Name: How to be a good ancestor | Roman Krznaric
Uploaded: 2020-10-23T20:51:54.000Z
Duration: 7 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Transcriber: TED Translators Admin Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs

It's time for humankind to recognize a disturbing truth:

we treat it like a distant colonial outpost

where we can freely dump ecological damage

and technological risk as if there was nobody there.

The tragedy is that tomorrow's generations aren't here

to challenge this pillaging of their inheritance.

They can't leap in front of the king's horse like a suffragette

or stage a sit-in like a civil rights activist

or go on a Salt March to defy their colonial oppressors like Mahatma Gandhi.

They're granted no political rights or representation;

they have no influence in the marketplace.

The great silent majority of future generations

It could be hard to grasp the scale of this injustice,

There are 7.7 billion people alive today.

That's just a tiny fraction of the estimated 100 billion people

who have lived and died over the past 50,000 years.

But both of these are vastly outnumbered by the nearly seven trillion people

who will be born over the next 50,000 years,

In the next two centuries alone, tens of billions of people will be born,

and the friends and communities on whom they'll depend.

How will all these future generations look back on us

We've clearly inherited extraordinary legacies

medical discoveries and the cities we still live in.

But we've certainly inherited destructive legacies too.

Legacies of slavery and colonialism and racism

creating deep inequities that must now be repaired.

that are structurally addicted to fossil fuels

and endless growth that must now be transformed.

So how can we become the good ancestors that future generations deserve?

of people committed to decolonizing the future

and extending our time horizons towards a longer now.

This movement is still fragmented and as yet has no name.

They can be found at work in Japan's visionary Future Design movement,

which aims to overcome the short-term cycles that dominate politics

by drawing on the principle of seventh generation decision making

practiced by many Native Americans communities.

to draw up and discuss plans for the towns and cities where they live.

Half the group are told they're residents from the present day.

The other half are given ceremonial robes to wear

and told to imagine themselves as residents from the year 2060.

Well, it turns out that the residents from 2060

systematically advocate far more transformative city plans,

from healthcare investments to climate change action.

And this innovative form of future citizens assembly

from small towns like Yahaba to major cities like Kyoto.

What if Future Design was adopted by towns and cities worldwide

and extend their vision far beyond the now?

Now, time rebels have also taken to courts of law

has filed a landmark case against the US Government

campaigning for the legal right to a safe climate and healthy atmosphere

has already inspired groundbreaking lawsuits worldwide

from Colombia and Pakistan to Uganda and the Netherlands.

And this wave of activism is growing alongside the movement

from the Whanganui River in Aotearoa, New Zealand

to the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in India.

Time rebels are taking action at the ballot box too.

began lobbying their parents and grandparents

to give them their votes in the European parliamentary elections of that year.

The hashtag #givethekidsyourvote went viral on social media

and was spread by climate campaigners as far as Australia.

and decided to give our votes in the last UK general election

So we all sat around the kitchen table and debated the party manifestos,

and they then each told us where to put the X on the ballot sheet.

no, they didn't simply mirror their parents' political opinions.

The rebels are rising to decolonize the future

founding a global movement for long-term thinking

one of the most powerful political movements of this century.

They're helping us escape the short-term cycles

that digital distraction and consumer culture trap us in,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How to be a good ancestor | Roman Krznaric

distraction

debate

profound

thrive