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Longtermism

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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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