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The BBC has an interesting article on short-term thinking in humans, and attempts by various people to get society to think long-term instead:
For many of us currently in adulthood, how often can we truly say we are thinking about the well-being of these future generations? How often do we contemplate the impact of our decisions as they ripple into the decades and centuries ahead?
Part of the problem is that the ‘now’ commands so much more attention. We are saturated with knowledge and standards of living have mostly never been higher – but today it is difficult to look beyond the next news cycle. If time can be sliced, it is only getting finer, with ever-shorter periods now shaping our world. To paraphrase the investor Esther Dyson: in politics the dominant time frame is a term of office, in fashion and culture it’s a season, for corporations it's a quarter, on the internet it's minutes, and on the financial markets mere milliseconds.
Modern society is suffering from “temporal exhaustion”, the sociologist Elise Boulding once said. “If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future,” she wrote in 1978. We can only guess her reaction to the relentless, Twitter-fuelled politics of 2019. No wonder wicked problems like climate change or inequality feel so hard to tackle right now.
[...] the longevity of civilisation depends on us extending our frame of reference in time – considering the world and our descendants through a much longer lens. What if we could be altruistic enough to care about people we might never live to see? And if so, what will it take to break out of our short-termist ways?
People tend to value rewards received in the future less than they value the rewards received now --- in the sense of "I'd rather have a hamburger today than 10 hamburgers three weeks from now". Coupled with improved technology, this has lead us to the 24-hour news-cycle life that society is in now: we are inundated with "breaking news items" that use up our stamina and we never take the time to think long-term. In practice, this means we tend to use up resources without making provisions for kids, grandkids, or descendants 1000 years into the future. We use various rationalizations of this behavior (when confronted with the accusation), but careful analysis shows that we are mostly wrong (as long as we value individual future humans as much as individual humans alive today).
While it's a fairly long read, I think it's worth the time: some ideas that I've heard before are placed in a wider context, and there are several references that I, at least, wasn't aware of.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by leftover on Saturday January 12 2019, @04:52AM (4 children)
As a devoted father and grandfather, I can honestly say I spend rather a lot of time thinking about various terms of 'the future'. It is not a pleasant pastime. Don't know about you but there are no "Truthful News" or "Long-Term Analysis" options in my newsfeed. Trying to filter the equivalents from the sewage streams offered as news would take more that 24 hours per day. I am far beyond merely "angry" at this situation, the people who orchestrated it, and the people who defend it against their own best interests.
My problems are fatigue and discouragement. Doing "whatever I can do" does not even leave a transient smudge, it has no effect at all. Convincing myself to do more of the same has been difficult but, barring sudden superpowers, is all there is. So I continue.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:49PM (1 child)
Run for office.
Make the world a better place.
One jurisdiction at a time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @12:00PM
You're assuming that those that successfully ran for office are running things...
In practice they're no longer the ones pulling the strings, they are now one of the strings being pulled
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday January 12 2019, @05:06PM
There are many others that feel as you do. You deserve Insightfuls rather than merely Interestings but you're already at +5. You recognize some of the injustices and you feel compelled to do at least a little to try to improve the world. That already means you're far less of a problem than the malevolent, sociopathic pricks that are orchestrating most of the damage. You're doing what little you can. People with more power and more wealth can do a lot more. A lot of them make the world a worse place but some do improve it and that in itself is something that needs to continue. It's about damage limitation. Just because things are awful now doesn't mean they wouldn't be a whole lot worse if people stopped being conscientious who currently are. I totally hear you about the fatigue though. Exasperation.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:02PM
I hear you. I am weary in my bones also for the same reasons. But it is only ever determined individuals who make a difference.
I've been involved in activism for a long time. At the center of every organization is one person with an iron will that others cluster around. In every public hearing on policy, everything pivots on the impassioned testimony of one person. Not everyone can muster that determination, ever. Among those who can, few can maintain that focus forever. But when called upon good men and women of conscience must answer.
I'd also observe that we don't always know how far our influence on the world travels. Doing the best you can everyday can feel like a thankless task, a Sisyphean struggle, but when you do it you set an example that braces up those around you who are also asking themselves if the good fight is worth fighting.
The highest good any of us can do, the actions that will echo the furthest, are those moments when we're given the choice to do the right thing that everyone else is afraid to do.
Washington DC delenda est.