Uproot

There are two ways to remove a weed: pull it out by the roots or chop off its stem. Only one is permanent. Many contemporary solutions do the latter, focusing on a problems’ leaves rather than its root. Such short-term thinking inevitably leads to short lifespans.

When a crisis occurs, we can analyze its effects or the cause of its effects. Encouraging long-term thinking requires that we look at patterns of how we interact with world systems, not only one specific instance. We typically fail to create the material conditions to do so, often endlessly restructuring society with the same foundational pattern. It is easy to fall into the idea that economics is the force underlying all world interactions, but I find this to be limiting in perspective. It prevents us from redefining relationships to last, mandating that all are governed by economic principles. Although this is useful for building productive and competitive societies in an increasingly globalized world, it does not factor in time.

I want to pause for a moment to clarify that this argument is not specific to any economic system. It poses a threat to all societies, competitive or not. In communism, we may see this manifest as tragedy of the commons, where individuals fail to see the resource macros. In capitalism, this often manifests similarly except corporations, agents of consumer demand, are the primarily actors involved in extraction. Relationships are more fundamental than politics.

When we enter into a relationship with another human, its potential duration is often a key consideration for how much time we want to invest in it. This is for good reason. Longer relationships mean more returns. The same should apply for our non-human relationships, those that we hold with the Earth, technology, and culture. We often pick ones that deliver now rather than later and fall into unsustainable patterns which leave a trail of destruction. This is not solved by economic thought and has only historically been mitigated by the scale of society. We cannot simply incentivize long-term thinking, it is a concept that only societies which have scaled on the time axis will inherently optimize on. Unfortunately, this creates a circular dependency as societies that fail to prioritize the future are unlikely to scale. Thus, until then, we need to be explicit about creating a culture that can.

When the goal of society becomes accumulating short-term wealth we fail to incentivize proper curiosity. Companies that achieve financial success are celebrated, and rightfully so, they have created technology that fulfills consumer need. Individual curiosity only goes so far as to address this need - but no more. Who is then left to evaluate the need’s validity? Even with a primarily macroeconomic motivation, who is considering whether meeting that need now results in failing to meet future consumer demand? There is no special attention paid as to the nature of the need itself (is meeting it the most optimal way to address it?).

When we look at issues of climate change, for example, we primarily see it as a technological need rather than a cultural one - in our toolkit we see solar panels, nuclear reactors, cloud seeding, and aerosol injection. What we don’t see are the general concepts behind this technology: building cyclic systems that more closely integrate us into natural resource flows and increasing local self-reliance. Most attention and funding is given to such solutions which solve the consequences of the crisis. Much less is given to prevent us from getting into another one. For that, we need thinkers who look at the problem and see it in its entirety, who question questions themselves. Creating a culture that nurtures inquisitive minds capable of penetrating its own societal fabric is an extremely difficult task, however, not impossible. We have done so countless times before, primarily at educational institutions where students have not yet integrated into “the system” and have opportunities to analyze it from the outside. I am reminded of the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything; the questions we ask determine the quality of the answers we receive.

Let us now pivot to a culture of mutualism, replacing the old ways of extracting until we encounter Doom. This is how a primitive robot may operate, blind except for a tiny light sensor which allows it to turn when it detects looming barriers. We should expect better from a society capable of forward thinking. In this analogy, let us be more like LiDAR, taking in stock of our surroundings and continuously calculating optimal future trajectories. I realize this is highly aspirational, but I also know that we are unique as a species in our capability to learn without doing. We do not have to experience an instance of pain to obtain the instinct to avoid it. There is no need for us to continue exploiting our relationships when we have learned the future consequences we will feel for those actions. We must learn to analyze — truly analyze — why problems are so we can break out of harmful patterns before they destroy our civilizations.