Longtermism

(see also clocks, legacy conservation and other key terms)

A moral perspective

• William MacAskill and Toby Ord apply this term (c. 2017) as part of a claim to a human obligation to the future.
• MacAskill (2022) claims that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.
• Ord (Namdar, Pölzler & Ord 2020) says that it is especially concerned with the impacts of our actions upon the longterm future.

A billion years of free sunshine

• The global economic paradigm tends to align futures with the human lifespan, or with cycles of governance.
• Wood (2022) argues that "designers are, albeit unwittingly, helping to shape the Anthropocene".
• Unfortunately, this epoch exceeds the customary timescale of civil engineering projects, etc..
• Moreover, the environmentalist term sustainability implies an unspecified number of future generations.
• However, practically speaking we can look forward to a billion years of ample, free solar energy.

Reconciling short and long term

• The global economic paradigm tends to align futures with the human lifespan, or with cycles of governance.
• Understanding one's own state of consciousness may help in raising the consciousness of large systems.
• This is paradoxical, as humans more easily act upon short term, rather than long-term issues.
• Face-to-face teaching would reconcile macroscopic (universal time/space) with the local 'here & now'.
• …so let us think beyond the short-sightedness of national politics
• …and rise above the flatland of mainstream economics
• …then dream far beyond the lifespan of humans
• …to imagine ecosystems of a distant future
• …i.e. a post-Anthropocentric paradigm

Notes for development (need verification)

1. Many modern buildings are likely to last less than half a century
2. Edo Sashimono
3. An ancient forest takes hundreds of years to mature
4. A silk kimono may last 500 years
5. Stainless steel (e.g. for the internal structure of modular buildings) should last a thousand years)
6. Hedgerows containing diverse species can take up to a thousand years to mature

References

• MacAskill, W., 2022. What we owe the future. Basic books.
• Namdar, B., Pölzler, T. Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, Bloomsbury, 2020. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 24, 855–857 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10181-9
• Wood, J. (editor), 2022, Metadesigning Designing in the Anthropocene, Routledge