Thread by @WestLondonMan

Ancestor thinking vs. legacy thinking: a thread.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking with folk in various fields I’m connected to who are either just retiring or retired. Something has nagged at me in reflecting on the ways they talk about the world amid this transition. 1/9

I’ve come name this as the difference between ancestor thinking & legacy thinking. Legacy thinking looks back in anxiety & asks what those coming behind me are doing with what I left behind, whether they’re acting in accord with my commitments or will maintain what I’ve done. 2/9

Ancestor thinking looks forward, asking how can I act now to secure the flourishing of those who will come after me? How can I be a good ancestor, seeding now possibilities that will come to fruition long after I am dead? 3/9

Ancestor thinking asks how can I or we resource or invest in this practice or institution or craft so that it flourishes in times to come? Ancestor thinking is future orientated and generative rather than backward looking and nostalgic. 4/9

Ethically, the practice of being a good ancestor is covenantal, entailing keeping a covenant with both past and future generations, and constitutes an intergenerational form of neighbor love. 5/9

A historical analogy-medieval cathedrals took hundreds of years to build. Those that built them understood that as well as undertaking the work of building the cathedral in their day, they must provide the resources they knew would not come to maturity a century or more later 6/9

Alongside planting say a grove of oaks, they also put in place a set of institutional practices and measures–a cathedral chapter, an archive, an endowment, etc–that ensured those living hundreds of years hence had what was needed to do the work well. 7/9

They were good ancestors to those who came after them, both making the past legible and accessible to those living centuries later and seeding the resources that would enable their inheritors to keep going and for their shared, intergenerational work to flourish 8/9

A good ancestor seeds now the resources & institutional means to ensure shared goods can be sustained & available long after we are gone but also, that such goods are legible and accessible. Which raises the question: am I/are you doing what it takes to be a good ancestor? 9/9