What We Owe the Future

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.

Yet if we truly wish to become good ancestors, we need to expand our conception of legacy and think of it not just as a route to personal glory or as a bequest for our offspring, but as a practice of everyday life that benefits all future people. We can think of this as a transcendent ‘legacy mindset’, where we aim to be remembered by the generatio

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