Do you believe the power disparity of the 1% is unfair? How does it make you feel when the 1% squander their power? When they withhold their wealth when they could redeploy it? Or abuse it? After all, billions of lives are in the hands of the 1%. It’s a big responsibility.
If that upsets you thats nothing compared to the privilege of the temporal 1%. What’s that you ask? Did you know that 1% of all humans that have ever existed are alive now? That on every measurable dimensions from freedom to longevity we are the most privileged generation ever. The meanest beggar has access to knowledge that oligarchs, emperor’s, and royalty of mere generations ago couldn’t dream of.
All of us, you and me, are the temporal 1%. Our generation is the lens that the trillions or more, all future life, will be shaped from. Each of our legacies, visible or not, will echo till the end of the universe or life itself.
If we expand to the solar system and then geometrically at a 1% growth rate there could be 100 trillion of us by 3023.
Every single human alive now, no matter how small, will shape the future. Every action, every purchase, every remark, every choice will ripple through the spreading wave of civilization — a butterfly effect in time. For this reason, we are the most important humans that will ever exist.
We matter. You matter.
Talk about privilege, am I right?
So, next time you hear complaints about the privilege of others, go ahead and agree and then ask what they are accomplishing with their privilege. Excuses and complaints are to be expected— its human nature to make up stories to stay the same; less dangerous that way.
As for me, I believe with this privilege comes a duty to those unborn trillions — first and foremost to give them the chance to exist and second to set them up for success.
What about you?