Are You Doing a Better Job Being a Good Person?

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I think most parents today, I'll say most grandparents look at their children raising their grandchildren and say, I'm so glad I'm not a parent today. That's part of what I'm saying. Maybe we've made some progress on it. But there's a way in which how to be a good person is always going to be relative to your circumstances. And that's why it's just really hard to say, well, am I doing a better job being a good person in the world that I'm in than Socrates was?

Suppose all of humanity was infected by a virus that left us all infertile--no one will come along after us. How would you react to such a world? Agnes Callard of the University of Chicago says she would be filled with despair. But why does this seem worse than our own inevitable deaths? Callard speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the meaning of life, and what exactly about the end of humanity is so demoralizing. The conversation concludes with a discussion of whether humanity is making progress.