Forging The Future: Ari Wallach on The Longpath Mindset, Telos & Transgenerational Empathy
Aug 15, 2022
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In this engaging discussion, Ari Wallach, a futurist and author of 'Longpath', delves into long-term thinking and how it can reshape our world. He emphasizes the need for transgenerational empathy, urging us to consider the impact of our actions on future generations. Ari shares profound insights on personal and collective legacies, the importance of adapting our mindsets, and fostering creativity during challenging times. He encourages listeners to envision hopeful futures and become great ancestors, inviting a deeper understanding of our role in the interconnected narrative of life.
Transgenerational empathy encourages understanding and connection with the past to shape the present.
Futures thinking challenges short-term mindset and guides actions for a better future.
T-loss provides purpose beyond one's life and contributes to positive legacies.
Acknowledging emotional inheritance from the past empowers change in behaviors.
Engaging in futures thinking and envisioning desired future is crucial for creating a meaningful legacy.
Deep dives
Transgenerational Empathy: Understanding the Past and its Influence
Transgenerational empathy is a pillar of the long path mindset that emphasizes the importance of understanding and connecting with the past. It encourages individuals to look back at their parents, grandparents, and ancestors to comprehend how their actions and decisions have shaped who they are today. This pillar promotes empathy towards previous generations and acknowledges their influence, both positive and negative, on the present. Transgenerational empathy does not absolve individuals of responsibility for their own actions, but rather aims to foster a deeper understanding of the complexities of family history and heritage.
Futures Thinking: Taking a Long-Term Perspective
Another pillar of the long path mindset is futures thinking. This involves adopting a long-term perspective and considering the implications of one's actions on future generations. It challenges the short-term mindset prevalent in society and encourages individuals to think beyond their own lifespans. Futures thinking involves envisioning and working towards a better future, guided by a T-loss or ultimate aim. It emphasizes the need to break free from short-term thinking and consider the long-term impact of decisions and behaviors.
The Importance of T-loss: An Ultimate Goal
T-loss, an ultimate aim or goal, plays a crucial role in the long path mindset. It provides individuals with a sense of purpose and direction that extends beyond their immediate lives. Having a T-loss involves identifying a quest or mission that is greater than oneself and building a life focused on contributing to a better future. It encourages individuals to find meaning and fulfillment in their actions and to make peace with their own mortality. T-loss serves as a guiding force to create positive legacies that resonate through future generations.
Importance of transgenerational empathy
Transgenerational empathy involves understanding the emotional inheritance from past generations and how it shapes our present. It encourages self-compassion and a connection with future generations to create a better future. By acknowledging the emotional baggage from the past, we can align ourselves with the present moment and take action to change our behaviors.
Architecting our desired future
Instead of passively accepting the official future, we need to engage in futures thinking. This involves exploring multiple plausible futures, considering megatrends, and actively envisioning our examine desired future. By developing a clear vision of where we want to go as a society and as a species, we can work towards creating a future that aligns with our values and aspirations.
Legacy and the importance of everyday actions
Legacy is not defined solely by accomplishments or wealth, but by the everyday choices and interactions we have with others. Each interaction, whether small or significant, creates an emotional inheritance that ripples through time. Building a meaningful legacy involves embodying virtues and values that positively impact future generations.
The need for a moral and conscious revolution
To solve the complex challenges we face, an elevation in moral and conscious thinking is essential. We must question our current cultural values rooted in individualism and embrace a broader perspective that considers the well-being of future generations. This revolution of consciousness is crucial for consciously shaping the future and creating a world that flourishes psychologically, mentally, and spiritually.
Focusing on the Vision for the Future
The podcast episode emphasizes the importance of discussing and clarifying different visions for the future. It highlights that many of the political conflicts and divisions we see today are rooted in competing ideas about what society should strive for in the long term. The speaker suggests that instead of engaging in proxy battles over current issues, there should be more conversations about where we want to be as a society in the next several centuries or even millennia. The podcast encourages envisioning a future that is shaped by a moral compass and proactive decision-making, rather than simply allowing the future to wash over us passively.
Creating a Department of the Future
The podcast proposes the idea of establishing a 'Department of the Future' in the United States with a budget equal to that of the Department of Defense. This theoretical department would focus on crafting a long-term vision for the country, determining what success looks like, and measuring progress toward those goals. The speaker argues that such a department could provide an alternative to the current reactive approach in government by proactively addressing root causes and investing in areas like education, community development, and criminal justice reform, rather than simply building more prisons. By rethinking incentives and metrics, such a department could help create a future that prioritizes well-being, rather than GDP growth.
We as a global society currently face challenges—some of which are existential in nature—that simply cannot be solved with the mindset, institutions, and paradigms currently in place.
Instead, these solutions require that we think beyond current economic, political, and social constraints—and even well beyond our individual life spans—to consider deeply the impact we will have on many generations into the future.
Indeed, these solutions require an applied mindset that Ari Wallach calls Longpath—an active way of being that cultivates future-conscious thinking and behavior to build more hopeful visions of the future, turn those visions into action, and foster more meaning in our lives and legacy.
Ari is a futurist (although he hates that term), a social systems strategist, and the author of a new book out this week, aptly titled (you guessed it) Longpath, which extends a discussion he began with his 2017 TED Talk, Short-termism is killing us: it’s time for Longpath which has been viewed over 2.5 million times.
This conversation asks a simple question: how do we become great ancestors to our future descendants?
The future is not a singular certainty. Nor is it solely fueled by technological advances in some far distant point in time. Instead, the future is manifesting now—and it is very much human. In this fascinating conversation Ari explains why.
