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Million Generations

milliongenerations.org intends to challenge the wisdom of crowds to think about the conditions required for civilization to exist on this planet while the sun provides a suitable environment. As far as we know that would allow for many millions of human generations.

Perspectives on the survival of civilization on this planet for even a few hundred or thousand more years tend to be pessimistic. History provides plenty of examples of collapsed civilizations and we have consumed most easily accessible resources.

milliongenerations.org plans to invite everyone interested to think out of the box. To leave pressing issues such as climate change, resources, and conflicts for what they are for a while and to focus here exclusively on the constraints placed by the assumption that civilization(s) continue for millions of generations. If in this process some of us can come up with viable visions or inspiring ideas, we may hope for beneficial feedback to current affairs. As various organizations dedicated to influencing the here and now in one way or another already exist, the focus of milliongenerations.org should firmly remain in the long term, no matter how (or if) we believe it can or should be reached.

milliongenerations.org is but an idea at the moment, conceived around the question of maximizing happiness. There is no agenda for any particular outcome nor do we have answers we intend to promote. We plan to set up a not-for-profit foundation and organize a prize to go to the most positively cited contributions. We hope to accommodate contributions in different languages and it would be welcome if the format turned out to be useful to also help explore other questions. It may take a while before this model is implemented. If you have ideas on how to arrange any aspect of that, if you want to support us in any way or help to better define and communicate our question, please let us know.

In the long run we are all dead, as was famously observed by John Maynard Keynes. Pushing this perspective out to reasons beyond our control warrants a sincere effort. Even if we fail, we may better understand the gift we have. And we may yet be standing in a line that continues for millions of generations with individuals who realize life is wonderful.