 | By Cornelia Channing Editorial Assistant, Sunday Opinion |
Recently, I was at dinner with some friends and the conversation turned to time travel. It was pretty standard fare: If you could transport yourself to any period in history — past or future — where and when would you go? The answers included Paris in the 1920s, Ancient Egypt, Mozart's Vienna, Mesopotamia. |
This is an admittedly pessimistic view — typical, perhaps, of my generation — but not an unreasonable one. We're living at an extraordinarily precarious moment in human history, one that will be defined by how we respond — or fail to respond — to some rather urgent existential threats. And it can feel at times like we are stuck in political gridlock, helpless to shape the future. It can feel like we are, in a word, doomed. |
But what if there is a different way of thinking about the future, one that offers a more hopeful, galvanizing outlook? What if the future could look better — even (dare I say?) great? |
In a guest essay, the Oxford philosopher William MacAskill offers one such outlook, zooming out on the timeline of human civilization to put this moment into context. The story of humanity, MacAskill argues, is just beginning. In fact, if history were a novel, we'd still be in the prologue. |
This is encouraging. It means that we have both the power and the responsibility to aim the trajectory of civilization in a positive direction. MacAskill's essay makes the case for longtermism, the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. |
How would we live — and legislate — today if we truly considered how our actions would affect not only our great-great-grandchildren but theirs after them? What if there were not just millions but hundreds of billions of future people counting on us to improve their lot? In order to think on this scale, we must extend our vision past the typical boundaries of generations and find communion with people many thousands of years in the future. |
Their fate, MacAskill argues, is in our hands. |
It's a thrilling thought, and it shook something loose in my mind. Reading MacAskill's essay, I began to question my pessimistic view. Perhaps the future needn't be so dire after all — perhaps it could even be great. And perhaps the way to get there is by passing down good will from one generation to the next — and on and on, until a meteor hits. |
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