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Expanding Human Time Horizons

Roman Krznaric

A contribution to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Collective Imagination Practices Toolkit

Expanding Human Time Horizons – a toolkit designed by Roman Krznaric

This set of activities is designed to take people on a journey of expanding their temporal imaginations, focusing on intergenerational responsibility and its applications in both personal life and in organisations
They have been designed for use by in-person groups but can easily be adapted for online use
It is important that the discussion activities are not rushed and that sufficient time is given for reflection on this challenging issue.

Roman Krznaric biography

Roman Krznaric is a social philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to create change. His internationally bestselling books, including The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World and Empathy, have been published in more than 25 languages. He is Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing and founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum. His latest book is History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity. www.romankrznaric.com

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What sorts of things do we wish our ancestors

had done better for us?

What might our descendants wish we

had done better for them?

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Mapping Time Horizons

Human beings operate on multiple time horizons, in both private life and public life. Extending our time horizons is one of the keys to being a good ancestor. We need to learn to operate not just on the scale of seconds, minutes and hours, but on the scale of decades, centuries and even millennia (as illustrated in this animated graphic).

Background information: extract adapted from The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric [This can be read out to the group or printed out for each participant]

Human beings have an astonishing evolutionary gift: agile imaginations that can shift in an instant from thinking on a scale of seconds to a scale of years or even centuries. Our minds constantly dance across multiple time horizons. One moment we can be making a quickfire response to a text and the next thinking about saving for our pensions or planting an acorn in the ground for posterity. We are experts at the temporal pirouette. Whether we are fully making use of this gift is, however, another matter.

This graphic reveals how this capacity to range across time is expressed in both personal and public life. In personal life we sometimes think, plan and operate on a scale of minutes or seconds, such as when responding to a text message or clicking the Buy Now button. But our minds can instantly switch to a scale of hours (thinking about when our phone battery will die) or days (looking forward to a weekly exercise class or planning when we plan to do the laundry), or months (planning a three-month diet or the cycle of pregnancy), or years (deciding to do a college degree), and occasionally a scale of decades (taking out a mortgage or saving for a pension). Yet we rarely think far beyond the threshold of our own lifetimes: death is the common cut-off point for our imaginings. Survey data shows that for most people, even from different cultures and religious backgrounds, the future goes dark after 15 to 20 years. We simply find it difficult to picture more than a few decades ahead, which is why it can be so hard to save for old age.

A range of time horizons similarly operates in public life. High frequency share trading works in milliseconds, fashion fads and quarterly business reporting in months, and election cycles in years. Temporal vision seldom extends further than a decade, although there are exceptions, such as NASA’s 30-year space exploration programme, the Chinese government’s 35-year National Plans, the building of flood defences and long-term seed banks. In general, the public future goes dark after around three decades. In 2020, it is difficult to find any governments, corporations or international organisations that are making substantive plans beyond 2050.

In both public and private life, then, we are operating within a relatively narrow temporal bandwidth and failing to draw on the imaginative capacity of our acorn brains to think into the long future. Moreover, forces such as digital technology are driving us towards even shorter horizons than in the past, so more and more of our activity is being concentrated in the bands closest to the present. The future is rapidly closing in on us.

Yet we must extend our vision if we hope to have a chance of meeting the challenges of existential risk and civilisational breakdown that our species will be confronting not just in the decades ahead, but in the centuries and millennia to come. The future needs to stay illuminated far beyond 20 or 30 years

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Seconds

Minutes

Hours

Days

Months

Years

Decades

Centuries

Millennia

Buy now button

Coffee break

Phone battery

Laundry

Pregnancy

College degree

Pension

Tree planting

Time Capsule

Stock markets

24/7 news

Intercity trains

Discount sales

Quarterly reporting

Election cycles

Social struggles

Flood defences

Seed banks

Human Time Horizons

PERSONAL LIFE

PUBLIC LIFE

What activities in your

personal life happen on these

different time scales?

What in your organisation or field of work happens on these

different time scales?

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What are the biggest barriers to long-term thinking and planning in your organisation or field of work?

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Where are the greatest opportunities for designing in new or different perceptions of time your organisation or field of work?

Consider levers such as: measurement of progress/impact, financing sources, 100-year plans, employee incentives, supply chains, governance, ownership structures, accountability

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As a group, design a practical project that shifts the time horizons of your organisation in a way that benefits future generations at least 30 years from today

Consider aspects such as who would be involved, how it would be financed, how its impact could be assessed, how you would get organisational buy-in, how barriers would be overcome, what it would be called

Present its key elements.

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Menu of Conversation

These questions have been designed by the social philosopher Roman Krznaric, based on his book The Good Ancestor, to stimulate adventurous conversations with family, friends, colleagues and strangers. Please take your time, discuss them in any order, and listen and speak with respect.

What legacy do you want to leave for your family, future generations and the living world?

How have you balanced making short-term and long-term decisions in your life?

What actions could you take to be a better ancestor?

How should we weigh up the interests of current versus future generations?

How do you feel about your relationship with time?

What sorts of things do we wish our ancestors had done better for us?

What might our descendants wish we had done better for them?

How do you feel about your life being just an eyeblink in the vast 13.8-billion-year history of the universe?

What are your greatest hopes and fears about the future?

How far into the future will your life and actions have consequences? How do you feel about them?

What impact does your phone, work or religion have on your attitude to time?

What should be the ultimate goal of the human species?

‘A satisfying conversation is one that makes you say what you have never said before.’

-Theodore Zeldin