beyond wishful thinking 29self, and indeed the entire phenomenal and temporal world, are less
real than the unifi ed and timeless being from which all emanates and
to which all returns, we can nevertheless persuade ourselves to accept a
weaker version of that doctrine.
According to this version, we are indeed the real individuals that we
seem to be, living in a historical world that is also for real. We shall have
to accept death and the dissolution of the body to which consciousness
remains tied. We shall nevertheless survive in the onward rush of
emergent humanity.
I, the individual, however, will not survive. Th e future glories of the
human race will not elate me now, nor its future absurdities and sav-
ageries now cast me down. Each of us can indeed work, out of love or
ambition, for the unborn. Only a fool, bent on consolation, no matter
what the cost in self- deception, would fi nd in our sacrifi ce to them res-
cue from death.
Once the specter of this secondhand immortality vanishes, the ro-
mance of the ascent of the human race loses much of its luster. It loses
it not only as a compensation for death but also as a cure for belittlement.
What we do must make us greater now, even at the price of abruptly
shortening the life in which this greatness is manifest. All true great-
ness may be sacrifi cial. However, as the benefi ciaries of sacrifi ce, those
who have yet to live enjoy no priority over the living.
As a response to the risks of belittlement, rather than as a vision of
the future capable of inspiring and informing action in the present, the
romance of the ascent of humanity must fail. It performs in this role the
part of an illusion that is related to a moral and po liti cal truth. Th e truth
to which it is related is that we diminish our susceptibility to belittlement
now by beginning to reor ga nize society now.
We can establish universally an education that recognizes in every
child a tongue- tied prophet, and in the school the voice of the future,
and that equips the mind to think beyond and against the established
context of thought and of life as well as to move within it. We can de-
velop a demo cratic politics that renders the structure of society open in
fact to challenge and reconstruction, weakening the dependence of
change on crisis and the power of the dead over the living. We can make
the radical demo cratization of access to the resources and opportuni-
ties of production the touchstone of the institutional reor ga ni za tion of