Exercise for 'Our Final Century?'

By EA Handbook @ 2023-12-05T18:26 (+5)

This session’s exercise is about doing some personal reflection. There are no right or wrong answers here, instead, this is an opportunity for you to take some time and think about your ethical values and beliefs.

What does it mean to be a good ancestor? (10 mins.) 

In the exercise from last week, we asked you to write a letter to the past. This week, we’d like you to turn your focus forward, and think about the years, decades and centuries ahead of us. 

When we think about doing good - such as by preventing malaria or restoring vision - we often already consider the future effects of our actions. We care about the fact that suffering is not just alleviated in the very moment we administer a vaccine or deliver some medication, but that recipients enjoy the benefits over the next days, weeks, months and hopefully years of their life. Similarly, it seems intuitive that parents have a moral responsibility for their children, and that safeguarding their well-being is a key priority, especially while they can’t take care of themselves. But what about our grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Or the generation after that? 

Whether or not you think that your personal responsibility stops at a certain point (there are legitimate reasons why it might), embedded in this idea is the concept of being “a good ancestor”. Entire books have been written about the notion that a key priority is to “create a better tomorrow” for those who follow in our footsteps. But what does that mean in practice? How can we start thinking about what makes for a “good ancestor”? In this exercise, we ask you to collect your thoughts on this question.  

You may start by describing character traits or attributes of a “good ancestor”, or by outlining actions they would or wouldn’t take.

E.g. A good ancestor…

Vegan banjo @ 2024-06-22T17:19 (+3)

Who doesn't want to be a good ancestor given a choice? Indeed the answer would be yes for almost all of us. But what it means to be a good ancestor may be a vague idea to think upon as most of us doesn't want to think beyond a very predictable near future.also we are not trained to think to a distant future timeline. I think it requires practice and common man is not bothered about those bits of extra stress and strain on their brain.

Few traits which I think is a prerequisites for being a good ancestor:

  1. Well Informed - information guides and shape our thought, helps us to imagine and finally leads to a better decision. Being open to diversity of information always helps to weigh the decisions against different sets of data hence increased is the chances of better outcome.

  2. learning to unlearn- with ages we all accumulate different sort of informations based on our immediate environment,traditions and practices. Many times learning new things create conflicts untill we unlearn some.

  3. Accepting chage- for changing the world a better place personal opinion and decisions can be compromised at any cost.

  4. Long termism- Thinking and learning and discussing about issues and topics which are beyond the present or near future timelines may seems to be a friction and fantacy but it helps taking actions for future. Imagining a world which is far from today is not everyone's cup of tea, it needs practice and going through a continuous process of learning about how to think logically about the unknown based on available information and facts.

  5. Art of giving- unconditional giving is an art. It's not an spontaneous decision man takes with very little exception. Only a child can show some acts of unconditional giving. For a man with matured or developed brain can rarely show the signs of unconditional love or giving anything. A learned man can give unditionally but mostly after training and practicing the act willfully.

That's only a few which comes to my mind for now, but there may be more and may be I'm missing the the most important ones. I'm open to explore more from others views on the subject.

Hugo Wong @ 2024-03-26T12:20 (+2)

What is the definition of good?

I think it is a return to the nature of human beings to meet their basic needs for survival and to achieve a prosperous life, where each person realizes his or her potential, where human relationships are good, and where there is harmonious social coexistence. 

This requires a society that is fair, diverse, accepting of different opinions and a healthy ecosystem.  Therefore, I believe that as good ancestors, we need to establish a system that monitors and takes preventive measures for all of these elements to ensure that they are not jeopardized by short-term interests. And when we know that development has deviated from the direction, we must make timely corrections.

Michael D.M. @ 2024-10-29T20:31 (+1)

A good ancestor. One who has ancestors is a descendant. Descendants need not be a genetic lineage (not necessarily even human), but rather the constitution of the living world some time into the future. A good ancestor should act in the present, with a specific vision for the future. A good ancestor should ideally "add value" to the world, that is, reduce suffering one way or another. This of course could be through means of direct, focused work toward progression of a relevant and underserved cause, or by philanthropy of any means. A good ancestor is one who takes a look at every major action they take, every donation they make, beyond the numbers, and asks themselves, "how will this affect the world after I've gone?" They research this well and inform their opinions with such. A good ancestor provides.

Gloria Mogoi @ 2024-09-24T12:32 (+1)

We all want our kids, people around us or our future grandkids and great grandkids to remember us for some good deed we did instead of bad deeds. Having said this, i think  a good ancestor  should be one who is part of advocacy againist vices such as racism, women and men exploitation, terrosism among others. He or she should be in the frontline fighting against things that harm humanity and ensuring that the ultimate goal is survival.

A good ancestor should also be open minded, open to the changing society, open to learning and open to listening to people around him or her. Lastly, a good ancestor should be involved in giving back to the community hence impacting a number of people positively.