Now that's delayed gratification!

The book [i]The Pillars of the Earth[/i] by Ken Follett points out something I never thought about.

Regardless of the moral ramifications, building a cathedral took decades and more.

I wonder if anyone today could even entertain the idea of committing so much money and so many lives for a project they would never see completed.

Now relationships shatter over a text left on "read" for an hour.

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ElwoodBlues · M

!!! Cool question !!!

I've been fascinated by institutions that manage to persist over very long timescales. The two biggest I know of are churches and universities. Harvard, oldest in the US has been around since 1636. Many European schools are much older. I was recently in Sevilla, and their U dates to 1505. There has been teaching at Oxford since about 1096; Bologna since 1088 (Cambridge was started in 1209 by disaffected Oxford scholars).

Businesses get bought and sold and split up for parts; foundations slowly give their money away and fade; governments change radically such as - from monarchy to democracy - and constitutions get scrapped and rewritten. But something about the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge and understanding has a power to hold things together. I have no idea why.

Some aspects of modern technology demand that we think on millenial time scales: radioactive waste such as spent fuel rods may need to be stored for thousands of years. CO2 needs to be managed on century long timescales.

Side note: there is an organization called "The Long Now Foundation" that aims to foster thinking on much longer time scales. As a sort of showpiece, they are designing and building a clock that will last and operate for 10,000 years
[b]https://longnow.org/10klibrary/library.htm[/b]

Mamapolo2016 · F

@ElwoodBlues That's fascinating.

I wonder how many other stalwarts are waiting for somebody to ask!

Maybe colleges continue because they contribute to an atmosphere of tradition and indirect immortality. The man that studied there may be dead but the college that taught him still stands.

Also because great colleges produce valuable graduates who make enough money to endow.

ElwoodBlues · M

@Mamapolo2016 I love that phrase " indirect immortality." But there may be a kind of chicken & egg situation - named buildings and chairs provide indirect immortality because of the longevity of the institution. You can pay for naming rights for sports stadium, but they'll probably pull it down in 40 years like the Astro Dome.

Science also offers indirect immortality. Your publication is linked by references to other publications, also linked, and thus it's always there, regardless of persistence of other institutions.

Mamapolo2016 · F

@ElwoodBlues My life is plagued by "on the other hand..."