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:
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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.
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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.
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Accepting chage- for changing the world a better place personal opinion and decisions can be compromised at any cost.
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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.
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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.
Part-I Case1 Saving or helping more is always better than a few. So the decision is always for those thousand people who are going to exist for the future 200 years. As there is every possibility that the future of humanity is going to be better if and only if we don’t deliberately or ignorantly make it worse. So being a member of EA community I have every responsibility to think for those in future even they are not in a position to influence the decisions in their favour.
Case-II If the malaria rate remains high then it is a good reason to believe that my donation which cannot be used before 5 years is of atleast same value that it would have been for now. Moreover the life lost or sufferings of all child are same even if they don’t exist now. Ultimate aim of my donation is to reduce suffering and death irrespective of its time or location.