Humans have a “lifetime bias,” explains futurist Ari Wallach. When we plan ahead, we do so by thinking in terms of years and decades rather than centuries and millennia.

We need to escape this short-term thinking if we want to be great ancestors to the generations of humans that will come after us. Thinking like a futurist requires ‘longpath’ thinking. 

One way to think long-term is through transgenerational empathy, by which we reconcile ourselves with the past in order to focus on the attributes that we want to pass on to the next generation. The ancient Greek concept of ‘telos’, meaning “ultimate aim”,  is incredibly useful here. Our telos should be to always think: ‘Am I becoming a great ancestor?’

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