SUICIDE EARTH (#8) Roman Krznaric -- The Good Ancestor | w. Van Carter

The Good Ancestor, A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking (Nov 2020, The Experiment) is by leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric.  A timely perspective for this moment in history.

Businesses eschew civic responsibility for immediate gains, politicians throw their support behind whatever will win the next election, and we all struggle to focus our attention beyond the next alert from our phones.  The result?

An inexcusable chasm between the haves and have-nots--and mounting existential threats--have brought our species to the precipice of disaster.  Yet Krznaric sees reason to hope... if we can trade short-sightedness with long-term thinking.  In The Good Ancestor, Krznaric reveals six practical ways we can retrain our brains to think of the long view, including Deep Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete).  His aim is to inspire more "time rebels" like Greta Thunberg--to shift our allegiance from this generation to all of humanity--in short, to save our planet and our future.

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Van Carter is a retired broadcast journalist. "I was never a war correspondent, yet we're now in a war and I feel like I'm reporting from the front lines."  Since 2008, he has published the Only Green List.  To see previous and upcoming episodes, go here.

Music credit: David Nevue, While the Trees Sleep

Kudos to Sunbury Press for hosting this interview series on its BookSpeak Network