What if future generations themselves were
able to speak to us? Just what would future generations say to us if they could? If they
had a voice today, what would they ask us to do for them?
Here is my best guess about some of the things they would like us to know and do. The
rest of this essay is a message to us from future generations in their own words—what
they would say to us if they could. A Message From Future Generations provides an expanded version of this
essay for anyone who is especially interested in what future generations would say to us
if they had a voice today.
A message from future generations
Thank you for listening to this message from future generations—those of us who will
inhabit this lovely planet for many decades to come. Our voices are usually overlooked by
your generations, so we are very appreciative of your willingness to listen to our
perspective.
You are alive at a pivotal moment in humanity’s development. You are making some
of the most important choices in human history. Your era is marked by positive and
negative potentials of such newness and magnitude that you can hardly understand them.
Through your public policies and daily lives, the people of your era have tremendous power
to influence the future course of humanity’s story. We strongly care about your
choices, of course, since we benefit or suffer from them quite directly. We live
downstream from you in time; whatever you put into the stream flows on to our era.
We will be very grateful if you devote your best efforts to four particular changes.
These are the four things that we need most from you.
It is important for you to realize just how deep and pervasive these changes must be in
order to give us equal opportunities. Individual behaviour, social structures, economic
assumptions, even paradigms and world views must all change. We know that these changes
are not shallow or easy. But if you do not change vigorously and successfully, we will be
much worse off than you are.
The costs of the deterioration and losses will be far larger than the costs of making
the changes in the first place would have been. If you continue your shortsighted
selfishness, the consequences will be catastrophic, perhaps even beyond the stretch of
your imagination. From our long-term perspective, we see how foolish, and unfair you will
be if you fail to make the required changes soon. How would you react to a bus driver who
knew the brakes would give out soon but did not bother to get them fixed promptly? If you
do make the changes, the benefits to ongoing humanity will be much greater than the costs
of making the changes.
We appreciate your willingness to consider these four changes seriously.
1. Adopt a long-term perspective
In all of your major decisions and actions, please consider our perspective and
well-being along with your own. Take our needs as seriously as your own. Care about our
welfare as well as your own. Our needs and rights are not inferior to yours. Please regard
your generation and ours as equals. This is the principle of intergenerational
equity—equal opportunities across the generations.
Reflect on your unique place in human history. You face the historic challenge of
making the shift from a narrow, self-centered, short-term focus to a long-term global
focus that takes into account our needs as well as your own. If you succeed in making this
deep-seated shift toward a long-term perspective, your era will be remembered for saving
human civilization and its planet from catastrophe and disintegration, and for building
the foundation for a more positive world.
As members of future generations, we are particularly eager for you to designate a
spokesperson for our needs in your various policy-making forums, planning processes,
legislatures, parliaments, houses of representatives, senates, and so on. Because we are
not yet alive in your era, we are unable to lobby or vote. We have no voice. We seem
unreal and unimportant to many of your politicians because we have not yet been born. Our
perspective and interests are rarely noted in any depth. This is why we are very
enthusiastic about your era’s diverse proposals for incorporating the views and needs
of future generations into your legislative and policy-making processes. On the global
level, we are pleased with your proposals for designated advocates and an international
tribunal for future generations. We are also pleased with your additional proposals for
particular nations.
We now urge you to move on from words and proposals to practical innovative
experiments. As you experiment, you will gain greater insights and skills and thus be able
to develop even better ways of incorporating our views into your public decision-making.
Please experiment with a spokesperson for future generations in the decision-making
processes of the United Nations and its agencies, other international agencies,
nongovernmental organizations, each religion, various levels of government, and all other
major organizations. As you see what works, what does not, and why, you will be able to
move ahead with wider use of spokespersons for those not yet born. Our ultimate hope, of
course, is that all participants in public and corporate decision-making will
eventually adopt the perspective of future generations, and will serve as spokespersons
and guardians for our interests.
The overriding importance of avoiding the worst catastrophes of all will become
obvious to you as you make progress in adopting a long-term perspective. Please begin now.
Detect and study the entire range of potential catastrophes or trends that could eliminate
or severely harm human civilization. Avoid losing the foundation that the previous hundred
generations have built up for you and us. Take particularly vigorous and creative steps to
avoid a severe world war—perhaps even to eliminate warfare entirely. Equally
important, take vigorous actions to stabilize the size of the human population and to end
the rapid deterioration of the planet. These two potential catastrophes—warfare and
environment—are so probable and have such far-reaching consequences that they are
clearly central in any list of priorities.
2. Future-relevant research
In order to achieve a satisfactory future, you need to rapidly expand your efforts to
develop future-oriented knowledge, ideas, insights, understanding, visions, and wisdom.
You need to know far more about world problems, social change, potential futures, the
effectiveness of various possible paths, individual change, the personal foundations of
caring about future generations, and several other future-relevant topics. This
future-oriented inquiry can include not only research and development projects, but also
creative visioning, speculative brainstorming, disciplined thinking, synthesis, conceptual
frameworks, theory-building, and wide-ranging dialogue.
Move toward a body of concepts, ideas, and knowledge that is profound, powerful, and
well organized. Carefully examine your conceptual frameworks and paradigms. Organize your
existing knowledge base more rigorously; don’t be conceptually sloppy or lazy.
Critique and build on the ideas and frameworks of others, instead of operating in
intellectual isolation. Try to attract people with especially penetrating minds and
thoughtful approaches, and then generously support their intellectual work.
The amount of effort going into creating knowledge that is profoundly significant to
the long-term future is only about one-third of what it should be. The gap between the
optimum effort and your current level is foolish and poignant. Your aim should be to
multiply your future-oriented inquiry threefold over the next few years. The long-term
benefits will far outweigh the costs.
For success, you need to increase your knowledge of world problems and social change
much faster than the problems themselves increase. At present, the problems are
outstripping your knowledge of how to deal with them. You are going to have to run much
faster than now simply to catch up to all the major problems. Then you may find that the
negative forces are running faster and faster, becoming more and more challenging. To
develop the knowledge to outrun all these tendencies for civilization to deteriorate, you
will need to increase your efforts even further. You certainly have the potential to win
the race, but not by coasting along at your present level of future-oriented research.
3. Future-relevant education
Learning and teaching about the future provide an essential foundation for building a
better world. You cannot achieve a positive future without far-reaching learning and
changes by individuals around the world. These individuals include all of you, not just
political leaders, government officials, policy experts, or business leaders. You no doubt
recall the prescient words of one of your early futurists, H. G. Wells: "Human
history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." You can
successfully navigate through the next few decades only if a large proportion of the
world’s population understands global problems and potential futures, cares about
future generations, accepts the need for change, and takes a cooperative and constructive
approach to dealing with hard choices. Once enough people care about future generations,
implementing these four key priorities will become much easier.
Any path to a positive future will require deep changes in individual perspectives,
values, and behaviour. From early childhood to late adulthood, learning opportunities
should be widespread. In every city on earth, at least some schools, colleges, adult
education programs, and libraries should provide a wide array of methods for people to
learn about the future prospects of their civilization and their region. In addition to
various educational programs and institutions, these opportunities can include libraries,
discussion groups, informal education, workshops, support groups, television, printed
materials, electronic sources and hardware, and self-planned learning projects. This range
of learning opportunities should help people of all ages understand global issues, think
skeptically and critically when appropriate, treasure all life on earth, feel concern for
other people, grasp the importance of caring about us future generations, grasp our
perspective, feel committed to necessary changes, tolerate diverse cultures and views,
cooperate for the common good, and pursue meaningful non-material goals.
Educational institutions should provide courses in futures studies, with some emphasis
on the perspective of future generations, using approaches that affect the head, heart,
soul, and hands of people of all ages. Your education about the future could be greatly
enhanced if you develop a better knowledge base about potential futures, conduct research
on the processes of learning and teaching about the future, and experiment with innovative
and profound approaches to such learning and teaching.
In addition, we urge you to consider a worldwide campaign to increase caring for future
generations. This campaign could use various approaches, including:
• clear, moving, powerful books and booklets written for the general public and
for students
• superb television programs and films that enable you to "experience"
future generations, and to grasp the fact that we too are actual living people (in your
future) rather than some abstract concept
• a major website, spearheaded by the World Future Society, where people around the
world can quickly learn about significant world trends and forecasts
• classroom exercises, such as speaking with the voice of future people, of wild
species, or of beings on other planets
• writing a pledge to future generations
• further growth of the World Future Society's publications and programs for the
general public
• inspirational support groups
• transformative experiences that combine music, poetry, powerful prose, nature,
rituals, inspirational meetings, and the voices of children and youth.
4. Learning, caring, and meaningfulness
Now we come to the final societal priority that we recommend for your era. This
priority continues to be very important to us, so we hope it will soon become important to
you, too.
In this final priority, we urge your society to focus plenty of attention and support
on the deeper and softer aspects of individual lives. We refer specifically to three
areas: (a) widespread individual learning about the most important questions of all, (b)
caring based on deep connectedness to people, the planet, and future generations, (c) a
strong sense of meaning and purpose in life. Although we will discuss these three areas
separately, they are actually closely interrelated. And all three contribute to the
individual’s deeper and softer side.
(a) Your society could do much more toward widespread individual learning about
the most important questions of all. You should encourage and help each individual to
learn the accumulated knowledge on these questions, and also to think through their own
best answers. Obviously they will be more successful in their quest if your society has
fostered their ability to think clearly, flexibly, creatively, and skeptically about
difficult and controversial questions. Here are some of the big questions that thoughtful
individuals face:
• the origin of the universe
• cosmic evolution and the ultimate destination of the universe
• our place in the universe
• our relationship with other intelligent beings and civilizations in our galaxy
• the history and long-term future of humankind and human culture
• our appropriate relationship with the planet and its diverse forms of life
• core values
• finding a path to a positive human future
• how each individual can contribute to achieving that positive future
(b) Your society should do much more to help people feel a deep bonding or connectedness
with all of humankind, with the planet and its diverse forms of life, and with future
generations. Explore the usefulness of music, hymns, songs, poetry, prose, laser light
shows, art, hiking, cathedrals, inspirational services, children, mountains, observation
towers, zoos, nature reserves, and scenic beauty for this purpose. As more and more people
experience a deep connectedness, they will care strongly about humanity, future
generations, and the planet—and will act on that deep love and caring. They will
eagerly want to make a positive difference to humanity and the planet. They will be happy
to experience a bond with something ageless, something transcendent, something much larger
than their own life.
Creating inspirational groups dedicated to future generations could be particularly
useful. The people in these groups would feel bonded together by their deep caring for
future generations, and by their efforts to build a better world. Various methods could be
used to inspire and strengthen each member’s sense of connectedness to humanity and
its positive future. Inspirational gatherings, oral readings, silent reflection,
discussion, and songs of gratitude and joy could all play a part. Members could share
their feelings about the long-term future, reflect on the implications of recent events,
and discuss their most significant unanswered questions. Members could also discuss their
current efforts to contribute, including their strategies, obstacles, triumphs, and
failures. Many people want to make a positive difference to the world, but lack a
sympathetic and inspirational support group. Such groups could be built on love and
reverence for human civilization and other societies in our galaxy, awe concerning the
mysteries of the universe, and commitment to service on behalf of future generations. By
supporting various efforts to build a positive long-term future, these groups could
provide people with an inspiriting and transcendent purpose in life.
(c) Your society should also focus much more attention and support on the
individual’s desire for a sense of meaning and purpose in life. A sense of
meaning and purpose can easily pervade a society in which people share a sense of
connectedness with the cosmos, with its diverse life, and with the continuous procession
of generations.
Reflections
We worry that you will choose the tempting path that lies right in front of you,
dissipating your efforts on alluring goals and priorities that will have little influence
on long-term flourishing—squandering your time and energy not only on consumption,
luxury, competition, quarrels, and violence, but also on the faddish projects and causes
of the moment. Think of the pain and suffering that you will cause us—the bleak lives
and barren planet, the harsh restrictions, the lost potential, the sense of malaise and
futility. We cry when we think of what might come to pass. Perhaps you too will feel some
tears as you think about what your era’s lack of future-oriented caring and effort
could inflict on us.
We agree with you that the four key changes that need to be made by individuals,
organizations, and society are startlingly large, deep, and far-reaching. But the
alternative is for your grandchildren and the other members of their generation to spend
much of their adult life in a social and physical environment that is bleak and nasty. The
four profound changes are necessary in order to avoid such a negative outcome. They
provide the best path to a positive future.
Of the four, the most important of all is a worldwide shift toward caring deeply about
the well-being of all the people who will be alive over the next few decades, and the
well-being of the planet. This perspective transformation or paradigm shift is necessary
for citizens, policy-makers, business leaders, and key people throughout governments. As
more and more of you change your inner perspective, there is an excellent chance that the
necessary outer changes will also occur. As a result, the ever-unfolding history of human
civilization may alter course toward a happy and positive future!
Thank you for your deep and serious attention to our suggestions.
