Richard Fisher - "The Long View - Why We Need to Transform how the World Sees Time"

As the late Middle Ages arrived, religion and time became entangled in other intriguing ways. Around the thirteen century, timekeeping technology made another leap forward, with the invention of the escapement, which allowed clock designers to build mechanisms with gears that 'ticked' one tooth at a time. While these more advanced clocks promised an evermore precise view of shared time for societies, it would be centuries before they were widely owned in households. Instead, many of the first timepieces in Europe rang as bells in churches, calling to prayer. And the world's first mechanical clocks can be found in Salisbury and Wells cathedrals, dating to the late 1300s. Time, for many, was owned by the Church.

[Stonehenge's] sacred usage as a cemetery suggests those ancient people clearly valued the links between generations. However, its 1,500-year construction took shape in distinct stages, beginning with ditches and wood, and evolving through various forms over time. The Great Wall of China, too, was completed section by section, by several unconnected dynasties, and by different officials in response to local needs. If Grandeur can foster an illusion of grand design; if aliens landed on Earth today, and looked at all the world's metalled roads, or the global railway network, they might make similar assumptions about a longsighted plan, when the reality is a patchwork of uncoordinated engineering.
    In the present day, we also only see the architecture that survived the centuries, so ought to to be cautious about assuming that it was representative.

Finally, it's worth remembering that if cathedral-builders did have a long view, it would have been rooted in a different societal context to our own. Perhaps it was easier for them to imagine baton-passing into the future because change happened more slowly. They would have expected their descendants to have essentially the same life as them, with the same needs and desires.

[late 17th century] By this period, maritime insurance to protect against future losses had also been introduced in European ports, and life insurance had been developed in Amsterdam, following research on the mathematics of probability. As well as evidence of forward planning, these financial inventions reflected the idea that multiple futures were possible and to be successful one needed to prepare for various scenarios to play out.

These eighteenth-century ideals about the deep future were not to last. The French Revolution and other political changes in Europe would nudge many utopian, future-facing intellectuals and writers into a more pessimistic and circumspect mode.

Amazing philosphical approach to time.

 

 

In the nineteenth century [...] a sense of shared timekeeping day-to-day was emerging across Europe.
    The days when churches were the main arbiter of hours and minutes were now long gone, and the West was entering the era of 'industrial time'.

Historians argue that the machine that drove the Industrial Revolution was not the steam engine, but the clock, because clocks could synchronise people.

Consider that agriculture before the Industrial Revolution had been predominantly shaped by the natural timescapes of climate and seasons. In the mid-1800s, however, British scientist-entrepreneurs discovered that crushed bones treated with sulphuric acid vastly improved crop yields. Coupled with the other impacts of industrialisation, these 'superphosphate' fertilisers would impose a new timescape on farming, meaning farmers no longer had to rely on the capricious cycles of nature. Crucially, it was a phase-change that came at the expense of the future, via phosphate pollution and soil depletion.
    In sum, at this point in history, the future became a space that could be exploited on industrial scales to serve the economic needs of the present. And in many ways, this has been the story ever since.

Unlike our ancestors, we are fully aware that tomorrow will be different to today, and that our societies exist within deep time. Unfortunately that hard-won knowledge is ignored in practice. In a time-blinkered age, all modes of thinking are shaped primarily by present-day concerns, meaning the long view is often seen only through the lens of satisfying current needs, increasing profit or winning political battles.

To [Aristotle], "all discoverable things have already been discovered; all thinkable things previously thought; all forms of government already assessed; all workable feats of engineering tried and tested", wrties the historian Thomas Moynihan. What this implies is that Aristotle and his contemporaries had littel sense that tehere could be a future world with ideas, technologies and things that were not already part of their universe.
    All this could explain why the Romans and Greeks turned to mysticism. Troughout history, ancient societies in Europe, China or Mesopotamia sought the wisdom of oracles, who promised answers from entrails, fire, dreams, bones, or even the crakcs on roasted turtle shells. And the Romans were no different. Before officials embarked on battles or elections, they'd ask a priesthood of augurs to study bird behaviour for guidance. (In Latin, the word 'auspices' essentially means 'looking for fortunate signs in birds') With the confidence of the historian relating fixed events in the past, these august would provide information about fixed events in the future.

'Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred three-score and six.' Centuries later scholars would realise that this number – 666 – was not random. It was a figure calculated useing the Hebrew letters for 'Nero Caesar', which can be converted to 50, 200, 6, 50, 100, 60 and 200, adding up to 666. [some refute this interpretation]

"You're going to have lunch with the President. The menuy is humble pie. You're going to eat every last  mtotherfu8Icking spoonful of it. You're going to be the most contrite sonofabitch this world has ever seen."

Italy's Beretta was founded in 1526, and Grolsch started brewing beer in 1615.

Researchers studying Japanese firms have found that companies with adopted heirs consistently outperform companies with blood heirs (which in turn outperform non-family firms.) Motivated by the honour of adaptation, the practice encourages star managers to invest themselves in the long-term prospoects of the company.

Another way that targets nudge people away from the long view is when goals are thought of as 'ceilings'. This is best demonstrated by the 'New York City taxi effect.' When it rains in NYC, it's hard to get a cab. Common sense would suggest that it's because demand is high, but it's also due to supply. Researchers have found that taxi drivers often don't choose to take full advantage of bad weather. They could, of course, reap in fares all day. What actually happens instead is that they earn their day's target faster, and so clock off early. Rain encourages people to take a greater number of short journeys, which are more lucrative for taxi drivers, but after a while it leads to fewer cabs on the roads.

'Almost inevitably, many people become adept at manipulating performance indicators through a variety of methods.' Muller writes, 'many of which are ultimately dysfunctional for their organisations.' This negative effect of metrics on people's behaviour is neatly described by a principle called 'Goodhart's Law', named after British economist Charles Goodhart, which is often phrased as: 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'

'... when firms are forced to increase reporting frequency, they cut back on investments.' Kraft told me. Other studies suggest that quarterly reporting correlates with reductions in R&D spending, patents, advertising and hiring, as well as cuts in discretionary spending and project delays.

People have often moved on to new roles before the consequences of their actions become accountable.

The managers who used short-termist language worked in firms that were more likely to cut R&D in years when they reported small earnings. And when the researchers looked at the shareholder composition, they found many more 'transient' than 'dedicated' investors.

One intriguing fact about shinise is that a large proportion of them provide services that never go out of fashion. Of the 1,000 companies more than 300 years old, 230 are in the alcohol business, 117 are hotels and 155 in the food industry. But it's also a question of priorities, and the targets they set for themselves and their employees. Scaling up, maximising profits, reporting quarterly or increasing market are not top of the list. Instead, it's just as important, if not more so, to aspire to other goals, such as ethical and stable stewardship or passing the baton to the next generation.

Kongo Gumi, a construction company established in the year 578. The company refers to an idea called 'ie', which means 'house' and emphasises continuation.

The University of Al Quaraouiyine provides an education underpinned by both the Islamic faith and benevolent concepts such as 'ummah' - Muslim community - social responsibility as expressed in 'zakat', and endowment via 'waqf', which advocates giving wealth to last beyond death.

Joining me in the Lords gallery to watch the debate was Roman Kzrznaric, who co-authored the analysis of teh Intergenerational Solidarity Index we covered earlier. He has been a prominent advocate for the rights of future generations in recent years - and in his book The Good Ancestor has called for a new movement made up of what he calls 'time rebels'. One of his arguments is that modern democracies, especially in the wealthiest countries, as 'colonising the future'.
    'We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please.'

favourite suggestions is a mischievous idea called 'an intergenerational chaining effect' proposed by the philosophers Tyler M. John and William MacAskill. As an incentive to focus on the long view, the pair suggest that the generosity of a politician's pension should not be decided until the political generation that follows.

'One of the design features of language is displacement, the capacity to refer to the nonpresent,' writes the evolutionary psychologist Michael Corballis.