What can we learn from the past to create the future?

Mike Kauschke in Dialogue with Roman Krznaric

Political Scientist and bestselling author Roman Krznaric is challenging our relationship to time. Inn his view we are stuck in a “Tyranny of the Now”, a “chronic short termism, an inability to see beyond the immediate here and now”. In his books “The Good Ancestor” and recently “History for Tomorrow” he invites us to see ourselves and the world in a much wider trajectory of time and unfolding that includes the times before us and ahead of us.  For Krznaric this inclusive, long-term view opens up a source for deep hope. In an interview with evolve he says:

“I often draw a distinction between optimism and hope. Optimism is the idea that everything's going to be okay in spite of the evidence. I'm not optimistic about the prospects for our species, we are going in utterly the wrong direction. But I'm hopeful in the sense of being committed to the vision and the values that you have, even when the odds are against you. We may well be able to not have our civilizations break, but rather bend, in the face of all the challenges that we face. And this requires a huge sort of shift of consciousness in terms of our relationship to time and the living world. But the question is, can we do it at the speed and scale required, given that we might be going over and already have gone over tipping points? And anybody who's working in the realm of deep ideas will point out that cultural evolution has rarely been fast.”

In Radio evolve we speak with Roman Krznaric about the deep transformation of consciousness and identity that opens up in a much wider, inclusive relationship to time.

More on Roman Krznaric:

www.romankrznaric.com

www.dumont-buchverlag.de/personen/roman-krznaric-p-2900

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