Roman Krznaric  1:49  

That phrase, “Good ancestor” is something I first discovered in the writings of Jonas Salk, the guy who discovered the polio vaccine back in the 1950s. Later in life, he said that there’s one great question that humanity faces, and it’s this: “Are we being good ancestors?” 

What he was thinking about was never before have human actions had such consequences for the future. This includes our capacity to press the nuclear button, or our impacts on the natural world and the environment, or the impacts of new technologies. There’s a real question there of: “How are we going to be remembered by future generations because we impact on their lives so much? How are they going to judge us.”

That’s what being a good ancestor is all about. It’s about kind of imagining your mind projecting it forward. If you think about it for a moment, there are 7.7 billion people alive today. It’s estimated that over the last 50,000 years, around 100 billion people have been born and died. 

If we go forward to 50,000 years and estimate nearly 7 trillion people will be born, even assuming if this century’s birth rates stabilize and remain constant, this means that in the next two centuries alone, 10s of billions of people will be born.

I’ve spent my life writing books about the good life, how to live, how to find fulfilling work, how to confront death, and how to be more empathic. But something I’ve kind of missed, I think, when I look at all of this is: “What about these future generations?”

I thought a lot about today. I thought about my life in this world. How do I have a meaningful life for my kids, and all those things? But then, there are all these people coming in the future. This new book, “The Good Ancestor” is really about trying to bring them into the picture and into the conversation.

Sean Murray  3:37  

One of the fascinating aspects of bringing the future ancestors into the conversation about how we live a good life and being more empathetic to people not yet born and future generations, what we bequeath to them is this idea of thinking long-term. I thought it was one of the most fascinating parts of your book. It was how you explore. 

How do we think long-term? You got a great quote, “We don’t just think fast and slow.” As Daniel Kahneman taught us, we also think short and long. We’ve talked a little bit about Daniel Kahneman on this podcast. We also think short and long. Can you talk a little bit about long-term thinking and how it fits into this idea of being a good ancestor?

Roman Krznaric  4:15  

Let me take you and your listeners into a bit of a journey into their own brains or our own brains. Actually, inside our heads, there is a tug of war going on constantly between the drivers of short-term and long-term thinking. Do we party today or save for our pensions for tomorrow? Do we upgrade to the latest iPhone or plant a seed in the ground for posterity? 

Of course, we are partly driven by immediate rewards and short-term gratification. That’s a part of the brain I call the “marshmallow brain.” It is named after the famous psychology experiment from the 1960s.

As you probably know, a marshmallow was put in front of kids and if they resisted eating it for 15 minutes, they were rewarded with a second marshmallow. It turned out that most kids, about two thirds of them would snatch the treat. But that is not the whole story of who we are.

There’s another part of our brain, which is what I call the “acorn brain.” That’s the bit that focuses on long-term thinking, and planning and strategizing. It lives at the front of our heads, which is a bit called the frontal lobe. Particularly, a part called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We’re getting a bit technical there. 

Actually, we’ve got this more developed than most other creatures. So think of a chimpanzee. They plan ahead a bit. They might get a branch of a tree and strip off the leaves to make a tool to stick into a termite hole, but they’ll never make a dozen of these tools and set them aside for next week. That is precisely what a human being will do. 

That’s why we will save for our kid’s education. That’s why we write song lists for our own funerals. That’s how we built the Great Wall of China, and voyage into space by using this “acorn” part of our brain.

I’m thinking of Dan Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow.” We also think short and long. I think it’s a part of ourselves that we haven’t really tapped into enough. Just think about the “buy now” button. There are technologies designed to switch on that marshmallow brain. 

Just imagine when you’re about to press “Buy Now,” a little drop down menu comes. You had an option to “Buy Now,” but also “Buy in a Week,” or “Buy in a Month,” or “Buy in a Year,” or “Borrow from a Friend.” 

You press “Buy in a Year,” and you get a little email a year later saying: “Well, do you really want that second yoga mat now?” I think our consumption habits would be totally different.

Sean Murray  6:28  

I’m glad you brought up that “Buy Now” button because one of the things I was thinking about as I was reading about your breaking down of short-term thinking and long-term thinking is the way technology is sort of driving us to think short-term in many ways. 

You even mentioned in the book that we’re carrying around these iPhones. They’re just distraction machines. They’re constantly drawing our attention to the latest alerts, and social media. If we’re not careful, we can find ourselves living in a very short-term reactive mode hour after hour. 

We’re lacking that reflective long-term thinking that brought us the Great Wall, helped us build cathedrals, and the like. Talk a little bit about what we’re battling here, such as some evolutionary forces that seem to be quite challenging.

Roman Krznaric  7:16  

I think there’s a whole load of short-term drivers, which are exacerbating our kind of marshmallow brain tendencies. Certainly, there are our phones. That’s the most obvious sort of level of it. Imagine you had a GPS in your car, which every time you put in where you wanted to go, it took you some way different.

Well, that’s what happens when we look at our phones, right? You go to do something useful online, like book a doctor’s appointment, and suddenly you’re looking at YouTube replays of Game of Thrones highlights or something. Well, that’s what I do anyway. We’re constantly being taken away from what we want to do. That is immersing us in a state of continuous partial attention. 

Here we are locked in the now, and the future is disappearing. It’s partly because of phones. I think there’s other forces as well. I think there are economic forces. I think speculative capitalism brings us so much into the moment. The average amount of time people hold shares for has dropped in the last 30 years, from about 5 years to about 3 months. 

Then we got nanosecond speed trading, and all that kind of stuff. I think what’s really amazing about the drivers of short-term thinking is how ancient they are. In fact, you can really go back at least 500 years. That’s when the world started speeding up when the first mechanical clocks were invented in Europe in the 14th century.

They used to chime every hour, and every quarter hour. By 1700, most clocks and watches had minute hands. By 1800, they had second hands. Time was speeding up. The future was coming closer and closer. The clock became the ultimate machine of the Industrial Revolution.

Now look at us. We’ve got our clocks and timepieces everywhere. It’s there on our phones, on our computers, and on our microwave ovens. This short-termism is kind of wrapped into our culture. It’s really hard to get out.

Sean Murray  9:10  

I found that whole discussion about the evolution of how time has become more involved in our day really interesting. It impacts the quality of our life, and our ability to think long-term. You make a connection between the speed of information, the speed of transportation, the speed of time, and how it’s really speeding up in many respects. 

It’s making it a bit harder to think long-term. Jeff Bezos, the person who founded Amazon is right here in Seattle where I’m recording from. The person who came up with the “Buy Now” button also started a foundation, or as part of a foundation called the Long Now Foundation. 

It’s interestingly trying to get us to think longer term. That was one of the organizations I thought was really interesting that you talked about in the book. Can you talk about the Long Now Foundation? What is it designed to do? What does it get us to think about?

Roman Krznaric  10:07  

The Long Now Foundation was founded back in the late 1990s. I’m a research fellow of the Long Now Foundation. The whole idea of it is to try and get us to think longer term. That is to take responsibility for future generations, the people and the planet to start thinking beyond even our own lifetimes. 

One of the Long Now Foundation’s sort of cornerstone projects is something called The 10,000-year Clock. It’s a clock which is being built at this moment, as we speak now inside a limestone mountain in the Texas desert. This clock is designed to stay accurate for 10,000 years. 

You’ll be able to hike through the desert to get there. And then walk up steps cut into the mountainside. Each of them represent a million years of geological time. When you go inside, you’ll listen to a sound of 10 bells, which are playing a different combination every single day for 10,000 years. It has been designed by the musician, Brian Eno, the great producer of U2 and David Bowie. 

In a way, that the clock is like a secular altarpiece to a long-term thinking civilization, or what Brian Enu, the musician called, “The long now as opposed to our short now” culture. It so happens that Jeff Bezos is one of the main funders of this particular project. That’s what he’s involved in. 

There’s an obvious kind of contradiction there, right? Here’s the guy who may well be remembered more than anything else for inventing the “Buy Now” button, funding a long-term project. You can kind of see where he’s coming from. A company like Amazon was losing money for years until it was successful. 

That of course is an investment strategy. It requires a kind of a long-term view. There’s definitely some tensions in there. But certainly, the Long Now Foundation really is all about trying to create a culture which is to get us to ask that question: “How can we be good ancestors?” Let’s think about the legacies that you want to leave.

Sean Murray  12:05  

I think one of the reasons Amazon is successful is because Jeff Bezos is able to think long-term. He challenges his team and his organization to think about the long-term payoffs. He is investing in customers, in infrastructure that’s going to pay off over time. 

You mentioned short-term trading. One of the apps that’s really popular right now is called Robin Hood. It has sort of gamified investing. Investing in options and short-term profits is way up right now.

We look to investors like Warren Buffett and long-term investors, such as Charlie Munger. They’re looking at how we invest in a company that’s going to be around in the long-term and be successful. They’ve traditionally been much more successful as investors than short-term trading. We’re seeing that play out right now in the technologies in the investing world.

Roman Krznaric  12:56  

I think what’s really interesting there is certainly the way I look at it is that there are lots of companies and investors trying to look more long-term. But to me, the question is “What’s the ultimate goal?” What are they trying to be long term about? 

There’s a famous quote from a former head of Goldman Sachs called Gus Levy, he said: “Once we’re greedy, but long-term greedy. Not short-term greedy.” I certainly look at that quote, and think “Well, is that the kind of world I want to live in long-term while dominated by long-term greed?” 

It’s all based on making super profits and big growth. It’s not really taken to account for the welfare of future generations, or of all those billions of people who will be born in the future. When I look around at various companies, I’m really impressed by the ones which have a long term goal.

It is about looking after the welfare of current and future generations. They’re staying within the boundaries of the one planet we know that sustains life. There’s a wonderful Swedish company called Houdini, which makes sportswear. They actually make edible clothes. 

You can buy a Houdini skiing jacket or hiking jacket. It’s totally compostable. It’s organic. It is made of cotton and stuff. They’ve actually got a composting facility in Stockholm. You throw your used jacket in there. You come back a year later, it’s turned into soil. 

They’ve served their customers’ meals made from their old clothes. It’s a complete kind of closed loop circular economy. And that I think is really visionary, long-term business thinking.

Sean Murray  14:26  

You talked about this idea of sustainability in your book. I think it was Jonas Salk who challenged us to think about our society as it matures. We’ll have to take on different values. One of them is sustainability. This kind of gets to the idea of what purpose do we think long-term? Why should we be thinking long-term?

Roman Krznaric  14:49  

Great question. Groucho Marx, apparently once said: “Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?” I think that’s a real question. In my mind, and I think in most people’s minds is: “Here I am. I’ve got my kids in the room next to where I am now. I’m just dealing with what I am going to cook for them for dinner.” 

I’m not thinking about 100 years ahead or 1,000 years ahead. But if I stop back and think for a moment, certainly something motivates me. I think it motivates a lot of people. It is thinking about the idea of legacy. That concept of “How am I going to be remembered when I die?”

In fact, I think most people, certainly, psychology research has shown this over the last half century. Once we tend to reach middle age, some general malaise between 35 or 50, we start thinking about how we’re going to be remembered when we’re gone. Mortality makes us do that confrontation with death. 

I think there’s different ways that we can leave a legacy. Some people want to leave what I think is an egotistical form of legacy, like a Russian oligarch who wants a baseball stadium named after them, or an art gallery, or something. That’s how they define death.

Most of us, I think are really concerned with a familial legacy. We want to leave things for our kids, our nephews or nieces. It could be a home or passing on cultural traditions, languages and religion. I think if we’re really going to be good ancestors, we need to think more broadly about a transcendent form of legacy about what I think was the universal strangers of the future, and trying to connect with them.

If you think about it, lots of cultures actually have quite a strong connection with future generations. It’s really part of their existential sustenance. Many Native American communities in Iroquois, Lakota communities have this idea of seventh generation decision making. 

You make your community decisions based on the impact seven generations ahead. It could be 150 to 200 years. In Maori culture in New Zealand, there’s a concept called “whakapapa.” It sounds a bit rude. It starts with a “wh” but it’s pronounced with an “f”. 

That’s their idea of lineage. It is the idea that we’re all connected in a great chain of life, which is going far into the past and long into the future. The light happens to be shining on me here right now. We’re going to talk about China a bit more broadly. They recognize that that living, the dead, and the unborn are all here in the room with us.

I think this really relates to something fundamental about the good life. It is something that the ancient Greeks discovered. They came out of ideas in the good life in the 17th to 18th century. Human beings are relational creatures. We care about our relationships with others, but we tend to think about relations with people around here today in the here and now.

I think we also need to stretch out where our relationships go. We need to look both into the past, which people often do. They investigate their family trees. That gives them a lot of meaning. 

Let’s also start looking forward as well, like the Native American cultures for example. Let’s start connecting with those future generations. I know it’s hard. We can’t see them. We can’t speak to them. We need to kind of imagine their world.

Sean Murray  17:53  

I love the idea of looking to the native cultures for ideas, and learning from how they think more in-tune with nature. They’re thinking longer term. You actually brought up an example that got me thinking about my own culture and my own experience that listeners may relate to. You call it the “grandmother effect.” 

While I was growing up, I had my great grandmother living in my house for a good 5 years before she died. She was in her 80s. This was in the late ’70s. She was born in the 19th century. I have a connection now to her through my memory and her stories. They extended even further back in time. 

You talk about this “grandmother effect.” It is a real process that serves as a vehicle in our culture, and in many cultures. These are connections with the past and future generations which are really held together by people like my great grandmother, or any grandmother in a family. 

Can you talk a little bit about the grandmother effect? What is the imagination exercise that you described in the book? I thought it was just so impactful.

Roman Krznaric  19:01  

The grandmother effect is actually a concept that comes out of evolutionary psychology. It relates to the way that human beings. As we evolve, we situate ourselves in multi-generational groups. A child would have parents and grandparents. When that child grows up, they may have their own children. 

We’re in a kind of five-generation line, in a sense. What really fascinating research has shown is that those societies where the grandmothers play a big role, kids tend to actually live longer, or they’re less likely to die in childbirth. 

Actually, in an evolutionary sense, we developed cultures, or as a species to have grandmothers or grandparents. They were depositories of knowledge. They cared for children. They help find food when there is a drought. This kind of thing.

Those grandparents of ours, particularly grandmothers are really important in our evolutionary development. Of course, as you were saying, they are part of our lives in terms of sharing stories and making us feel connected. They’re giving us a sense of home.

The real question, I think is, “Okay, how do we make that imaginative leap to the future, to our great grandchildren, or their grandchildren who may not be even born?” One of the things I described in a book as a kind of thought experiment, which I had been part of. I’ve been in workshops with them, and then I’ve done it with others. 

It basically goes something like this. Why don’t we just kind of do it for a moment? What I’d like you to do, Sean, and anyone who’s listening, is to close your eyes for a moment. I want you to imagine in your mind’s eye a young person in your life who you really care about. It could be a nephew, or a niece, or a godchild, or one of your own kids, or grandkids. Just picture their face. 

Sean Murray  20:59  

Got it.

Roman Krznaric  21:00  

And now what I’d like you to do is to imagine them 30 years in the future. Think about the joys and the challenges they face. Have a look at their face. Look into their eyes. Sit with that for a moment. And now, I’d like you to imagine them at their 90th birthday party. They’re surrounded by family, friends, loved ones, and old work colleagues. 

You look out the window of the room. You look at the world outside that they live in. You go back and you look into their 90-year old face. Someone comes over and puts a tiny baby into their arms. It’s their first great grandchild. They look into that great grand child’s eyes. They think to themselves, “What would this child need to survive and thrive for the years and decades ahead?” 

Open your eyes again. Just think for a moment that that little baby could live well into the 22nd century. Their future isn’t science fiction. It’s an intimate family fact. 

I think if we do these imaginative exercises, which I admit can be quite confronting. If you’ve got a dark vision of the future and look out the window at that 90-year old world, it could be very apocalyptic. It could be full of the wildfires that are across so many parts of the world today, including in the US.

When I first did that exercise, I was imagining my 10-year old daughter, as a 90-year old. Something really interesting happened. I mean, it was really confronting imagining her when she was 90.

What I realized, and this is the key to it, I think, is that she was not alone. She was part of a web of relationships of friends and family who were there to support her. She was part of a web of the living world too. She needed air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink.  

What I realized was that, if I really care about my child, long into the future, I have to care about all children and that wider world. I think that’s where kind of long-term thinking and sustainability start meeting. We need to kind of prompt ourselves with these kinds of imagined exercises. This is not the kind of stuff that we do in everyday life. It is not what you do in boardroom meetings, or in school classes.

Sean Murray  23:16  

First of all, that’s just a very powerful exercise. I just emotionally sort of went through that journey, as you were talking. It really hits you. There’s that one takeaway you just mentioned, which is as we imagine the person, or our child, or our nephew, or niece or someone that we care about at 90 years old, it’s not just the shelter that they’re living in, or the immediate surroundings. They’re going to be part of this environment. 

That’s the clean air they breathe. The sustainability of the ecosystem they’re in at that time is all going to be important to their health and their well-being. It’s dependent on decisions we make today. 

Another takeaway that gets you to think about and confront is your legacy. What have you passed on to that daughter, or that son, or that niece or nephew that they are now absorbing? It could be that wisdom that they are now going to hopefully pass on to that little baby that’s in their arms. 

It really ups the ante, or it forces you to confront: “What am I doing today to pass that knowledge on? To be the best father I can be? To be the best community member, citizen, and steward of the environment?” I think it’s a great exercise to really force us to answer the question that you asked us to answer in the book which is: “How do we become good ancestors?”

Roman Krznaric  24:38  

It does that for me as well. It raises those really challenging questions of “What am I doing and why?” Something that connects to me is this brilliant art project by a Scottish artist called Katie Patterson. It is this project called Future Library.

It’s a 100-year project. Every year for the next hundred years, a famous writer is depositing a book in the Future Library, which will remain completely secret until the year 2114. 

At which point, the 100 books will be printed on paper, which is made from 1,000 trees. They have been planted in a forest outside Oslo. The first person to donate a book was Margaret Atwood. Many other famous writers have donated since. 

But if you think about it, Margaret Atwood is never going to meet the readers. She’s never going to see it published in her lifetime. It’s kind of like a legacy gift to the future. I think we can all ask ourselves: “What legacies do we want to leave? What do I want to leave for my children and everyone in those big networks around them?” 

I think it also relates to another sort of fundamental aspect of what it is to live the good life. It is about having a sense of purpose. If you go to the writings of someone like the existential psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl. He is an Auschwitz survivor. 

He said, “Well, what we really need to live for a good life is to have a goal”, or what he called a “concrete assignment” or “transcendent goal.” It’s something bigger than ourselves that we really care about. It is something that gets us up in the morning.

It could be finding a cure for cancer if you’re a scientist. It could be keeping your family business alive. All sorts of things can act as that transcendent goal, or what the ancient Greeks called a “telos”. It is their word for a goal or an ultimate aim. 

I think as individuals, we can think, “Okay, what am I trying to do? Who am I here for? Who am I working for?” We can think, “Okay, maybe this is about current generations, but also, future generations. Maybe it’s something bigger.” 

In fact, the great Carl Sagan, the astronomer back in the ’70s said that: “Just as individuals need a sense of purpose, so does a whole society.” We can think to ourselves, “Okay, what should our goal be?” 

Certainly, for me, it’s about learning to live within the boundaries of this one planet, rather than being like Elon Musk and running away to Mars. But certainly, I think when you’ve got that kind of goal, it’s what gives you meaning, right? It gives you purpose. It gives you something to drive for. It needs to be something a bit bigger than yourself.

Sean Murray  27:07  

You introduced this concept to me. I hadn’t heard this before. I don’t know if you coined it or not. It is something you call, “The going beyond the ego boundary.” The way you described it in the book is that we often think within just our own lifetime. It is what we can impact within our lifetime and within our own familial system. 

That is tied to our own ego in many ways. If we can get beyond the ego boundary, which should be for maybe one lifetime or beyond our family. It is to think about our community. It is to think about what you just mentioned, “Being part of this earth,” which is the one earth that we have.

We have some examples of this, such as in the past, human communities are doing something like this. You talked about “cathedral thinking,” which is another great term that I’m sure is going to stick with me after reading the book. It is building something that’s going to go beyond.

Roman Krznaric  27:54  

I like that phrase, “cathedral thinking” too. I didn’t invent it myself. But I’ve kind of liked the idea of trying to popularize concepts which I think are really cool. Certainly, “cathedral thinking” is one of them in it. 

Obviously, as you alluded to it, it refers to those medieval cathedral builders in Europe. They would start building these great religious edifices that they knew would never be finished within their own lifetimes, yet they kept at it anyway. One famous example is Ulm Minster in southwest Germany. It is a Lutheran Church. 

In 1377, the good citizens of Ulm decided they wanted their own church. They were going to finance it themselves. It took them more than 500 years. They didn’t finish it until 1890. It is probably the world’s longest crowdfunding project. 

If you think about it, human beings are embarking on these really long-term projects all the time. You see it in public works projects. There’s a famous example from Britain in the 19th century where the sewers that were built in Victorian London were built twice as big as they needed to be.

The great engineer behind it is a guy called Sir Joseph Bazalgette ensured that they were gigantic. The sewer is bigger than they needed to be. It has better quality than they needed to be. That’s why they’re still used today. That’s the kind of maybe not cathedral thinking, but maybe “sewer thinking,” I might call it. 

But again, it’s this kind of long-term vision we often don’t find in politics, or in business or in everyday life. I’m really inspired by those things. I mean, there are examples around today.

In the Arctic Circle, there’s this amazing science project called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It’s a depository of millions of seeds, which are being kept in an indestructible rock bunker in the Arctic Circle. It’s been designed to last 1,000 years to preserve the world’s plant biodiversity. I think that’s an amazing example of cathedral thinking.

I think we can all think to ourselves, in our own lives, in the businesses, the organizations, communities we’re a part of on how we can be a cathedral thinker. Can I be thinking 100 years ahead for the church I’m part of? 

If I’m in my kids’ elementary school and seated on the board, or if I’m putting solar panels on the roof, or whatever it happens to be. There’s all sorts of ways where we can start trying to take a longer vision. Here’s the amazing thing, it makes you feel good. It’s sort of good for you and for the world.

Sean Murray  30:19  

Exactly. It contributes to the good life in that way, and in an individual holistic perspective as well. I’m glad you mentioned that because I think these projects, although they’re very inspiring, they sometimes leave the question of: “Well, it’s great that the seed bank is happening, but what’s my role in that?” We’re not building a cathedral in Seattle today.

Your point about, look at your own life, your relationships, community, and organizations just extend beyond the ego boundary. Extend the thinking. Apply the long-term thinking. Bring that into your decision making. It can have a big impact.

Roman Krznaric  30:58  

When you go to the supermarket, you can ask yourself, “Am I being a good ancestor?” I sometimes go into my local supermarket. I’ll pick up a pack of beans. I’ll see that they’ve been flown from Kenya. I live in England. It doesn’t make sense for me to buy some string beans, which have been pumping fossil fuels in the air. It is going to be the legacy that I would be leaving for my children and their children.

Then, I would think, “Okay, no. Being a good ancestor means putting those down and buying something else, which is locally grown.” That’s why people love going to their farmers market and things like that.

It’s about in a way, being a good ancestor and a good community member. I also think it’s really important to bring this kind of long-term thinking into everyday life and habits.

I cycle out with my kids to visit ancient trees that have been around for 1,000 years. There’s one that is one mile away from where I live. It is an old yew tree in a church yard. It is maybe 1,200 or 1,300 years old. You sit beneath it. 

Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “Don’t just do something. Sit there. Sit under it. Don’t take a selfie, but just try and feel that ancientness.” Recognize that, “Hey, us humans are just an eyeblink in the great cosmic story. Who are we to break it without environmental degradation and ontological risk?” 

I love going to those places. I was just recently on a summer vacation. We went down to a local beach not too far from where we are. We were hunting for fossils along the beach. We were holding in our hands the 195 million-year old belemnite, which is like a little squid-like creature.

There’s only a tiny bit of rock. As I was showing the kids, I say, “Look, no human being has ever gazed upon this rock, which just fell out of the cliffside.” This was from the time of the dinosaurs. It was even before the dinosaurs. It’s absolutely incredible. 

I think it’s just those little everyday things that would get us away from our phones, and our computers. We just start thinking in a slightly longer expanded view of the world.

Sean Murray  33:03  

I think those little excursions can be really powerful. I once had an opportunity while visiting Yosemite to go to the Maricopa grove of the sequoia trees. I stood beneath several of these trees, which were just awe inspiring and enormous.

I think there’s a basic human yearning to connect with our past. Through these living beings we’re connected to 500 to 1,000 years ago. It really touches you pretty deep to be around something like this. It can inspire you to, as you said, “Make some change in your day-to-day” because you reconnect with these wonderful living beings, or fossils, or whatever it is.

You mentioned another one, which is the Uffington  White Horse. Maybe you could talk about that because I found that amazing. It’s not far from your house. Is that right?

Roman Krznaric  33:55  

Right. The Uffington White Horse is this amazing Bronze Age sculpture. It’s 3,000 years old. It’s a gigantic horse, which is about 100-feet long. It has been carved into a chalk mountainside.

There’s green grass around and then you see this sort of white portrait of a horse from the side. It can be seen from miles around. Over the last thousand years, at least we know that local villages have been going up there over a year or a few years to do a ceremony. It is what they call “chalking the horse.” 

What they do is they take out weeds from it, and then they bash in new bits of white chalk, so that it remains pristine. You can see it. I’m now part of a group which goes every year to rechalk the horse as part of this ancient ceremony.

You’re sitting in the sun and bashing it in there. But unfortunately, we couldn’t do it this year because of COVID. We did it last year. We’ll do it next year. We’ll do it for decades after that, as long as I live anyway. 

I think this is all about maintenance. It’s about looking after stuff. I think there’s something really beautiful in looking after our cultural heritage and even our memories. I really love that ritual aspect of rechalking the white horse.

In fact, I’d like to kind of be involved in more stuff like that. In a way, if you go and visit an ancient tree every month, just stand under those sequoias once a year even, it’s a bit like rechalking the horse. It’s the white horse of Uffington. It’s about kind of connecting with that sense of what’s called “deep time.”

Again, it’s as you say that we are so caught in our ego boundaries. And of course, doing what I want, or the “me” part of us is a real part of us. But as the philosopher in the 18th century, David Hume, once said, “We are both serpents and doves.” We’re driven by the “me” and the “we.” We are incredibly social creatures, as well as being individualistic creatures. 

Ultimately, you can have gourmet meals every night eating alone. But in the end, you probably would rather have somebody sitting there with you. I think that’s really a deep part of who we are. I think in these kinds of long-term rituals, we can connect with people today, but also connect with people tomorrow.

Sean Murray  36:24  

I’d like to talk a little bit about how we think about time for *inaudible*. You mentioned that we tend to think about time as an arrow in western civilization. We tend to think about it as an arrow pointing into the future. It’s very linear.

Whereas many native cultures and indigenous cultures think about it more as a cycle or a circle. What can we gain from thinking more in a circular, natural pattern than as a linear model of time?

Roman Krznaric  36:55  

That’s a really good question. I do think that kind of linear idea, or time as an arrow is the dominant one in our culture. We think about the past, the present and the future. It’s kind of like a line. 

As you say, many cultures in the past, and still, some indigenous cultures today have this more circular or cyclical view of time. Rather than worrying so much about what’s going to happen tomorrow, or in a month, or in a few weeks, or whatever it is, they’re thinking more of connections with natural cycles, such as the cycles of the moon, or cycles of the season, solar years, and things like that.

For example, if you go to the Indonesian island of Bali, they have a calendar called the “Pawukon” calendar. It’s a calendar, which is based on cycles. Lots of cycles were based on the moon, particularly. It really influences the way that they live. 

When these various cycles happen, or these cycles within cycles, such as moons and seasons, when they coincide, they have what are called “full days.” It is when they have lots of religious ceremonies, community meetings, and things. And then on other days, they call them “empty days.” They are days when you actually sit around and don’t do that much. 

Anthropologists have described it. They live life more in terms of sort of pulses of activity and non-activity, of engagement and chilling out as it were. I think that’s a really different way than most of us think because the arrow of time is always pushing us towards achievement, climbing ladders, and all that kind of thing. 

Let’s get in touch with these cycles. Instead of the fiscal year, let’s think of the seasons. Instead of that tax year, let’s think of the moon cycles. I think this is really important because again, it connects us with the natural world. It connects us with nature because we impose our own artificial cycles on top of what we find on planet Earth.

Sean Murray  38:52  

I think incorporating a few days a month, or whenever we can, a day where we run on a more natural cycle. It can be really refreshing. I just had the opportunity to do some fly fishing. I spent the day just walking in a river and fishing mostly alone. There were friends close by, but not in the same proximity. 

At the end of the day, when my friends I got together, when we were reflecting on the day, we talked about how differently we felt going through a day that was more natural. The rhythms we followed were more moving through the flow of a river. We’re going from a hole to a hole while seeing nature. 

It’s so different from the day-to-day that most of us live. We’re going from zoom call to zoom call. We’re under the tyranny of the clock. I just found it so refreshing and invigorating to be on that more natural cycle. When you wrote about it, it really spoke to me.

Roman Krznaric  39:49  

I’m not a fishing person myself. Friends of mine who are into fishing often describe that kind of timelessness that goes on. *inaudible* the fish. They’re tracking the sun. They sort of engaged with nature in a kind of very real way. There’s a real sense of presence. But there isn’t that sense of rush, or of turbulence, and so on.

Of course, we can all find our different ways of trying to do something like that. I mean weirdly, I get something similar from my obsession with playing tennis. I’m so engaged in the moment that I forget all the moments. There’s a kind of timelessness to it when I’m really engaged in it.

I think that’s what creativity and spontaneity partly give you. It’s one way of stepping out of time. I certainly think that engagement with nature is such a great way of challenging the tyranny of the clock.

I’m all for taking digital diets. That includes leaving your phone away for a couple of weekends. I’d love to do that with my kids. They just got their first phones. They’re 11-year old twins. We’re trying to teach them how to not become an addict to linear time, or into high speed, or to the “Buy Now” button. That is a huge challenge.

Sean Murray  41:01  

Is there anything you’d like to leave the audience with, as far as being a good ancestor? How to think more long-term? How to grab on to a more transcendent aspiring goal Incorporate some of these ideas into our lives to live the good life.

Roman Krznaric  41:20  

At the end of my book, “The Good Ancestor,” I’ve got what I call a “menu of conversation.” On that menu, there are these questions about long-term thinking, such as: “What kind of legacy would you like to leave to your family, your community or the living world? What have been your most profound experiences of deep time? What should the relationship be between current generations and our obligations to future generations?” 

If I’m going to leave people with any message, it is: talk to people. Have conversations about intergenerational thinking and long-term thinking. Talk to your family, friends, kids, and work colleagues. Have a conversation such as, “Hey, what would it mean for us to be a good ancestor?” 

I think that we start changing the world through conversation, getting other people’s ideas, and sharing our own. I believe that we can kind of change the world one conversation at a time. Get out there. Have conversations even with strangers about being a good ancestor. That’s probably a pretty good antidote to the “Buy Now” button.

Sean Murray  42:19  

I love the idea of changing the world one conversation at a time. This has just been a deeply satisfying and fulfilling conversation. Where can people find out more about your book, your writings, and your work?

Roman Krznaric  42:31  

People can buy the book, “The Good Ancestor” to any website or local bookshop, if you can. People can follow me on Twitter @romankrznaric, or go to my website. That is romankrznaric.com. You may also put in a search engine: “Roman The Good Ancestor,” and you’ll find me. Say hello, please.

Sean Murray  42:51  

Great. Well, thank you for being on The Good Life.

Roman Krznaric  42:54  

It’s been a huge pleasure, Sean. Thanks so much for a really enjoyable and stimulating discussion.

Outro  43:00  

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