For me, this begins with my daughter, Grace, imagining her path to the next century. She will be 86 years old in 2100. I find it remarkable to consider that there are tens of millions of citizens of the next century already living among us – and when I do so, my sense of time and possibility opens up a little more. There are tens of millions of citizens of the next century already living among us As well as diagnosing our temporal bias for short-term thinking, Fisher provides ways we can bring our ‘present’ and ‘future’ selves closer together, so we are less psychologically distant from the long view. This includes incorporating ‘perspective thinking’, which in short refers to viewing life in the mindset of a future being.

Few books can claim to shake your perspective on life, but The Long View does exactly that ... a landmark book that could help to build a much brighter future for many generations to come.' David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect Ian McEwan, novelist and screenwriter ’A wise, humane book laced with curiosity and hope. It will open your mind and horizons – and leave you giddy at the prospect of all that we may yet become.’ It’s early days though, and while these examples are encouraging, they are also isolated. Unless we get better at ditching our short-termist ways on a global scale, the decisions we make in the early 21st Century could shape the future of our species in far more profound – and chilling – ways than we might realise. Fisher discusses the root causes of short-termism, with a focus on capitalism and politics. In the case of capitalism, Fisher refers to quarterly reporting and misaligned personal targets as two contributing factors to the increased reliance of firms on short-term goals. Firms are guided by this three month timeframe to appease investors, sacrificing opportunities to pursue long term objectives such as R&D spending, advertising and patents.It’s early days in their project, but Saltmarshe and Pembroke aim to foster and encourage new cultural works about the long-term as well as creating a network of like-minded artists, institutions and intellectuals. Marcia Bjornerud, author of Timefulness 'A compassionate, beautifully considered meditation on how we think about the future, and why that needs to change.' Outside the cloisters, daily life was mostly cyclical. The seasons turned; plants sprang up and fell down again, just like humans. But by the 17th century, says Fisher, change was in the air. Linear time started to become the commercial and cognitive norm. The old cycles were the preserve of farmers. The idea of progress made its way into life and thought, and a future that was different from the past became imaginable. The practice of statistical prognostication began. Life insurance was sold in Amsterdam. That’s the thinking behind one new initiative called the Long Time Inquiry, recently established in the UK, to foster long-term thinking via artistic rather than empirical routes. The founders Ella Saltmarshe and Beatrice Pembroke argue that culture is often relegated in big strategic conversations about the future of humanity and the planet, and that needs to change. Charles Foster, Literary Review ‘The Long View is sprawling in its coverage, but clear throughout, and offers a compelling vision of how so many strands of human thought have come together to support long-term perspectives.’

Few books can claim to shake your perspective on life, but The Long View does exactly that … a landmark book that could help to build a much brighter future for many generations to come.’ David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect Afterwards, when he looked around at his contemporaries, Eno saw the singer’s narrow view everywhere. What’s more, this attitude to space also translated to the way this New York glitterati seemed to think about time – not much further than the following week. They were living in what Eno called a ‘small here’ and a ‘short now’. “Everything was exciting, fast, current, and temporary. Enormous buildings came and went, careers rose and crashed in weeks. You rarely got the feeling that anyone had the time to think two years ahead, let alone 10 or a hundred,” he later reflected.It wasn't always so. In medieval times, craftsmen worked on cathedrals that would be unfinished in their lifetime. Indigenous leaders fostered intergenerational reciprocity. And in the early twentieth century, writers dreamed of worlds thousands of years hence. Now, as we face long-term challenges on an unprecedented scale, how do we recapture that far-sighted vision? Hope-filled and revelatory … Beautifully readable and scholarly, rich and personal, this book shows how, to leave a robust legacy for the future, we need to overcome our bias for the present.’ Rowan Hooper, author of How to Spend a Trillion Dollars Rowan Hooper, author of How to Spend a Trillion Dollars ‘A soaring hymn to all that might lie in the future; alongside the diverse and beautiful ways to think about it. Overflowing with wisdom and insight.’ In the West, Christian eschatology is central to psychology and politics. Jesus and Paul both expected this world to end imminently. As time passed and the world continued, the daily expectation of apocalypse was cautiously revised. The revision is apparent in the great, confident religious monuments of Christendom. Work began on Wells Cathedral around 1175 and continued until 1490. Its architects and craftsmen trusted in and worked for a future they knew they would never see. Time in the ecclesiastical world had always been linear, and the line looked as if it would go on for a while yet. It is a tremendously powerful skill,” Suddendorf told BBC Future’s Claudia Hammond in 2016. “We can imagine situations like what we’re going to do tomorrow, next week, where we’re going to have a holiday, what career path to pursue, and we can imagine alternative versions of those. And we can evaluate each of them in terms of their likelihood and desirability.”

And as one group of researchers warned recently, acts of neglect or stupidity in the present day could possibly even threaten civilisation itself. I understand the dangers of short-termism. I can both rationalise the argument, and feel the need to care more about future generations. But I confess I still struggle with how to translate that to action as an individual. Some days I wonder if I should be eating more ethically. The next I consider sacrificing a trip abroad to reduce my carbon emissions. However, that does not mean our timeviews cannot be coloured, swayed or even diminished. Every day, we are exposed to a barrage of temporal stresses: shortsighted targets, salient distractions and near-term temptations. When these combine with the psychological habits we inherited from our ancestors, a longer perspective can recede from view. Every day, we are exposed to a barrage of temporal stresses

First night reviews

Around the same time, a small, little-known group of researchers were meeting at a workshop in Gothenburg, Sweden with a goal to look much, much further ahead – far beyond this latest news cycle. Motivated by a moral concern for our descendants, their goal was to discuss the existential risks facing humanity. And if we are prone to neglecting the wellbeing of our own future selves, it’s even harder to muster empathy for our descendants. Humans are unique in their ability to understand time, able to comprehend the past and future like no other species. Yet modern-day technology and capitalism have supercharged our short-termist tendencies and trapped us in the present, at the mercy of reactive politics, quarterly business targets and 24-hour news cycles. A soaring hymn to all that might lie in the future; alongside the diverse and beautiful ways to think about it. Overflowing with wisdom and insight.' Thomas Moynihan, author of X-Risk Status quo trajectories, in which human civilisation persists in a broadly similar state into the distant future.