What it argues
The Good Ancestor is Roman Krznaric's case for extending our sense of moral and practical obligation across time — not just to the people alive today but to those who will come after us. Published in 2020, it argues that humanity is suffering from a pathological short-termism: political cycles rewarding quarterly thinking, financial markets discounting the future, and media environments training attention to the urgent at the expense of the important. The result is a civilization that cannibalizes its own future while believing it is acting rationally.
Krznaric's argument is philosophical but deliberately practical. He is not interested in abstract obligations to posterity; he wants specific cognitive tools and institutional designs that make long-term thinking less exceptional and more habitual. The book is organized around what he calls six pathways for becoming a good ancestor: cathedral thinking (planning projects whose completion you won't see), holistic forecasting (imagining multiple futures rather than extrapolating from trends), legacy mindset (asking what your actions will look like from a hundred years out), intergenerational justice (treating future people as rights-holders, not abstractions), transcendent goal setting (commitments to goals larger than personal success), and finding your deep purpose in relation to deep time.
What it gets right
- 1.
Pathological short-termism — optimizing for immediate outcomes at the expense of longer ones — is built into the incentive structures of democratic politics, financial markets, and media, not just individual psychology.
- 2.
Cathedral thinking names the capacity to begin projects whose benefits will come generations after their authors are dead — a mode of commitment rare in contemporary life but historically commonplace.
- 3.
The Iroquois Confederacy's tradition of considering the seventh generation in decisions is an example of institutionalized long-term thinking that modern democracies have largely abandoned.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Roman Krznaric is a British-Australian philosopher and co-founder of the School of Life. He writes on the application of philosophy to everyday life, with particular focus on empathy, carpe diem, and the ethics of future generations. His previous books include Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution and How Should We Live? The Good Ancestor, published in 2020, emerged from his work with the Long Now Foundation and his research into long-term governance across cultures. He is a fellow of the Long Now Foundation and has advised governments and organizations on futures thinking.
