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You've done all this thinking, you've seen all the possibilities for the future - good ones and bad ones alike - and yet the only ones you are willing to believe in, the imagined future that you seize upon as the foundation for all your moral judgments, is the only future in which everyone that you and I have ever loved and everything we'd ever hoped for must be obliterated.

Orson Scott Card#146

EthicsMoralityFearJudgmentFuture

About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker critiques building moral judgments on a future where all loved ones are destroyed.
In plain terms
Do not base your morals on doom.
What can you take from it?
Avoid doom-based moral reasoning.

Where it applies

  • moral decision making
  • strategic planning

Putting it to work

  • evaluate worst case scenarios carefully
  • question catastrophic thinking

Questions to consider

  • What future are you building your values on?
  • Does fear drive your choices?

Another view

Sometimes acknowledging worst cases is necessary for safety.

More from Orson Scott Card

  1. She had passed his test. She had listened to him the way no one else did - without impatience, without finishing his sentences, without letting her gaze waver …

    Permalink to quote #145
  2. I choose to live in a universe that has some hope in it.

    Permalink to quote #147
  3. Why did I come? I didn't come. I went. I wasn't coming here, to meet these people. I was leaving there. Getting away. Only I tricked myself.

    Permalink to quote #144

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