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Jacques-Yves Cousteau
THE RIGHTS OF FUTURE GENERATIONS
(Mr. Cousteau is an explorer and an environmentalist and
founder of the Cousteau Society)
Life has existed for more than 3 billion years. We arrived
only about 3 million years ago. Our presence represents only
about 1/1000 of the span of life on this planet.
Nature provides newcomers all the time, through evolution,
but nature's nature is alien to our concept. Nature is cruel
and violent and does not know what justice is. Nature favors
the strong, violent, the most cruel. It is because of this
set of values that we reject that nature was successful in
evolving and populating the world.
But we are not ordinary newcomers. We arrived as naked apes,
and as naked apes we were subject to all the violence of
nature. We have to behave like nature does, by being violent
and cruel and try to save our own lives. This continued
until very recent times, 10,000 to 15,000 years ago when we
stopped being mere food gatherers and established rules, ways
to live together, to farm the land and to use our brain for
other purposes than just escaping danger.
But the moral values that we have introduced as our rules are
radically opposed to nature's. The two sets of rules,
nature's and human's have had difficulty cohabitating. But
we have cohabitated with bloody adventures, with ups and
downs, we have lived with these two sets of values.
He also mentions that liberty is only possible in a
disciplined society. Human rights can only be adopted and
respected if a high dose of discipline is exercised by human
beings. Self-discipline is a very difficult thing to
implement in our own lives Self-discipline is the only way
we can at the same time be proud of our revolt against nature
and protect that nature that we have very recently become
masters. We have a very sharp turn to make, 180 degrees,
from being victims of nature to being protectors of nature.
It has taken about 200 years to understand that to begin to
act accordingly.
He goes on to talk about the "fluids of life". The fluids of
life are air and water. He lists some of the frightful
damage we have done to the planet.
