Après moi, le déluge

I came across a new phrase today. Literally, it translates as 'after me, the flood'. Attributed to Louis XV of France, the attitude expressed is one of myopic self-interest. It doesn't matter what happens after me as a result of my (in)actions, so long as my desires are satisfied. Let catastrophe come, as long as it comes once I'm gone.

Prior to the the Earth Summit in Rio (the UN Conference on Environment and Development 1992) George Bush snr is allegeded to have warned: 'the American way of life is not negotiable.' Après moi, le déluge.

UPDATE: Dan suggests an excellent Christian response: Plongeons dans le déluge (maintenant!).

Merton on humility against despair

      Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.
      In every man there is hidden some root of despair because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us. But because our own resources inevitably fail us, we are all more or less subject to discouragement and to despair.
      Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves.
      But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

- Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, 108.