I've most often seen this word coupled with self, as in self abnegation, but a quick dictionary check indicates that self may be superfluous. Abnegation: renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others.

This notion has been rattling around in my noggin for a couple of days since I last checked out Nanette's TV to make sure it still worked. (See It's Not Noise for the back story). I leave the set tuned to The Science Channel, of course, to reduce mental damage. I caught the very end of a show investigating what makes humans unusual compared to other animals. There had apparently been a number of candidate ideas explored earlier in the show but it ended with the idea of suicide as being a uniquely human behavior - especially the genetic suicide of failure to breed for ideological reasons.

It wasn't a compelling thesis. A chorus of evolutionary biologists in my mind raised objections citing instances where such apparent abnegation assisted the genetic package, or at least parts of it, to make it into the future through related individuals. It's the genes not the individual that matter in this.

The narrator was a Brit and I imagined that he (or at least the show's writers) had been influenced by a current thesis that Europe's low fertility rate threatened the continuation of some of those breeds of humans. I doubt this since the genetic packages have already spread widely and thrive in more congenial places. It is only European nations that are threatened with genetic evolution as the gene pool changes to reflect the effects of immigration and the higher fertility rate of those immigrants.

The ideology of abnegation is fairly strong in Europe, as well as other places, and results in a number of behaviors in addition to low fertility. Many are obsessing about the future of humanity and this planet, and see nothing but gloom and doom ahead. It's all our fault. We deserve punishment. We are a disease afflicting Gaia, who will soon take steps to stem the infection. Repent!

More prosaically, what do we owe to the future? What is the present value of a future benefit? What is a proper discount rate? Does this change when we consider time frames that presume the death of the individuals making the decision, so that the future benefits accrue to different individuals, presumably some of them being direct descendants (assuming that breeding failure has not led to the extinction of a given genetic package)?

This has been a more widely and vigorously debated topic since climate change hysteria in general and the Stern Review in particular have pronounced that the only moral discount rate is zero, perhaps even negative. Those of us living today should sacrifice to assure the wealth and health of future generations.

It's not a novel idea. Sacrificing for your children has long been a central thesis of upwardly mobile humans seeking to escape brutish poverty. We toil so our children might bask in luxury, at ease in the world. But it gets complicated when this impulse is raised to the level of a moral claim. [via Tyler Cowen, who observes that this article is by Someone who sounds like Megan McArdle]

I am still chewing over the full import of the moral intuition that people born 100 years from now have just as much right to, say, live in Bangladesh, as those born today. But as one does, when one is chatting with economists, I became curious about what this moral intuition would mean if we actually applied it. The most obvious example is abortion. If we cannot discount the interests of the fetus simply because it is not yet with us as a person, then how can one morally justify legal abortion as a coherent national policy? In the United States, at least, the argument generally centres around whether or not the fetus is a "person"—an argument which only makes sense, given the time horizon, with a very aggressive use of time preference. . .

Then I began exploring the permutations that might logically reconcile favouring legal abortion, on the one hand, and perfect concern for the welfare of unnamed descendants 2,000 years hence. Is it that the unnamed descendants are not yet fetuses? Does non-fetushood convey protections? But surely, barring scientific advance, they will eventually be fetuses, before they are people.

Is it that they aren't specific, but only general? I cannot build any moral logic does not dictate that any preference should run the other way, in favour of creatures with a high genetic likelihood of existing in a particular form. . .

Therefore, I mote, the future he or she should be able to collect any considerations owed to the amorphous future over the specific.

{I think I need an entirely new tense to have this discussion.}

There are, of course, other arguments in favour of legalised abortion. One could say, for example, that women have no obligation to support a fetus just because it happens to be helplessly dependant—but this would seem to undercut any moral support for the social safety net and the income tax. Saying that bodies are different might make some sense, but personally, I take my body to work with me every day, after which the various levels of American government will take forty percent of the labour of my fingers, at gunpoint if necessary.

I find it hard to construct a really compelling argument in favour of abortion which does not rest in some way on discounting the utility of the fetus-as-future-person.

It is odd that we have a nebulous concern for future generations who lay claim to our health, wealth and happiness, and yet regard fetuses as infections or parasites that exploit individual women and threaten to burden Gaia further. As is often the case with scientific claims, these moral claims are instrumental, devices to advance a political view. It isn't that there are no legitimate scientific or moral issues, it's that they seldom lead to unambiguous conclusions that support fist-in-the-air political objectives. Politics, it now seems, is not only stupid but immoral as well . . . or at least amoral.