There is a line in Hamlet where the prince of Denmark declares, “The time is out of joint.” Shakespeare might have written these words yesterday, not more than 400 years ago, for we live in a world where our perception of time is dislocated. Humanity should be acting to preserve its long-term future. Instead, short-term mindsets and structures dominate. We focus on the present day while neglecting problems that will endure for centuries – from climate change to ecological collapse.

For most of human history we haven’t needed to think long-term. It wasn’t very useful when we were avoiding attacks from sabre-toothed tigers, desperately foraging for breakfast on the forest floor and surviving extreme weather conditions. As futurist Jamais Casio puts it, “In a world of constant, imminent existential threats, the ability to recognise subtle, long-term processes and multi-generational changes wasn't a particularly important adaptive advantage.” Yet today, the nature of risk has changed. We no longer live in a world of clear, local cause and effect, and the greatest threats to civilisation are happening on the timescale of decades or centuries.

To avoid these dangers, we can’t wait for our Neolithic mental functions to play evolutionary catch-up, so we need to supplement them. While our minds might be not be wired to deal with long-term threats and priorities in the abstract, they are wired for two things that we can control: story and emotion. Our predisposition towards story, and the deeply emotional nature of our decision-making, makes art and culture foundational to ensuring our future as a species.

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That’s why we have established an initiative called the Long Time Project, which champions art and culture as a route to helping people think and act more long-term. This is about everything from the YouTube videos we watch, to the adverts we scroll past, to the box-sets we binge, to the art exhibitions we attend, to the theatre we see, to the clothes we wear and the furniture we use. All these art forms and creative works are shaped by small “c” culture: the collective values, norms and narratives that underpin and drive our societies. This culture shapes our collective direction of travel, from the kinds of laws we make, to the technology we develop, to the way we distribute wealth.