00:12:59 · Roman Krznaric
[00:12:59] S1: I had a kind of romantic notion that it would be good to try and connect with nature. You know, clearly, you know, this was in the early 2000s, so I was just becoming aware of the ecological crisis, which, you know, to my shame, I hadn't been earlier. My kids sometimes say, like, how come you were taking aeroplanes in the 1990s when you knew about the carbon emissions? And I didn't start cutting down my flying until about 2005, and very rarely fly now. Um, and but gradually I started becoming aware of this, and I thought, right, I'm gonna leave being a political scientist, as I I used to be, and I'm going to try and put my hands in the soil, try and grow things. Actually, one of the really interesting things that happened, which I didn't expect expect, but I used to be working in this Oxford College garden on my hands and knees in the rain, you know, weeding and planting seeds and things like that, um, mowing lawns, and the college fellows and students would walk past and say nothing to me. Really? They just ignored me. And I didn't realize this would happen, but I started losing my sort of sense of self-respect. I kind of felt like, why don't you notice who I am? And this is something that's really driven my life a lot. That to try and understand how other people experience the world, people who are different from you. So, like, also in the city of Oxford where I I live in the UK, I was once walking past this homeless guy. Um, and I'd seen him for years walking up and down the street. Um, and a kind of this kind of crazy guy who would always be walking with no shoes in the snow and have be wearing five different jackets. And I never thought I had anything in common with him. And one day I stopped to talk with him. And it turned out his name was Alan Human. He changed his name by deed poll from Alan Lewis to Alan Heumann because he wanted to be in contact and feel solidarity with all of humanity. And it turned out this homeless guy had studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, just like I had. And we developed a friendship based on our mutual interest in Aristotle, Nietzsche, and pepperoni pizza. Right. But it was a really good lesson about how we fail to or we we make assumptions about people. Yeah. We fail to step into their shoes. And this has really informed my thinking about being a good ancestor.
00:15:05 · Roman Krznaric, Cameron McLain
Because I'm also interested, not just how do we step into the shoes of people like Alan Human, but how do we step into the shoes of future generations. [00:15:13] S0: And that's really hard, right? I mean, it's very hard to feel emotionally connected to future generations.
00:15:13 · Cameron McLain, Roman Krznaric
[00:15:13] S0: And that's really hard, right? I mean, it's very hard to feel emotionally connected to future generations. [00:15:17] S1: It is really hard, but actually we've got to kind of wire into us. I mean, if you think about, if you think about like the year your grandmother was born, right? Most people might know that. And if you have children, or if you even if you don't, just imagine the year a grandchild you might have might die. Now there is a span across five generations, two backwards, two forwards, and yourself, a span of maybe 200 years. So we're just naturally, kind of anthropologically embedded in multiple generations. And you know, I remember the moment my children were born, I've got twins. Okay. I remember seeing them both, um, like in the in the hospital, and kind of thinking, my God, what a crazy thought to think that I'm just me as an isolated individual. Where immediately I saw them, I thought, my god, I'm gonna do anything for you to help you, sacrifice for you, whatever. It's a very human thing. So we we're we're sold this narrative. You know, if you study economics about the idea of rational economic man or this kind of thing, it's so mad because it's so unlike who we are. I'm not saying we're not egoistic and selfish sometimes and all that kind of stuff, but we're a mixture of both the serpent and the dove. You know, we're we're we're both self-interested, but we're also other interested, and we're it's all intertwined.
00:16:34 · Cameron McLain
[00:16:34] S0: That that's the thing that I think reading your work and and listening to your talks struck me the most, is that I think it is quite strange that we, on the one hand, particularly with children, think so much and sacrifice so much for children as they are today, but are so bad at thinking about the world that our children will live in and what life will be like for them when they're 50, 70, 90. And and you don't even have to take it into future generations, which are harder to empathize with, right? Because those people are not born yet, you'd never met them. But you have met your own kids, and yet we are really bad at thinking anything more than kind of five to ten years out for our children.
00:17:08 · Roman Krznaric
[00:17:08] S1: Yeah, we're bad at it, but we can switch on that capacity, that kind of acorn brain thinking, relatively easily. Now, let me give you an example. So in Japan, there's this really cool movement called future design, and it was founded by this kind of crazy economist, and he was very influenced by this Native American principle called the seventh generation principle, which is found amongst many indigenous communities around the world of basically making decisions based on the impact seven generations ahead and sometimes honoring seven generations behind. And he took this idea to Japan and he didn't exactly follow it to seven generations, but he had this idea where he started organizing these community meetings in small towns and cities where he'd invite people, a bit like a citizens' assembly, invite people to discuss and draw up plans for the town or city where they live on an issue like, you know, the impacts of AI on employment or aging populations or climate change impacts. And basically, when they started doing it, they would split people into two groups. The first group were told to imagine themselves as residents from the present day. And the other group were given these kind of like ceremonial orange kimonos to wear and told to imagine themselves as residents from the year 2060. And there's systematic evidence showing that just by wearing that orange kimono robe thing, that the residents, the people who imagined themselves coming from 2060, advocated for far more transformative plans for their towns or cities. Because they knew that their children or grandchildren or people from their religious community or neighbors would be living there in that future. They even would vote for higher taxes like local water taxes to pay for water infrastructure. And this future design method is now used in local government across Japan. It's used by in big companies like Fujitsu for long-term planning by the Japanese Ministry of Finance. And it doesn't take much, it's just the human imagination. In a way, we've got this, we're experts at the temporal pirouette. Our minds have a capacity to dance across time. Like one moment you can be looking at your phone, but then you can be thinking about your children's future or your pension or whatever it happens to be. And we just need to learn to tap into that a bit more and make it normal.
00:19:15 · Roman Krznaric
And, you know, in a way, when it comes down to it, when I write my books, you know, my books are about trying to put ideas into the world that stay with people, that kind of shape your worldview. So the idea of being a good ancestor is just that. It's like wake up in the morning and look yourself in the mirror and say, you know, what am I going to do today to be a good ancestor? In a way, that's all I'm inviting people to do. I'm not, I don't want to tell you exactly how you should do it. Depends what you're doing in your life. You might be working in some in fintech, you might be a climate activist, whatever. But ask yourself that question.