Book Review: The Good Ancestor

Information about the book

The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-term Thinking by Roman Krznaric.  Published by The Experiment, New York, 2020.  (Amazon).

Summary

From Amazon: “The most important question we must ask ourselves is: Are we being good ancestors?” ... Markets spike, then they crash in speculative bubbles. We rarely stop to consider whether we’re being good ancestors...but the future depends on it.

Here, leading public intellectual, philosopher, and best-selling author Roman Krznaric explains six practical ways we can retrain our brains to save our future - such as adopting Deep Time Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete). His aim is to inspire a “time rebellion” - to shift our allegiance from our generation only to all humanity, present and future

Impressions

This book was used as part of the thesis of a keynote presentation at the recent Stewardship and Financial Wellness conference I attended.  The speaker used it to support the idea that churches (and people) should think about the future as they make strategic plans. The book vaguely supports that idea, but is much more targeted toward the idea of considering future generations in all decisions (political, business, etc.).

The author presents the necessity of long term thinking, provides six ways to think long, and four ways to "bring on the time rebellion."

I know that we need to do this if we are to survive the current climate crisis, political upheavals, health concerns, and any other number of threatening futures that confront us. Rating this book and speaking about this book are difficult for me because I understand the need of what it says, but found the book so unengaging that I only skimmed the second half of it. I really wanted to DNF it, but didn't. My brain kept telling me "you need to read this - it's important." I liken it to needing to eat kale or spinach - it's good for you, but I don't want it.  At the end, I gave it one star. My non-fiction star rating system defines one-star as "confusing and counter-productive." The book was counter-productive for me; it might not be for everyone. Truthfully, the Goodreads rating is 4.05 stars, so there are many people who like it.

Would I recommend it? Only if you are deeply interested in the topic.  I don't disagree with the premise, but found the narrative to be repetitive and not very innovative. It was a slog to complete.

Posts about book

Krznaric Ancestor