178 Morten Tønnessen
system which can be in operation eternally – whereas in fact it does not have
the fundamentals of a timeless system.
JD: I just discovered the last month or so that Pakistan has no public school
system. The only schools they have are these private schools where they
learn nothing but the Quran.
MT: They must have a public school system.
JD: You would think so, but they do not. I was really scandalized. That is
exactly the kind of thinking that you are talking about, they think this way:
―We only have to worry about now‖. The Pakistani government has taken no
responsibility for the education of the young.(JD suggests that each generation should be able to expect that overall, they will be better
off than the last generation)
MT: In that case we are all failures in our days, because we have put constraints
on the conditions for future generations, conditions which we did not have to
endure ourselves. I wonder if that is too strict a criterion, though – because it
is basically impossible for us to leave the world in a better state in 20 years
than it was in 20 years ago. If we talk about the environmental conditions,
that is. In human terms, we may be able to offer better opportunities than we
had a generation ago. There are two sides to this coin – the conditions we
offer to fellow humans, and the conditions we offer to non-humans. I think it
is clear that in the course of the last 100 years, the conditions for humans
have on many points improved – considerably, if you look at life expectancy- but this has come at the cost of the environment.
TO PINPOINT WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE
MT: You said something about responsibility which I would like to ask you
about. In a family setting, the scale gives you a perspective for discussing
who is responsible for what in the family. But if we are talking about close
to 7 billion people on a globe with international politics and so on, what
individuals are responsible for the whole? To some extent we are all
responsible, of course – but in effect someone has to do more than others.
Who are the ones who have this responsibility on their shoulders?
JD: That is where you get to the structure of governments. I would say the
governor of the state of Indiana has more responsibility than Jean Sebeok,
who happens to live in the state. And so on.
MT: So power gives responsibility?
JD: Power gives responsibility, for sure.
MT: Many would claim that it can also be a question of being responsible for
achieving power for a good cause.
JD: Yes – standing for an office, not necessarily because you want the office, but
because you are the only one who can get a particular thing done.