Goal

The goals pertaining to this idea are to improve humanity's capacities to care about future generations and capabilities for effective futures-thinking. I believe that humanity cannot truly flourish without these capacities and capabilities. I believe that caring for future generations is an apex point in our social evolution. Eminent futurist Wendell Bell has stated that "The present generation's caring and sacrificing for future generations benefits not only future generations but also itself." His colleague, Richard Slaughter, echoes this sentiment: "To not care about future generations diminishes us."
Conversely, it is irresponsible and unforgivable to ignore the many risks to the very existence of the human race. Humanity will not survive nor flourish into the future simply by chance. People are natural planners but not necessarily adept futures-thinkers. For many, the future goes dark a few years into the future. There are no visions of future worlds, good or bad, that extend beyond our immediate concerns. In their place may be anxieties about even trying to become more futures-oriented. Humanity cannot adequately address issues such as climate change if we do not care about future generations and if our mental time frames can only extend a few years into the future.

Opportunity

Literature in the fields of futures studies and philosophy addresses why we should care for future generations and our obligations to future generations. Other researchers are improving methods to help us confront future risks, from modeling the impacts of climate change to anticipating the ravages of global pandemics. However, we know very little about why and how much individuals care about future generations. We have very little evidenced-based knowledge about how to help individuals build their capabilities to become more effective futures-thinkers. This effort provides an opportunity to integrate knowledge and methods across disciplines to improve these capacities and capabilities.

Roadblocks

Myopia and individualism typify modern societies. The intellectual edifices underlying our economic and political systems exacerbate these problems. Individuals are not trained to think long-term nor encouraged to care about future generations to the detriment of both themselves and our future generations. Thus, the roadblocks are cognitive, emotional and institutional. Additionally, our educational systems, K-12 through undergraduate and post-graduate education, lack robust curricula and activities to foster futures-thinking and caring for future generations. H.G. Wells lamented the lack of professors of foresight, which is still the case today. The challenge is how to break through constraints to compassionate futures thinking.

Breakthroughs Needed

Assessment -- One project entails developing an index that captures how much a population (e.g., nation) cares about future generations. The index should encompass publicly available secondary data that help express the futures orientedness of a nation. A second project entails engaging individuals across the globe in discussions about caring for future generations, possibly modeled after the popular and successful Socrates Cafés.
Interventions -- Projects in this area should focus on developing, testing and evaluating approaches to: help individuals improve cognitive abilities needed to think more long-term; and help individuals confront and adjust deeply held values that may prevent them from authentically caring about future generations. There are existing informal futures-thinking exercises and more formal processes such as Futures Literacy Laboratories developed and implemented by UNESCO that can be tested and evaluated.
Dissemination -- Projects in this area would disseminate the most effective intervention approaches. Grants could be provided to non-profit, educational organizations, science museums and other appropriate organizations worldwide. Funding should be provided to evaluate these efforts. Also as part of this group of activities, all data (e.g., discussion narratives, evaluation results) and indices should be made available open source to the global research community.

Key Indicators of Success

Indicators of success include the development of the index and facilitation of the discussions, development and testing of intervention approaches, and dissemination and evaluation of intervention approaches worldwide. Longer-term, a key indicator of success would be improvement in population's caring for future generations, as measured by updates to the index and subsequent discussions. Another longer-term indicator of success would be the adoption of intervention approaches across the globe that are not reliant upon Templeton Foundation grants. Lastly, the aspirational key indicator of success is when it is commonplace for caring for future generations to influence public policy discussions.

Additional Information

Projects and activities fall into three areas: assessment, intervention, and dissemination. One project in the assessment area focuses on developing and estimating an index to measure how much a nation cares for future generations. Similar to the Human Development Index, this index would be composed of secondary data points Case studies of countries that score well on the index could be conducted.
The second project would entail conducting discussions with diverse groups of individuals across the globe about caring for future generations. This activity will draw upon the rich literature in the field of future studies on why we should care about future generations (Bell 1993). The discussion sessions could be modeled on the popular and successful Socrates Cafés (Phillips 2004). The discussion narratives will be captured in a database to systemically assess important themes. It is recommended that the index be re-estimated and a second round of discussions held towards the end of this effort.
The intervention component encompasses research to develop, test and evaluate approaches to improve the ability of individuals to think more effectively about the future and increase their ability to care for future generations. The intervention approaches will need to address many challenges, such as how to communicate to individuals risks to humanity (e.g., Ord 2020) and overcome biases and heuristics that limit how effectively individuals can imagine potential futures and deal with inherent uncertainties about the future. This effort could tap many informal exercises that have been developed to improve futures thinking, including scenario writing.
Among several more involved and formal approaches to the intervention task include those that fall under the rubric of futures literacy (Miller 2018). Futures literacy training has been implemented worldwide through Futures Literacy Laboratories supported by UNESCO.
The dissemination component entails providing grants to K-16 and graduate education programs, science museums, and various non-profit advocacy organizations worldwide to implement and evaluate the interventions. Cohorts of individuals who have participated in interventions could be followed to assess how they flourish over time. Finally, the dissemination task also involves making all data collected by the projects and activities available open source to the global research community.
In summary, this idea is an important component of a much larger set of tasks needed to ensure humanity's journey into the distant future (Tonn 2020).
There are very well qualified individuals across the world that could contribute to this effort, such as myself (Bruce Tonn, President, Three3, Inc. USA), Keri Facer (UK), Rakesh Kapoor (India), Riel Miller (UNESCO), Stuart Candy (USA) and Loes Damhof (Netherlands).
Bell, W. 1993. Why Should We Care About Future Generations? In Didsbury. H. The Years Ahead: Perils, Problems, and Promises. World Future Society, Washington, DC. 25-41
Miller, R.) 2018. Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century. Routledge.
Ord, T. 2020. The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Hachette Books.
Phillips, C. 2004. Six Questions of Socrates. Norton.
Tonn, B. 2020. Anticipation, Sustainability, Futures, Human Extinction: Ensuring Humanity's
Journey into The Distant Future. Routledge (In publication process).