Am I a good ancestor?

Ponder with me for a moment

Today’s musing will be a short one. Mostly because this line of questioning is so deep and nuanced that it needs to be held with the true spirit of dialogos.

How can we know what will, in hindsight, be considered ‘good’? What value system might help determine this? Will there even be future generations?

Questions abound. The spectrum of uncertainty is significant.

But…

I’m not convinced that should lead to inaction. I’m not convinced that said uncertainty should lead to such heavy future discounting. I’m not convinced that damn good ‘ancestorship’ is beyond today’s grasp.

As I’ve discussed before, we have good idea of where we are at. Many folks still live way below social foundations. Our global society is operating far beyond planetary boundaries. The mix of these two dynamics is far from equitable.

This remains true in what is typically the, or one of the, world’s most liveable cities.

So although the uncertainty about ‘what we owe’ future generations remains significant, it seems reasonably defensible to suggest that movements towards the ‘safe and just space’, as Raworth might put it, will benefit those today and those tomorrow.

Therefore the work we do to bring life back within planetary boundaries, whilst also more equitably distributing the benefits of genuinely normative resource extraction and production, will likely contribute to more favourable conditions for future life. This seems likely, in hindsight, to be viewed favourably.

Much more could be said here. But I’d like to extend the invitation to real conversation. I’d like to propose we engage in the process of collective futurecrafting together. I’d like to encourage us, all of us, to consider what it means to plant trees under whose shade we will never sit.

I look forward to being with you in this process.

With love as always.