Saturday, November 07, 2020

Short-termism

Big old churches are not really my thing but I respect those who chose to erect something worthy of the God they sought. Rowan Williams described churches and other faith groups as 'custodians of the long-term questions'. He observed that they were so because their vision of human nature was not in allegiance with political fashions and majorities. (Being Disciples)

It is hard to be popular if you are a long-term thinker. Investment in the future involves paying now for something you, or maybe somebody else, will get and enjoy then. Oak tree woods may have been planted by visionaries but they are enjoyed by the following generations, not the planters,

But today we have all grown up with credit, hire purchase, loans and mortgages. Paying then for something you get now. Investment spending is a difficult sell. 

Thus populism, as a philosophy, finds it easy to demonstrate that people may keep their freedom during a time of a pandemic. Saves thinking about that awkward business of  being dead. Short-termism wants now what may be compromised if we don't show a willingness to delay gratification. Short-termism says it won't wear a mask now but will risk the hit later. Which would be a perfectly reasonable and acceptable gamble if the person doing the betting was the person who would take the hit. Trouble is the non-mask wearers are gambling with my life, without my permission. The Darwin Awards shouldn't cause collateral damage

'History tells us what happens when economics in decline, with mounting social and economic anxiety, are captured by oversimple populist slogans which cast out those who don't agree or are deemed not to look or sound right.' (Susie Orbach, Guardian Review 26/1/19) Indeed it does. Tragically.

Short-termism is usually late to the party. Short-termism met someone interesting on the way and valued them more highly than the pre-booked appointment they were heading for. 'Running a bit late' they text as you carry on with the book you always have handy if they are in the diary. 'Lateness is a lack of respect for the structures.' (William Challis) 

Short termism will not acknowledge climate change. It sees climate change as somebody else's problem. It wants the oil and the gas and the coal out of the ground so people have jobs and money now. If it was the sort of person to ever show its working it would say that the grandchildren will be better able than us to work out how to survive floods, hurricanes and drought. Short-termism, Stefano Hatfield reminded us, means '... we are lumbered with perennial government by opinion poll, without vision.' (The ipaper 18/8/14)

But no. I'm into the huge unpopularism of the long-term. 'Instead of looking at what is and asking how to maintain it (we) should look at what ought to be and ask how to bring it about' (Mark Ashton: Christian Youth Work). We must learn to look beyond what has already been accomplished. And we must embrace dissatisfaction with the status quo wherever we find it for that will contain within it the birth throes of change.

I do not accept the obvious as the limit of the possible. Never have. If you ever get three wishes ask for more than a bottomless biscuit tin. You're not six. This generation (in the grandest terms - those on the planet now) know more than any previous one about the effect we are having on the future. Fixing it will cost us. We must pay.

I am writing this listening to the report on the US Election 2020. It seems that the US has rejected short-termism. That is good news for the world in the future. It is probably bad news for a few people now.



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