Scaling 100X generations into the?future

In Jan 2020, I thought that 2019 was a challenging year as I had knee surgery that year. However, 2020 triumphed with me getting sick with Covid-19 and suffering from breathing problems from the disease.

Lying in bed, focusing on breathing (thinking I might die soon from lack of oxygen), I found myself thinking about the future and what is most important for me. That led me eventually to thinking about the future generations, my kids, and hopefully one-day grandkids. I’m highly growth-oriented in my day-to-day work, so the next logical step for me was to 100X scale it up and think about 100 generations into the future.

How does one think about the next 100 generations?

It starts from a very selfish and basic point of view: I want to have some legacy, I want to live something behind me in this world after I’m gone, in a nutshell, I want my genes to survive!

Henceforth I have kids that will pass my genes on to the next generations. I love my kids and would do anything for them. The next step in this journey is to think about what the next generations will need in order to survive and prosper.

My kids will not be living in a vacuum; they will have other people around them. They will be dependant on the society, culture, and environment around them to survive. This applies to all future generations and all of humanity. So, suppose I want my genes to survive. In that case, I need to make sure that all of humanity will survive. Suppose I want my future generations to have a prosperous life. In that case, I should hope that all of humanity will also prosper.

If there is one thing that Covid-19 taught us, it is that no one is protected. As even the president of the strongest country in the world could not be shielded from the pandemic. This existential risk applies to everyone. We can all die tomorrow from disease, war, or any other thing that comes our way. But as a species, it’s our mission to guarantee that future generations will survive and hopefully thrive and prosper.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What do your children need?
• What did you get from past generations?
• What should you leave for the next generations?

Simon Sinek talks in his book “the infinite game” about having an infinite mindset. What applies to games and business also applies to human society. We should focus more on long term planning and look far beyond our short life span.

The game of life existed long before humanity, and it will outlast every human being currently in existence. There is no winning in the game of life because there is no end. Our role is to make sure that life will perpetuate and for our generation not to be the last of it’s kind.

Ask yourself these questions:

• How will future generations judge us for the things we did or didn’t do?
• How are we going to be remembered by future generations?

We live in an age in which humanity mostly exhibits short term thinking and planning. Our leaders can bearly see past their next election. Businesses can’t see past their next quarterly report. Nations meet and debate on topics like world hunger, climate change, and wars. Still, they do nothing but talk.

When we go to the bank and take a loan, that loan is from our future selves, as we are the ones to pay it back. In some cases, loans can be useful for both the now and the future. But in many cases, the loans we take are only to satisfy the demands of now, disregarding the future impact of that loan altogether. Such is the way we, as a species, have been living, taking loans from future generations to satisfy the current generation’s needs. That type of behavior was passed on to us from our ancestors, it’s time for us to evolve.

It seems like we are making decisions today, not thinking about their impact on future generations as if our actions will have no consequences in the future. This story’s tragedy is that the next generations are not here to fight us against this injustice we are doing to them.

The resources we harvest from the earth today will no longer be available for the next generations that come after us. We need to change our way of thinking into long term investments. Investments that go so far into the future that we will probably not get to see their fruits. I trust you understand that this is the only way we can be remembered. If future generations do not exist, then there will be no one to remember us.

Think of some of the most pressing matters our generation is facing:

• A nuclear threat at a press of a button
• Pandemics (Covid-19 and the likes)
• AI and algorithms decision process affecting human lives
• Climate change and global warming
• Air, water, and food pollution
• An upcoming energy crisis

We have to expand on our time horizon. We need to scale our thinking to go beyond our life span, go further than the here and now, and think about the impact our current actions will make on future generations. We need to see beyond the amount of money we’ll have in the bank next year.

Ask yourself these questions:

• If you were to live 200 years from now, what kind of world would you want to inherit?
• If your life expectancy wasn’t 80 years but 200–300 years, would you make different choices in your day-to-day? Would you think long term about your future?

The answer to these questions is that our children are the extension of our present being. We continue to live through them. Whatever we’d wish for ourselves should we live to the age of 200, 300, or 1000. In any case, the long term thinking about future generations should be the same as if we are the ones that lived in that future time.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What should we do for future generations?
• How can we do a better job than our ancestors, with the inheritance we live our children?
• What is the world going to be like for our kids and grandchildren?
• What kind of legacy do we want to live for the next generations?
• What will our children need to survive and thrive in the world they live in?

If we are not going to be there to take care of all future generations, we need to have a legacy that outlasts us. So what kind of legacy can we leave for future generations that will outlive us and guarantee that more than one or maybe two generations are being taken care of?

Some of the things we might want to make sure we leave as a legacy for the next generations would be:

• A safe and healthy environment
• knowledge and guidance on how to best use it (how to use knowledge for doing good and not using it in a harmful way)
• Personal safety — A world free of wars and crime
• Healthy and sustainable economy
• Leaders that also think and act on behalf of future generations
• Clean and healthy food, water, and air
• Clean, sustainable energy that will fulfill the needs of all living
• A health system that is of high quality and available to everyone
• Gender and racial equality
• Well being and high quality of life

It is our mission to guarantee the survival and prosperity of future generations. We are the generation to carry the torch at the present moment. It is our responsibility to make sure it stays lit and pass it onward to the next generation. We need to make sure that this mission is also clear to all the next generations that follow us. So they will also support our species attempt at immortality.

What can we do that will create a movement strong enough to tilt the balance for future generations?

We need to create a system that will outlast us, and anyone can quickly adopt, in daily life decisions.

Our core values and beliefs need to evolve.

Our decision making should be cross-generation as if we were to ask ourselves not only what would my mother think of me (past generations), but also what would my children think of me (future generations)?

Imagine a TV set in the future that shows anything that happened in the past. What would future generations think about our actions and decisions (as they already know the outcomes)?

?It is our mission to guarantee the survival and prosperity of future generations

Resources to get you started with long term thinking:

• Use your imagination to look into the future, ask yourself the questions outlined above.
• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• The Bento system or Bentoism
• Michael Simmons list of Mental models
• 30-Day Future Self Project by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
• Psychohistory as described in Asimov’s Foundation series novels
• The long now foundation
• Use First-principles to improve your thinking and future planning