This is the age of the tyranny of the now: our politicians can barely see beyond the next election date or the latest tweet; companies cannot see beyond the quarterly report; markets rise and fall in speculative bubbles; nations sit and argue with each other in international conferences while the planet burns and species disappear. And our task is to escape the pathological short-termism that we have inherited and to see, think, love and dream beyond the present time”, says the philosopher Roman Krznaric in an online conversation with La Vanguardia. Hers is one of the many voices that, from different fields of study and analysis, have risen in recent times against the prevailing short-term thinking.
The problem of short-termism, explains Krznaric, “is that it blinds us to the long-term challenges facing society” and while politicians, economists, scientists and citizens have their attention focused on the now, “they are not thinking about planning for the next pandemic, in how to fight the risks of technologies such as artificial intelligence and biological weapons, in confronting the deep economic and racial inequalities that are transmitted from generation to generation or in dealing with the consequences of the climate crisis and ecological”, such as the drought.
As he explains in his latest work, El buen antepasado (Captain Swing), the solution to all these challenges is to recover the long-term vision or what he calls cathedral thinking, with reference to the artisans who dedicated their lives to work in cathedrals that they knew they would not see finished or enjoy.
“It is important to understand our relationship with the future at a deep level; I think we treat it as a distant colonial place where we can freely unload ecological degradation and technological risk as if there was no one there, because future generations are not here now to remedy itâ€, says the philosopher.
Luis Miller, PhD in sociology and scientist at the Institute of Public Policy and Goods of the CSIC, assures that it is not only the philosophers, but that more and more governments and companies are aware of this need to think more in the long term and create foresight offices to try to anticipate future problems such as climate change or population growth or decline, because “if you don’t anticipate, the costs are greater”. The problem, he says, is that these kinds of initiatives “run into everyday politics, which does not want to commit itself beyond the electoral cycle, which is getting shorter every year because every year there is an election that is interpreted in national terms, so everything is planned for months, not even for four yearsâ€.
Miller, who in 2021 was an advisor to the National Office of Prospective and Strategic Planning in Moncloa, indicates that another of the problems with medium and long-term planning is that the issues, no matter how important they seem, last “a breath” on the political agenda.
“Governments run after public opinion and do not set their own agendas, and the fact that they apply restrictions or important changes thinking about the future polarizes and causes political confrontation (we have seen it in France with pensions), because what we need in the medium and long term it usually has short-term costs that are not well received by the present generations”, he comments.
And he points out that this causes “a vicious circle from which it is difficult to get out, because the government that tries to take measures to anticipate the future ends up losing the elections and populist parties that propose magical formulas win”.
Iñigo González Ricoy, professor of political philosophy at the UB, agrees that politicians have no incentive to adopt measures whose results are not visible before the next electoral cycle if they have costs for the public; but, in politics, the short term is not always negative.
“Short-termism is sometimes framed as a matter of selfishness, but all research finds that, in general, people’s willingness to sacrifice their present interests for future interests does not depend on whether they are virtuous or not, but on the context institutional that they have to decide. In situations of uncertainty, for example because there is a lot of corruption and it is not known whether projects will be carried out or funds will be diverted, there is less willingness to sacrifice than if there is confidence that the sacrifice will lead to the promised results” , explain.
He adds that, in addition, long-term political decisions require transversal consensuses that the current polarization makes impossible “because any attempt to apply serious reforms (whether on climate change, early education or pandemic prevention) by governments is immediately discredited by the opposition bloc”.
Joan Carles March, specialist in preventive medicine and public health, explains that the lack of long-term vision slows down progress and improvements in the field of health. “There is little strategy and a lot of action for action; there are many beginnings of change, but the plans are abandoned midway and plan after plan is made but without any major change or improvement,” he says. And he gives as an example primary care, “where to focus on the patient who is cared for every day without thinking about the problems of the population, their determinants of health and without community health programs and strategies that have led us to the current crisis”. Add to that, says March, that decisions are taken based on short-term economic criteria, without a vision of future problems, and this means that, for example, the professionals we need now are not available.
The neurobiologist Mara Dierssen, head of research at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, ​​explains that the bias of the present is very human and the culture of immediacy has exacerbated it, and that is why politicians, aware that their privileges may not they pass a legislature, make decisions and demand immediate results, even if this slows down many activities. He assures that science would be one of the areas that would clearly benefit if long-term thinking were recovered, and that is why movements such as Slow Science have emerged.
“Slowing down research procedures would allow us to reflect to be sure that we are asking ourselves the best questions, and to assess the long-term impacts of what we do on knowledge and people,” he says. And he emphasizes that having research policies with a long-term view would allow “extracting the full potential of scientific and technological knowledge and creating the conditions for great advances”.
MarÃa Loureiro, professor at the University of Santiago and specialist in environmental economics analysis, indicates that climate change is one of the areas where the tyranny of short-termism does the most damage. “Most companies prioritize immediate success, the immediate return to shareholders, and this implies that investments are not made to have a long-term forecast (for example in climate resilience) because it can affect current profits”, he explains. And he believes that from the point of view of economic analysis, great opportunities are being missed to consider future generations and design good policies for adaptation to climate change. “To be short-termist is to take a lot out of the future; we are aggravating the environmental situation because the bad future is despised, because we do not have clear enough incentives to appreciate the future in the same way as the present”.
Enric Prats, professor at the Faculty of Education at the UB, assures that technology has accelerated changes in all areas and this forces us to think on two levels: that of immediacy to respond to the urgent, and that of medium and long term for what is important. And in education this is decisive, because there are aspects that cannot be subject to political changes or peremptory situations from day to day, but this cannot prevent solving the urgent question. The key is “that decisions are more or less adjusted to a broad horizon, instead of being driven by day-to-day needs”.
Joan Riera, professor in the Department of Strategy and General Management at Esade, believes that the double speed that Prats talks about is also essential in the business field. “Currently everything changes very quickly, more and more, and agility and flexibility are rewarded to adapt to changes, and this is short-termism; but at the same time you need a navigation system that provides you with information about what is happening outside your business, and this is the long-term visionâ€. He adds that this vision is like putting the high beams on the road to see the next bend, but also equipping yourself with a purpose and an innovation system that allows you to open new paths and break out of continuity in order to survive. “If you only think about the quarterly results, you will make an incremental, continuous innovation, and not something more radical, which is what the environment demands”, he says.
