The Long Now Foundation Interview

#237 Great.com Talks With… The Long Now Foundation

Why do the big existential challenges of our time - issues like climate change and antibiotic resistance - cause us to moan and drag our feet? Why do we prefer sticking our heads in the sand when we know how threatened life on our planet is? A key reason is our proclivity for short-term thinking. In this episode we talked with Nicholas Paul Brysiewicz from The Long Now Foundation about reorienting our vision of what’s possible and what achievement really means.

Why Do We Need To Think Long Term?

Many of humanity’s key accomplishments are the culmination of several lifetimes’ work. While immediately palpable results and instant gratification are often seductive, such thinking can be fatally flawed. It’s easy to develop a negative or even nihilistic attitude when you don’t see how your work contributes to something greater. But we should shrug off doomsday thinking and instead ask ourselves where humanity could be in another ten thousand years, argues Brysiewicz.

The Long Now Foundation’s Organizational Continuity Project seeks examples of projects whose goals persist and whose results are not realised in a single lifetime. They want to celebrate such efforts, because passing the baton to the next generation is both empowering and rewarding.

Listen to the whole interview to find out about the Long Now Foundation’s flagship projects: a giant clock built to last for 10 thousand years as a timely reminder of our duty to see beyond ourselves, and an archive of all of Earth’s languages. The Long Now Foundation also welcomes donations to support a more responsible world view.

Want to learn more about The Long Now Foundation? You can check out their blog and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.