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Ian McEwan: An Essay for our Time
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The pressure of our numbers, the abundance of our
inventions, the blind forces of our desires and needs are
generating a heat – the hot breath of our civilisation.
How can we begin to restrain ourselves? We resemble
successful lichen, a ravaging bloom of algae, a mould
enveloping a fruit.
We are fouling our nest, and we know we must act
decisively, against our immediate inclinations. But can
we agree among ourselves?
We are a clever but quarrelsome species – in our public
debates we can sound like a rookery in full throat.
We are superstitious, hierarchical and self-interested,
just when the moment requires us to be rational,
even-handed and altruistic.
We are shaped by our history and biology to frame our
plans within the short term, within the scale of a single
lifetime. Now we are asked to address the well-being of
unborn individuals we will never meet and who, contrary
to the usual terms of human interaction, will not be
returning the favour.
Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the
matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring.
On our side we have our rationality, which finds its
highest expression and formalisation in good science.
And we have a talent for working together – when
it suits us.
Are we at the beginning of an unprecedented era of
international co-operation, or are we living in an
Edwardian summer of reckless denial? Is this the
beginning, or the beginning of the end?
Ian McEwan, 2005
MceEwan's work as a novelist has
earned him worldwide critical acclaim.
He has been shortlisted for the Booker
Prize for Fiction three times, winning the
award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel
Atonement received the WH Smith
Literary Award (2002), National Book
Critics’ Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los
Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003)
and the Santiago Prize for the European
Novel (2004). His latest book Saturday
is published by Random House.
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