Living our Destiny
We work alongside the future
An interesting column in the New York Times about thinking (and living) in an extended future (The Case for Longtermism by William MacAskill, 8/8/2022). The author is talking about the REAL future, what I’ve been thinking about for most of my life.
Consider that our lifetimes are part of the Prologue to the human story. We will die while still in the prologue, but there are no limits how far into the story we can imagine. Our minds are time machines. It is perhaps what is most “human” about us.
And we can live in that future. Our present actions determine the quality of life for unimaginable numbers of generations. It should be exciting; it can be renewing to see ourselves working alongside the extending edge of our progeny. Two thousand years from now? A million years? That is the time frame of the human experience.
Think a seedling in the ground. We care, we nurture, and the great arching beauty of the tree slowly rises toward the sky. And it’s seedlings.
I think that meaning is as necessary as water for life. I would go so far as to say that such a desire is written into our DNA. And that may be all and more than our creation myths teach.
Not a turkey, not an eagle, but the horizon should be our national symbol.