Longtermism seems an awful lot like a psychological coping mechanism for death, as described by modern Terror Management Theory.
"According to TMT, death anxiety drives people to adopt worldviews that protect their self-esteem, worthiness, and sustainability and allow them to believe that they play an important role in a meaningful world."
Throughout human history, countless humans have found solace in being able to identify with their society as something permanent, even divine, that will outlive their physical selves and into which they should pour their energies in exchange for immortality. To many people, especially those who have found a great deal of success and approval from society at large, the thought that the entirety of our modern granfalloons are doomed to be disbanded and forgotten is a worse than an actual terminal disease. And this is neither an exclusively western nor modern perspective.
For instance, the Epic of Gilgamesh ends with the title hero being frustrated in his attempts to achieve immortality, so in response he builds great walls and lays out the plans for the great city of Uruk which will outlast him. Longtermism, in other words, saved Gilgamesh from existential despair 6,000 years ago. Are today's tech bros so different?
'Longtermism', according to the (tldr) linked essay, is about (the hubris here is off the scale) "how our actions affect the very long-term future of the universe", lol. What a surprise, it's based on the work of Nick "Batshit" Bostrom...
Like a stopped clock being right twice a day Bostrom may be right about climate change not being that big a deal, but some of his other views would not be out of place in a mental hospital. E.g. that we are living in a computer simulation, that there will be a 'singularity' when computers become conscious, and (according to the essay) that "we should seriously consider establishing a global, invasive surveillance system that monitors every person on the planet in realtime" ('preventitive policing').
People like him (and Bezos, Gates, Musk, Thiel etc etc ad nauseam) are best denied the oxygen of publicity.
The fact that these nutters have the ear of governments and 'security services' worldwide is a sad indictment of how far humanity has fallen.
"A hushed hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man – the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories – will all be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper."
"The present exponential growth can not continue for the next millennium. By the year 2600 the world's population would be standing shoulder to shoulder and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red hot." — Stephen Hawking, link: http://clinton4.nara.gov/Initiatives/Millennium/shawking.html
"Given an infinite source of energy, population growth still produces an inescapable problem. The problem of the acquisition of energy is replaced by the problem of its dissipation." — Garrett Hardin
"Malthus has been buried again. (This is the 174th year in which that redoubtable economist has been interred. We may take it as certain that anyone who has to be buried 174 times cannot be wholly dead.)" — Garrett Hardin, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, November 1972, p23, date: 1972-11-01
"Longtermism is a philosophical movement holding the ethical view that we should prioritize the far future of humanity — our species long term survival — over its short term needs and desires".
This much about "longtermism" is absolutely correct. If humans live within carrying capacity, with a total population of around 100 million or less, and our species survives for about as long as most mammals do, then there are 10-20 trillion babies yet to be born. Less than 1% of that total, only about 100 billion people, have ever lived. This means that 99% of potential human life is at risk.
Prioritizing those babies needs requires that we leave them a habitat they can live in, but our modern priorities are very short term and very destructive of the natural world that comprises that habitat. We are party animals who are going to leave it to our descendents, if any, to clean up our mess.
Our shortsightedness is causing grave damage to the future of millions of species, including our own. Long term thinking is the only way to put our current behavior in the proper ethical perspective. I see nothing wrong with that at all. It would take an extremely nihilistic viewpoint to accept what we are doing to life on earth.
Let's not denigrate thinking about the greater good from a long term perspective just because some people have fantasies of extending modernity into the distant future. Long term thinking is virtuous and something we all try to teach to our children. It's something more people should try to do.
It is generally 'authorities' thinking about "the greater good" who have done the most harm.
Truman nuked two densely populated cities for "the greater good". Iraq (and many other countries) were invaded/bombed to shit for "the greater good". Getting jabbed and forced to wear masks was for "the greater good" etc etc etc.
These 'Longtermism' adherents are really just techno-utopian fantasists in disguise.
Trying to 'engineer' their way out of problems they created, trying to escape the hole by more digging.
The true exponents of long-term thinking (i.e. indigenous groups, Aborigines etc, who have been brutalised by the system now in place, the same system endorsed by the techno-utopians) didn't call it "Longtermism" - they called it wisdom.
"true exponents of long-term thinking ... called it wisdom".
I agree. Indeed, the greatest part of wisdom is knowing that there are long term consequences for every action and taking them into account. Hence the indigenous Seventh Generation Principle, which is wise.
And while thoughtful people can disagree about what those long term consequences might be, they don't disagree that the "greater good" is worth seeking. What else can one aspire to -- "the greater bad"?
The point about "the greater good" is that the term is almost always used by 'authorities' (power hierarchies) to justify some action they deem to be necessary (such as the ones I mentioned).
But the ends don't always justify the means - in fact, they do so very rarely.
As long as people leave it to 'authorities' to seek "the greater good", it's unlikely to be found.
Joe, It's an interesting point, sort of. The obvious rebuttal is that the "longtermism", and Seventh Generation concepts are two completely different things. The former is couched in ideas like "human potential" and various other odious, exceptionalist, anthropocentric empty virtues (empty of all, but ego, of course). The latter is about place, and nature, and earth, and belonging, and love and care - for all species. There is no similarity between the two whatsoever. That is exactly why longtermism is based on vast timescales, to give the illusion of caring about future, whilst not having to address the near future. It's why their answer lies on ploughing on in exactly the same manner, growing exponentially. Theoritically, the two approaches could go hand in hand. The "short long-term" could be dealt with in the timescale of a few centuries, lowering population via fertility, vastly reducing energy consumption, moving from a growth economy, removing the profit motive as a measure of anything etc etc. Once that has been dealt with, then we still have the remaining 100,000 centuries to conservatively plan our projection to outer space, carefully conserving those resources required to do so, with a view to completion in the next few millenia. One glance at the longtermism charlatans' array of bullshit, and we see that it translates to getting humans to Mars by 2040, and mining asteroids by 2045 or some deluded shite. Whilst. Changing. Nothing. Of course.
The article mentions the Fermi Paradox. One thing that is always missed when discussing this, is that there appears to have only been one offshoot of one particular species who have ever had the mindset that their species should seek to leave its home and colonise other planets. It's taken as read that every advanced culture would always want to leave its home, and feel that it was their destiny to be in the stars. It's taken as read that this is a mature way to think and feel. What this article misses isn't just that the resources required would cause overshoot within a couple of hundred years, but also that a species with wisdom - a truly advanced species - would understand this BEFORE they undertook such a mission. It's our culture's ridiculous assumption that all advanced species would follow the in-stone trajectory of progress, of which space travel is an immutable truth.
"The obvious rebuttal is that the "longtermism", and Seventh Generation concepts are two completely different things."
Apparently they are, even though they both promote the same core concept, thinking about what are good things to do over the long term.
It's a real shame that something so obviously good, thinking about our species in the context of long term consequences, has been tainted by such a grandiose "array of bullshit" from "longtermism" proponents. I guess it's too late to save the words "long term" from longtermism, but I wonder what other words can be found to convey the obvious, and very important, meaning of "long term" when talking about the future of humanity.
If longtermism is now a shorthand for bullshit, the obvious opposite, short-termism, is double bullshit. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. The long-term future needs a new descriptor.
PS Here's one of the things that Google's AI comes back with when using the search term "long term future" -
"Longtermism:
This concept, often associated with effective altruism, emphasizes the importance of prioritizing the well-being of future generations and taking action to protect and improve the long-run future".
Everything good in our system gets co-opted. It has to, by design. If the concept of generational planning is to survive in our system then it must return a profit or give someone (many people) a salary. Things like effective altruism are bullshit because they stop at the narrow, and artificial, boundaries of the system. They answer the question: how can we be altruistic within the confines of economic growth and the profit motive. They are inherently wrong from the outset. It's surreal to see people who apparently care so much, and apparently want to see real change, stop at the gates of the system. We can't go beyond there guys! At this point, I really wish it was a big conspiracy, but it isn't. These people genuinely believe the barriers are real, physical walls. To the extent that they don't even raise questions.
Just started reading but wanted to mention a probable typo: "justifies just about anything which could prevent them from being born" was probably meant to be something like, "justifies just about anything to make sure they're not prevented them from being born"
There are a lot of problems with this narrative...Fermi's paradox was apparently an offhand remark at a cocktail party, and shouldn't be taken seriously...There are tens of thousands accounts, including many military and law enforcement, of contacts with alien craft and alien creatures...
Another problem is that the standard theory of evolution by natural selection can't account for the speed at which new animals sometimes appeared...Darwin himself admitted that the fossil record didn't support it, and Stephen Jay Gould cooked up a new theory for the sudden appearance of new species, which is more or less abracadabra....Mathematically, it couldn't have happened in the time required...
People like Dylan Balfour and Elon Musk seem to be incapable of joining the dots of the environmental damage and the depletion of resources that is self-evident. And others have mentioned "carrying capacity" as though there is some level of human population that can live in a climax ecosystem indefinitely but still maintaining modernity. Earth Day seems to come earlier each year but only accounts for primary productivity, ignoring the non-renewable resources that modernity craves. That's fair enough, there is no level of consumption of non-renewable resources that is sustainable.
I, too, think that the only rational option is to look for a way to manage the decline of modernity, to minimise suffering. I have no expectation of that because all organisms live only for the day (the future is unknowable, after all) and humans, like other species, are not able to act in a rational way, even if sometimes the way we act coincides with rational. We don't have free will (nor does any organism) and are slaves of our bodies. The slim hope I hold is that if our predicament is taught to enough people, brain development might be such that, collectively, we see the managed decline as the best option. It is a very slim hope, though.
"They drove many large mammals and birds into extinction, burned down entire forests and spread species where they don’t belong."
Who's to say where a species belongs? If we help migrate a species to a new place, are we not part of evolution? How does a human city differ from a beehive or a beaver dam?
That's a fair point, actually. Much is made of how humans are destroying nature and of the need to stop the 6th mass extinction that is underway. But environmental goals are simply goals that some people (even a lot of people) have decided is "right." Any logic that is applied to those goals is emotional logic. https://mikerobertsblog.wordpress.com/2025/03/04/emotional-logic/
Well how do you decide what is 'right', if not with 'emotional logic'?
If I see swathes of rainforest being cleared in order for a monoculture crop (eg palm) to be planted, or governments demanding tax from me, or Israelis bombing women and children, I *feel like* those things are not 'right'.
Contrary to what scientists and academics would have you believe, there is *no* objective position. Humans decide what to do according to emotion.
Most people, religious or not, have some sort of 'moral compass' which they follow. Those that don't are the psychopaths who, unfortunately, have run the show for the past 10,000 years.
(I am not arguing with Isaiah Antares's point, which I agree with.)
Of course one decides what is "right" with emotional logic. There is no objective measure of what is right. It can't be scientifically researched. It depends on one's goals, which themselves are subjective.
I'm not sure what is meant by a moral compass but everyone has morals. And they are simply what is coded into our brains. There is no control of that.
I'm saying that the logic we apply (I'm not talking about mathematics but about our apparent decisions of opinion and actions) is based on our personal subjective goals and views. These aren't arrived at in any rational way but in how the neurons in our developed brains fire. How I believe I decide on something is irrelevant.
The dinosaurs lived for many books but still died, the native American tribes were wiped out by a more invasive version of humans, and many ecologists predict 90%+ of humans will die this century.
The only consistent part of the story is Earth carried on.
At this point I am inclined to let the techno-utopia long-termism tech-bros give it a try at uploading minds and geo-engineering, and bio-engineering their way out of the mess.
As soon as B started doing the piece about the library filled with books representing the whole of earth's history, I thought
"Hey this is the end part from Blip. What a great read! I bet B has read it"
and than later on B puts a link to Blip. Blip really is an excellent book and excellent summation. It is concise and easy to read and understand. I highly recommend Blip (2019) to anyone who wants a good concise summation of the events which this substack and many others are devoted to.
We are biologically limited in how we approach time, always discounting the future, which IS fraught with peril, after all. We do need to grok the perils of the exponential function intellectually and steer clear of debts at compound interest.
Learn to have "enough", and keep rolling with the waves.
Survival and satisfaction are core to long term persistence.
Longtermism seems an awful lot like a psychological coping mechanism for death, as described by modern Terror Management Theory.
"According to TMT, death anxiety drives people to adopt worldviews that protect their self-esteem, worthiness, and sustainability and allow them to believe that they play an important role in a meaningful world."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/terror-management-theory
Throughout human history, countless humans have found solace in being able to identify with their society as something permanent, even divine, that will outlive their physical selves and into which they should pour their energies in exchange for immortality. To many people, especially those who have found a great deal of success and approval from society at large, the thought that the entirety of our modern granfalloons are doomed to be disbanded and forgotten is a worse than an actual terminal disease. And this is neither an exclusively western nor modern perspective.
For instance, the Epic of Gilgamesh ends with the title hero being frustrated in his attempts to achieve immortality, so in response he builds great walls and lays out the plans for the great city of Uruk which will outlast him. Longtermism, in other words, saved Gilgamesh from existential despair 6,000 years ago. Are today's tech bros so different?
'Longtermism', according to the (tldr) linked essay, is about (the hubris here is off the scale) "how our actions affect the very long-term future of the universe", lol. What a surprise, it's based on the work of Nick "Batshit" Bostrom...
Like a stopped clock being right twice a day Bostrom may be right about climate change not being that big a deal, but some of his other views would not be out of place in a mental hospital. E.g. that we are living in a computer simulation, that there will be a 'singularity' when computers become conscious, and (according to the essay) that "we should seriously consider establishing a global, invasive surveillance system that monitors every person on the planet in realtime" ('preventitive policing').
People like him (and Bezos, Gates, Musk, Thiel etc etc ad nauseam) are best denied the oxygen of publicity.
The fact that these nutters have the ear of governments and 'security services' worldwide is a sad indictment of how far humanity has fallen.
Oh, but we are important!
"A hushed hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man – the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories – will all be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper."
— Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction
Damn what a succent and powerful summation of all the past 8,000 years of human civilization will amount to.
Thank geology and physics for plate tectonics.
It is one silver lining out of all this mess.
"The present exponential growth can not continue for the next millennium. By the year 2600 the world's population would be standing shoulder to shoulder and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red hot." — Stephen Hawking, link: http://clinton4.nara.gov/Initiatives/Millennium/shawking.html
"Given an infinite source of energy, population growth still produces an inescapable problem. The problem of the acquisition of energy is replaced by the problem of its dissipation." — Garrett Hardin
"Malthus has been buried again. (This is the 174th year in which that redoubtable economist has been interred. We may take it as certain that anyone who has to be buried 174 times cannot be wholly dead.)" — Garrett Hardin, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, November 1972, p23, date: 1972-11-01
"Longtermism is a philosophical movement holding the ethical view that we should prioritize the far future of humanity — our species long term survival — over its short term needs and desires".
This much about "longtermism" is absolutely correct. If humans live within carrying capacity, with a total population of around 100 million or less, and our species survives for about as long as most mammals do, then there are 10-20 trillion babies yet to be born. Less than 1% of that total, only about 100 billion people, have ever lived. This means that 99% of potential human life is at risk.
Prioritizing those babies needs requires that we leave them a habitat they can live in, but our modern priorities are very short term and very destructive of the natural world that comprises that habitat. We are party animals who are going to leave it to our descendents, if any, to clean up our mess.
Our shortsightedness is causing grave damage to the future of millions of species, including our own. Long term thinking is the only way to put our current behavior in the proper ethical perspective. I see nothing wrong with that at all. It would take an extremely nihilistic viewpoint to accept what we are doing to life on earth.
Let's not denigrate thinking about the greater good from a long term perspective just because some people have fantasies of extending modernity into the distant future. Long term thinking is virtuous and something we all try to teach to our children. It's something more people should try to do.
It is generally 'authorities' thinking about "the greater good" who have done the most harm.
Truman nuked two densely populated cities for "the greater good". Iraq (and many other countries) were invaded/bombed to shit for "the greater good". Getting jabbed and forced to wear masks was for "the greater good" etc etc etc.
These 'Longtermism' adherents are really just techno-utopian fantasists in disguise.
Trying to 'engineer' their way out of problems they created, trying to escape the hole by more digging.
The true exponents of long-term thinking (i.e. indigenous groups, Aborigines etc, who have been brutalised by the system now in place, the same system endorsed by the techno-utopians) didn't call it "Longtermism" - they called it wisdom.
"true exponents of long-term thinking ... called it wisdom".
I agree. Indeed, the greatest part of wisdom is knowing that there are long term consequences for every action and taking them into account. Hence the indigenous Seventh Generation Principle, which is wise.
And while thoughtful people can disagree about what those long term consequences might be, they don't disagree that the "greater good" is worth seeking. What else can one aspire to -- "the greater bad"?
The point about "the greater good" is that the term is almost always used by 'authorities' (power hierarchies) to justify some action they deem to be necessary (such as the ones I mentioned).
But the ends don't always justify the means - in fact, they do so very rarely.
As long as people leave it to 'authorities' to seek "the greater good", it's unlikely to be found.
Joe, It's an interesting point, sort of. The obvious rebuttal is that the "longtermism", and Seventh Generation concepts are two completely different things. The former is couched in ideas like "human potential" and various other odious, exceptionalist, anthropocentric empty virtues (empty of all, but ego, of course). The latter is about place, and nature, and earth, and belonging, and love and care - for all species. There is no similarity between the two whatsoever. That is exactly why longtermism is based on vast timescales, to give the illusion of caring about future, whilst not having to address the near future. It's why their answer lies on ploughing on in exactly the same manner, growing exponentially. Theoritically, the two approaches could go hand in hand. The "short long-term" could be dealt with in the timescale of a few centuries, lowering population via fertility, vastly reducing energy consumption, moving from a growth economy, removing the profit motive as a measure of anything etc etc. Once that has been dealt with, then we still have the remaining 100,000 centuries to conservatively plan our projection to outer space, carefully conserving those resources required to do so, with a view to completion in the next few millenia. One glance at the longtermism charlatans' array of bullshit, and we see that it translates to getting humans to Mars by 2040, and mining asteroids by 2045 or some deluded shite. Whilst. Changing. Nothing. Of course.
The article mentions the Fermi Paradox. One thing that is always missed when discussing this, is that there appears to have only been one offshoot of one particular species who have ever had the mindset that their species should seek to leave its home and colonise other planets. It's taken as read that every advanced culture would always want to leave its home, and feel that it was their destiny to be in the stars. It's taken as read that this is a mature way to think and feel. What this article misses isn't just that the resources required would cause overshoot within a couple of hundred years, but also that a species with wisdom - a truly advanced species - would understand this BEFORE they undertook such a mission. It's our culture's ridiculous assumption that all advanced species would follow the in-stone trajectory of progress, of which space travel is an immutable truth.
"The obvious rebuttal is that the "longtermism", and Seventh Generation concepts are two completely different things."
Apparently they are, even though they both promote the same core concept, thinking about what are good things to do over the long term.
It's a real shame that something so obviously good, thinking about our species in the context of long term consequences, has been tainted by such a grandiose "array of bullshit" from "longtermism" proponents. I guess it's too late to save the words "long term" from longtermism, but I wonder what other words can be found to convey the obvious, and very important, meaning of "long term" when talking about the future of humanity.
If longtermism is now a shorthand for bullshit, the obvious opposite, short-termism, is double bullshit. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. The long-term future needs a new descriptor.
PS Here's one of the things that Google's AI comes back with when using the search term "long term future" -
"Longtermism:
This concept, often associated with effective altruism, emphasizes the importance of prioritizing the well-being of future generations and taking action to protect and improve the long-run future".
Everything good in our system gets co-opted. It has to, by design. If the concept of generational planning is to survive in our system then it must return a profit or give someone (many people) a salary. Things like effective altruism are bullshit because they stop at the narrow, and artificial, boundaries of the system. They answer the question: how can we be altruistic within the confines of economic growth and the profit motive. They are inherently wrong from the outset. It's surreal to see people who apparently care so much, and apparently want to see real change, stop at the gates of the system. We can't go beyond there guys! At this point, I really wish it was a big conspiracy, but it isn't. These people genuinely believe the barriers are real, physical walls. To the extent that they don't even raise questions.
Just started reading but wanted to mention a probable typo: "justifies just about anything which could prevent them from being born" was probably meant to be something like, "justifies just about anything to make sure they're not prevented them from being born"
There are a lot of problems with this narrative...Fermi's paradox was apparently an offhand remark at a cocktail party, and shouldn't be taken seriously...There are tens of thousands accounts, including many military and law enforcement, of contacts with alien craft and alien creatures...
Another problem is that the standard theory of evolution by natural selection can't account for the speed at which new animals sometimes appeared...Darwin himself admitted that the fossil record didn't support it, and Stephen Jay Gould cooked up a new theory for the sudden appearance of new species, which is more or less abracadabra....Mathematically, it couldn't have happened in the time required...
People like Dylan Balfour and Elon Musk seem to be incapable of joining the dots of the environmental damage and the depletion of resources that is self-evident. And others have mentioned "carrying capacity" as though there is some level of human population that can live in a climax ecosystem indefinitely but still maintaining modernity. Earth Day seems to come earlier each year but only accounts for primary productivity, ignoring the non-renewable resources that modernity craves. That's fair enough, there is no level of consumption of non-renewable resources that is sustainable.
I, too, think that the only rational option is to look for a way to manage the decline of modernity, to minimise suffering. I have no expectation of that because all organisms live only for the day (the future is unknowable, after all) and humans, like other species, are not able to act in a rational way, even if sometimes the way we act coincides with rational. We don't have free will (nor does any organism) and are slaves of our bodies. The slim hope I hold is that if our predicament is taught to enough people, brain development might be such that, collectively, we see the managed decline as the best option. It is a very slim hope, though.
"They drove many large mammals and birds into extinction, burned down entire forests and spread species where they don’t belong."
Who's to say where a species belongs? If we help migrate a species to a new place, are we not part of evolution? How does a human city differ from a beehive or a beaver dam?
That's a fair point, actually. Much is made of how humans are destroying nature and of the need to stop the 6th mass extinction that is underway. But environmental goals are simply goals that some people (even a lot of people) have decided is "right." Any logic that is applied to those goals is emotional logic. https://mikerobertsblog.wordpress.com/2025/03/04/emotional-logic/
Well how do you decide what is 'right', if not with 'emotional logic'?
If I see swathes of rainforest being cleared in order for a monoculture crop (eg palm) to be planted, or governments demanding tax from me, or Israelis bombing women and children, I *feel like* those things are not 'right'.
Contrary to what scientists and academics would have you believe, there is *no* objective position. Humans decide what to do according to emotion.
Most people, religious or not, have some sort of 'moral compass' which they follow. Those that don't are the psychopaths who, unfortunately, have run the show for the past 10,000 years.
(I am not arguing with Isaiah Antares's point, which I agree with.)
Of course one decides what is "right" with emotional logic. There is no objective measure of what is right. It can't be scientifically researched. It depends on one's goals, which themselves are subjective.
I'm not sure what is meant by a moral compass but everyone has morals. And they are simply what is coded into our brains. There is no control of that.
Emotion and logic are not the same thing. Logic can be codified mathematically.
How do you, personally, decide whether something is right or wrong?
I'm saying that the logic we apply (I'm not talking about mathematics but about our apparent decisions of opinion and actions) is based on our personal subjective goals and views. These aren't arrived at in any rational way but in how the neurons in our developed brains fire. How I believe I decide on something is irrelevant.
Well, it boils down (again) to semantics - to say something is 'logical' is synonymous with it being 'rational'.
How you decide on things *is* relevant, as it's contributed to the opinions you hold now. The observer can't be removed from the experiment.
The dinosaurs lived for many books but still died, the native American tribes were wiped out by a more invasive version of humans, and many ecologists predict 90%+ of humans will die this century.
The only consistent part of the story is Earth carried on.
At this point I am inclined to let the techno-utopia long-termism tech-bros give it a try at uploading minds and geo-engineering, and bio-engineering their way out of the mess.
As soon as B started doing the piece about the library filled with books representing the whole of earth's history, I thought
"Hey this is the end part from Blip. What a great read! I bet B has read it"
and than later on B puts a link to Blip. Blip really is an excellent book and excellent summation. It is concise and easy to read and understand. I highly recommend Blip (2019) to anyone who wants a good concise summation of the events which this substack and many others are devoted to.
Congrats on the 5k subscriber milestone, B.
We are biologically limited in how we approach time, always discounting the future, which IS fraught with peril, after all. We do need to grok the perils of the exponential function intellectually and steer clear of debts at compound interest.
Learn to have "enough", and keep rolling with the waves.
Survival and satisfaction are core to long term persistence.
Superb and eminently shareable with the sceptical. Bravo 👏🤞🏼✌🏼🌏