Just Finished Reading: The Good Ancestor – How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World by Roman Krznaric (FP: 2020) [245pp] 

According to the author, short term thinking will kill us all. He's not far wrong. Certainly, in the West, few politicians or governments think much beyond the next election or the one after that – 8-10 years at most. They certainly wouldn't want to start something that only comes to fruition years later if there's a possibility that the opposition party might be in power to take the credit. Likewise, business tends to think of quarterly profit forecasts and shareholder meetings. Why would they possibly put something in train that might not turn a handsome profit in 3 months rather than 3 decades? Short term thinking is reasonably adept at dealing with immediate problems and the unexpected out-of-the-blue disasters, but it's also very good at laying the groundwork for perpetuating or even creating the very conditions from which disasters emerge. 

So, what's stopping us from long term (or at least longer term) thinking? Part of the problem is that, generally, we're not very good at it. Planning 5 years out seems long term to many and planning further out seems pointless especially if circumstances are prone to regular and rapid change. Then, of course, there is little incentive for either governments or business to plan for decades or even generations ahead. They would be criticised for 'blue sky thinking' and wasting money. Yet, at the same time, there are calls to fix some fundamental problems that cannot be resolved in 5, 10 or even 20 years. We KNOW that ongoing climate change is going to cause MAJOR problems – and is already doing so – but little if anything is being done about it by people or organisations with the power, ability and money to actually accomplish things because of short-term thinking. If any solution is predicted to take more than a few elections or shareholder reviews to bed in... forget it. 

The author proposes a range of options to help us (and those in power) to think about things beyond what we can see right in front of our eyes. My favourite, and probably most practical, is Cathedral Thinking. Our ancestors built cathedrals and other structures that still have the power to amaze us hundreds if not thousands of years after they were completed. What many fail to take into account is that many of these structures took generations to complete with their construction being handed on to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original designers/builders to complete. We seem to have lost that focus, that projection into the future, that OUR ancestors seem to have. It might be a very good idea to rediscover it. 

Although I found the author to be somewhat over optimistic and some of the ideas presented to be rather wishy-washy and vague, I thought that his heart was in the right place (and not just in his chest). Despite all of our technology and imagination we, as a culture, seem to have lost the ability to think big and project ourselves into the DEEP future rather than 5 minutes down the road. Short term thinking will not save us from many of the problems – which have honestly been building for decades or longer – we KNOW are coming our way. This book, flawed as I think it is, is a small step looking to correct that. Worth a read. Reasonable.