00:12:20 · Roman Krznaric
[00:12:20] S1: Uh we did actually. Yeah, it's funny how you remember that. Uh yeah, we did actually paint, try to paint our driveway um so that, well actually with with chalk on the ground so that people wouldn't part their cars there. In fact, I wanted to put a big skip there and and plant, you know, uh grow vegetables in it or in a kind of trailer, but I knew the council would kill me for that. Um so I mean, these are just small things, um, you know, and you know, trying to live within a carbon budget, you know, trying to, you know, the average phone is thrown away after less than three years and uses half the elements in the periodic table. So try and buy secondhand, you know, electrical equipment, all that kind of stuff and digital devices. I mean, that's all obvious stuff. I mean, and that's only beginning. I think it's also fundamental to change the system. So that's why, you know, I've gone with my kids on demonstrations, whether it's Extinction Rebellion or other things. But that kind of like, you know, protesting on the streets is not for everybody. Everyone has to find their own route. Some people want to write poetry about a future river. You know, some people might sort of think, right, I'm I want to create a company that creates some amazing cancer cure, you know. Um, great. Find your way. Yeah. But I think, you know, I once heard the great American environmental campaigner Bill McKibben asked, someone asked him in the audience, you know, what should I do as an individual? And his reply was this be less of an individual. And I think there's something really important there about, in a sense, it doesn't matter what you do, but do it with others. Right. You know, this is teamwork, yeah, right? Whether it's putting solar panels on the roof of your kid's school, whether it's, you know, saying we're going to turn our company into a steward-owned company and be a bit like Patagonia and put some of the shares in a kind of trust, you know, for the earth rather than just for our um short-term shareholders, you know. What can you do with others?
00:14:08 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric
[00:14:08] S0: You you wrote The Good Ancestor. You also wrote a book called Carpe Diem Regained. So one of them is about seizing the day uh and and acting for the now. One of them is a long-term thinking book. On a Monday afternoon uh in a gloomy October London, how should we think about doing both at the same time? [00:14:28] S1: That's a really good question. Because I think carpe diem, the idea of seizing the day, it sounds like it's about the present moment. You know, like the idea of, you know, live every day as if it were your last. But actually, if you think about how to live our lives in a meaningful way, I think one of the most important things is to project yourself to the end of your life and look back and wonder: do I have regrets? Do I want to get to the end of my life and be on my deathbed or in a hospice and think, I regret certain decisions, um, whether it's in family, in business, politically, whatever. And ultimately, I think to live a life of depth and meaning, we need to do this kind of regret analysis to project ourselves towards the future. And that helps inform the decisions that we make today. And that projection to the future, of course, is a kind of long-term thinking. How do I make or live a life so that I don't look back on my life with regret? And that is about a kind of future thinking. It's about, may well be about being a good ancestor, you know. How can I be in those final moments and think, yeah, I'm glad with what I did and and how I lived? [00:15:35] S0: Have these thoughts and and and ideas made you less fearful of death?
00:15:35 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric
[00:15:35] S0: Have these thoughts and and and ideas made you less fearful of death? [00:15:40] S1: It's really difficult. You know, if I'm honest, as I get older, I fear death more. Okay. Um, partly because it's a very physical thing. Like I play a lot of sport and I can feel my body crumbling, you know, on the tennis court because I'm much slower than I used to be. In parallel to that, I've started going to this um Buddhist meditation retreat in the south of France called Plum Village. And it was um invented by this Vietnamese Buddhist monk called Thich Nhat Hanh, who in the 1960s was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr., he was an anti-war, anti-Vietnam War activist. Um and it's a kind of Buddhism which is very much about not just gazing at your own naval, but kind of trying to do good in the world. And I find that kind of Buddhist ideas of impermanence that, you know, the idea of like you're just a whirlpool. You know, if you look at a whirlpool, okay, in a river, right, you can just kind of identify what it is, but a whirlpool really has no edge to it. You can't say where the whirlpool ends and the river begins because it's just a flow, right? And I think we're all kind of like that. We're just kind of a flow in the universe. And so I'm always seesawing before this between these ideas. I'm decrepit and getting older, and oh my god, what's happening to my body and my mind? But also, look, we're just here for a tiny eye blink in the great cosmic story, and I do find that quite that perspective helpful.
00:17:06 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric
[00:17:06] S0: And and thinking house be a good ancestor, clearly, if you do that, if we all do that, it's better for the world, it's better for future generations. Is it also something which makes you happier selfishly? [00:17:17] S1: Absolutely, it does. Look, human beings are relational creatures. You can go to a Michelin-style restaurant by yourself and have a pretty decent time, but you're probably going to have a better time going with one of your mates and having a kebab, right? And we all know that, right? It's we all understand that human beings are deeply relational creatures. And what I'm trying to say is that that relationality that we feel when we're having a kebab with our friend, um, or falfel in my case, since I'm vegetarian, um, is also something that can extend through time. We can feel connected through the generations. And I feel kind of good, you know, thinking about my children or their futures and future generations. I feel more connected to the world. You know, I feel more alive, right? And I think it's a kind of a habit of thought, you know, um, to feel that we're kind of interconnected. In lots of other cultures, this is totally normal. The idea of seventh generation decision making in Native American culture and stuff like that. It makes me feel really great to feel uh connected, to not feel isolated and alone. I mean, what about you? [00:18:24] S0: I feel already happier having listened to your talk uh a few weeks ago and tried to kind of deploy some of this thinking in my in my life, and I feel I feel for sure happier.
00:18:24 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric, Cameron McLain
[00:18:24] S0: I feel already happier having listened to your talk uh a few weeks ago and tried to kind of deploy some of this thinking in my in my life, and I feel I feel for sure happier. [00:18:33] S1: I mean, if you think about it, right, the idea of uh leaving a legacy to the future is transcending death. [00:18:38] S3: Yeah. [00:18:39] S1: Right? Isn't that cool? It's great. Right. I mean, it's it's kind of it's a kind of living beyond your own bodily life. I think it's fantastic. It's a kind of eternity. So, hey, who wouldn't want that? [00:18:51] S0: How have your kids reacted to it? They've been immersed in it, they've got your vote, age 11. Do they love this stuff? [00:18:58] S1: You know, it's funny with my kids, you know, I always wonder whether they've actually read my books or not. Yeah. You know, but I think they have. I think they've got this one, but they have very different approaches. [00:19:06] S3: Okay.
00:19:06 · Cameron McLain, Roman Krznaric, Tommy Stadlen
[00:19:06] S3: Okay. [00:19:06] S1: You know, like one of them, you know, wants to be an activist of some kind, another one wants to probably be a scholar of some kind. But I think both of them feel that that, you know, if you live your life just in a very kind of narrow, self-centered way, it might be all right, but you're going to feel pretty alone in the end. Yeah. You know, and that actually to be a full human being is to recognize that we are these sort of social creatures. Um, we're as gregarious as bees, as Aristotle said, you know, and let's do more to bring out that side of our ourselves, let's recognize our deep interrelationality. This is part of who we are. It's almost not so much I think therefore I am, but you are, therefore, I am. I love that. [00:19:54] S0: One more piece of advice for the listeners and and people watching this. If there was one thing that they should change about how they act and live, having listened to you over two episodes, what would it be? [00:20:06] S1: I think it's just that idea of you know, human beings are habit-driven creatures. And I think that idea of you know looking yourself in the mirror in the morning and saying, What can I do today to be a good ancestor? Or at night to say, What did I do today to be a good ancestor? And look, you may not achieve anything on any one particular day, but if you make that a habit like brushing your teeth, then you may well be on a pathway to be remembering being remembered well by the generations to come, which I think they deserve for us to be the good ancestors.