An Introduction to Longtermism

What happens when we no longer limit the scope of our concern to just the next couple of generations? Once we consider how many generations could follow ours, the implications look striking: our actions could influence the lives of far more people than many expect.

Put simply, humanity might last for an incredibly long time. The lifespans of other species suggest there might be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us, and the Earth will remain habitable for hundreds of millions of years. If human history were a novel, we may still be living on its very first page.

It’s natural to care about future generations: we may all want the lives of our children and grandchildren to go well, even before they are born. 

You might agree that future people matter in the abstract. But it’s this point — that our actions today could meaningfully impact their lives — that might compel you to believe that positively influencing the long-term future should be a key moral priority of a time. This is the idea encapsulated by longtermism.