If the past is replayed too fast, life seems futile, and humanity resembles water flowing from a tap, straight down the drain. A film of history for today needs to be in slow motion, showing every person who ever lived as a star, though dimly visible in a night sky, a history still unexplored - Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity
A call to action. Time to explore these unexplored histories together.
Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living...so claimed Arthur C Clarke in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Population growth over the past 40 years means that, on average. we each only have about 15 ghosts to meet (i.e. 107bn/7bn). A "buddy system" for all the dead would surely yield fascination, cultural understanding and perhaps, just perhaps, a sense of us all being children of the same two parents, 50,000+ years ago.
This wouldn't solve all problems, of course, as close family members tend to fall out more than most, but still, it might help lessen racial discrimination, encourage empathy for the economically disadvantaged and bring us just that little bit closer together.
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching - Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
What if we could we remember and honour all of the dead...the estimated 110 billion or so humans who have ever lived?
Of course, our most urgent challenge right now is to keep working towards the goal of giving everyone alive right now access to basic needs - to water and food, security, health, education etc - and it's painfully clear that, with e.g. growing numbers of orphans around the world, we still have a huge task still ahead of us. (And yes, let's unashamedly say "us", rather than fall back on the third person, abstract term "humanity" that somehow suggests it's someone else's problem.)
However, what if at the same time, everyone - all 7.8 billion of us alive now - were allocated, at random (to encourage diversity and understanding) 20 "ancestors" about whom we would try and find out something - a name, a likely lifespan or job etc. - and for whom we would light a candle, wear a poppy, say a prayer...whatever...how much more might we feel part of the same family, regardless of race, creed or gender?
For this, we'd need to start by joining up all the records, histories and anthropological studies that give us clues about our ancestors.
At the same time, how can we become "good ancestors" to the generations that will come after us? Roman Krznaric’s The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World, explores six ways we can expand our time horizons to confront the great long-term challenges of our age, from the climate crisis to threats from new technologies and the next pandemic coming our way. Do we have what it takes to become the good ancestors that future generations deserve?
Meanwhile, the question at the heart of Robert MacFarlane's book Underland book’s core is: “Are we being good ancestors?” Mostly, MacFarlane found the answer to be “no”, but he did find hope too. He found it in people - visionaries, altruists, scientists, activists - and in their refusal to settle for despair.