No wonder people find it difficult to set and work towards long term goals, the ability to think on long time scales seems to be a rare skill these days. I have had an interest in time and how the mind perceives it for several years now - is it possible to think on scales of months, years, and decades as if they were as real as the next hour, day, or week? Taken to an extreme, this creates a sense of timelessness, the same feeling that a religious person might experience when contemplating immortality. How far into the future can one rationally plan before lofty aspirations become pure fantasy and the last threads anchoring them to reality are severed?
Long term goals are important for a reason that did not become obvious to me until the last few days. Whatever other thoughts they may have had (or lacked), the recent shootings in Germany and Alabama were carried out by people who had no personal long term goals here on Earth.
One long term goal example from Don't Delay: global sustainability
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