Review — The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric
Recently, in my role as a local organiser for a climate activist group, I sent out a newsletter inviting supporters to an evening meeting in a pub. One supporter wrote back, saying she didn’t go out in the evening or to pubs, but wished us all well. I don’t know her circumstances and don’t wish to judge, but it struck me as strange that someone would support an activist group but not be active. At the heart of activism is the practice of creating change by doing something. Anything else is not activism and is unlikely to lead to change.
I share this anecdote as at the time I was reading The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric. This is a book focused on what we do and the consequences of those actions, as seen from the viewpoint of those generations that follow us. How will our actions be seen by those who will call us ancestors and how will our inaction be regarded?
Two ideas are at the centre of Krznaric’s book: becoming a good ancestor won’t happen by accident, and we achieve this by thinking long term. The book builds from these two ideas into a forensic examination of both short-term and long-term thinking and how we can embrace the latter.
Human beings are unique in that we live in a culture that extends both back and forward in time. I’m writing this review in a house that was built around 80 years ago and will probably still be here in 100 years’ time. My dealings with other people in the UK are guided by laws that have their roots in the 13th century with the Magna Carta. When I travel to London, I do so on a railway line laid down in the 1860s. Likewise, there are things that I am responsible for that extend into the future. I have children and grandchildren. I put waste in my bin that will take decades to decompose. I have a pension fund that makes investments in the future of companies. I have planted trees.
Krznaric wants to get us out of the mindset of now and into the mindset of the Long Now, a highly descriptive phrase created by Brian Eno. Instant gratification has its place. When human beings were evolving as hunter-gatherers, a failure to capitalise on an eating opportunity meant you went hungry. But we no longer live like that. We are sustained by complex systems that provide food when we want it. Rather than think about whether we will eat, we are free to think about the ethics of what we eat. Krznaric characterises this as the difference between the marshmallow brain (instant gratification) and the acorn brain (long processes that embrace the future).
The Good Ancestor is a handbook for this transition from marshmallow brain to acorn brain. He explores where these thought patterns originated and how they might be managed. He considers examples of long-term thinking like cathedral building and socially progressive projects.
Perhaps the greatest lesson is that if we do not consider the future, we tend to steal from it. If we create a mess; socially, economically or environmentally and walk away from it, eventually someone in the future has to clean it up. That is stealing from the future. The people of the future should be free to deal with their own lives. It is not up to them to clean up the mess of the past.
This is why this book is so pertinent. We live in a time when the future is being plundered. There are multiple crises, caused by governmental failure, corporate greed and a colonial mindset that says that the world’s resources are ours to expend as we wish. This approach is storing up enormous problems for future generations. It is literally the policy of the UK government to tackle the climate emergency using technologies that have not yet been perfected. This policy requires that future generations either create a solution for these problems or suffer the consequences. They didn’t choose this scenario, it was thrust upon them by previous generations that preferred to take what wasn’t theirs. You can call it theft or you can call it colonisation, they amount to the same thing. The future belongs to future generations but past and current generations have robbed them of it.
The good ancestor does not behave like this. The good ancestor plants trees in whose shade they will never get to sit. They support progressive causes that will bring benefits to future generations. They do not leave a mess for others to clean up. When they vote, invest or build, they consider what the long-term implications of that action will be.
Krznaric brings forward numerous examples of this long-term thinking to show how real good ancestors behaved. The Victorian engineers who built London’s sewage system and freed the capital of The Great Stink. The Japanese shoguns who realised the consequences of deforestation and put in place action to reverse the process. The Polder water management system in the Netherlands that protects people and farmland from flooding. The New Deal in recession-hit America to provide jobs and restart the economy.
We don’t need to embark on a mega-project to be a good ancestor. We just need to be responsible and learn to be in the Long Now. Krznaric’s clearly written and absorbing guidebook is an essential companion to this transition.
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