While our minds might be not be wired to deal with long-term threats and priorities in the abstract, they are wired for two things that we can control: story and emotion. To avoid these dangers, we can’t wait for our Neolithic mental functions to play evolutionary catch-up, so we need to supplement them. We no longer live in a world of clear, local cause and effect, and the greatest threats to civilisation are happening on the timescale of decades or centuries. As futurist Jamais Casio puts it, “In a world of constant, imminent existential threats, the ability to recognise subtle, long-term processes and multi-generational changes wasn't a particularly important adaptive advantage.” Yet today, the nature of risk has changed. It wasn’t very useful when we were avoiding attacks from sabre-toothed tigers, desperately foraging for breakfast on the forest floor and surviving extreme weather conditions.

We focus on the present day while neglecting problems that will endure for centuries – from climate change to ecological collapse.įor most of human history we haven’t needed to think long-term. Instead, short-term mindsets and structures dominate.

Humanity should be acting to preserve its long-term future.

There is a line in Hamlet where the prince of Denmark declares, “The time is out of joint.” Shakespeare might have written these words yesterday, not more than 400 years ago, for we live in a world where our perception of time is dislocated.

Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud