A Good Future Is the Present, Improved
Protecting the present is not selfish. It is the only way the future survives.
Everyone claims to want a better future. Politicians campaign on it. Billionaires fund projects in its name. Activists rally for it. Advertisers sell products by promising it.
The phrase is always the same: “We must do this for the next generation.”
But here is the simple truth that is almost never spoken: a good future is simply the present, improved.
The future does not arrive as a blank canvas. It is the continuation of today. If the present is strong, free, and human, tomorrow can inherit that strength. If the present is degraded, tomorrow will inherit only weakness.
That means every demand that we “sacrifice the present for the sake of the future” is a fraud. Destroying life now does not protect the future. It sabotages it.
The Future Is a Function of the Present
The future is not separate from today. It is today, carried forward.
Every generation receives what exists now, adds to it, and hands it on. This is the unbroken chain of human life. Farmers once understood this instinctively: if the soil was ruined this year, next year’s harvest would fail. Builders knew that weak foundations meant collapse. Parents knew that children raised without stability are far less likely to grow into flourishing adults.
Continuity depends on protecting the present so the future can inherit it. Break the link, and the chain itself is lost.
Yet in our time, this truth is being denied — and inverted.
The Trick of Sacrificing Now for Later
Look closely at the most common slogans of our age:
“We must endure hardship today to stop climate change tomorrow.”
“We must reduce freedoms today to prepare for the pandemics of tomorrow.”
“We must submit to surveillance today so our children can be safe tomorrow.”
“We must fight wars today so future generations can live in peace.”
On the surface, these sound like noble appeals to responsibility. They borrow from a real human instinct: the wisdom of deferred gratification.
Parents save for their children’s future. Farmers store grain for the winter. Workers set aside income for retirement. We all know that short-term sacrifice can sometimes bring long-term stability.
But this natural instinct is now being weaponised against us. We are told to accept fear, poverty, division, and control today — in exchange for a hypothetical tomorrow that never arrives.
This is not deferred gratification. It is deliberate sabotage.
Deferred Gratification vs. Deliberate Sabotage
There is a world of difference between true prudence and deliberate destruction.
Saving nuts for winter is sensible.
Tightening your belt in lean times is sensible.
Not eating anything in case you get food poisoning — so you starve instead is madness.
This is not just theory. In 1950s Ireland, my mother — only twenty years old — had all her top teeth taken out. Not because they needed it, but because in poor families it was simply “the done thing.” The idea was to prevent future problems by removing the possibility altogether. She has lived with the regret ever since. That was not prevention. It was needless destruction — the same logic now being sold to us on a civilisational scale.
Destroy your freedom today, and one day you will be free.
Destroy prosperity today, and one day you will be rich.
Destroy families today, and one day you will have stronger communities.
It has never worked that way. It never will.
History is full of real examples of wise deferred gratification. Medieval cathedrals took generations to complete, with stonecutters working on projects they would never live to see finished. Parents plant trees they will never sit under, knowing their children will. Indigenous cultures preserve rituals, songs, and oral histories that stretch back thousands of years, because they know that memory itself is a survival tool.
These acts strengthen the chain of continuity. They make the present meaningful and the future possible.
But the demands we face today are not of that kind. They are not prudent sacrifices. They are reckless acts of deliberate degradation. They weaken the chain instead of strengthening it.
Climate: The False Trade
Climate politics is the clearest case. We are told the planet will be uninhabitable unless we make “sacrifices”: give up affordable energy, give up travel, give up independent economies.
But what does this sacrifice look like in reality? Food poverty. Shuttered industries. Families unable to heat their homes. Communities hollowed out. Life reduced to a permission society.
Can anyone seriously argue that this produces a flourishing future? A generation raised in deprivation cannot inherit strength. They inherit weakness and dependency.
The irony is that true continuity would mean protecting both humanity and the environment together. But the current agenda does the opposite: it sacrifices human flourishing in the name of abstractions while doing little to safeguard the living earth.
If continuity truly matters, the goal cannot be to degrade life today. It must be to strengthen life now so tomorrow has a foundation worth inheriting.
Pandemics: The Experiment in Fear
We saw the same pattern during the Covid years. People were told: “Give up your freedom today to protect tomorrow.”
The result was catastrophic:
Lives cut short by enforced isolation.
Generational wealth and security undermined.
The culture of work and education fractured.
Trust between people and institutions shattered.
Even if one accepts the official medical story, the continuity cost was immense. Children robbed of their childhood cannot simply “catch up.” Societies stripped of trust cannot just reset.
Lockdowns were sold as temporary, but their social effects are permanent. Continuity was broken: the handover of memory, learning, and culture between generations was disrupted on a scale not seen in peacetime.
Destroying the present destroyed the very future it claimed to defend.
Surveillance: A Future of Papers
The same false bargain is now sold through digital ID, central bank digital currencies, and mass surveillance. “Sacrifice privacy today so your children can live in safety tomorrow.”
But a society that requires permission to move, transact, or even speak is not building freedom. It is conditioning obedience.
Obedience produces dependency, not flourishing.
A child born into a controlled world does not wake up free one day. Unless freedom is protected now, it will not exist tomorrow.
History teaches this as well. Every authoritarian regime has promised safety in exchange for freedom, and every time the result has been the same: a population stripped of dignity and a future defined by fear.
War and Division
Leaders have always used the same trick with war. “We fight now so our children may know peace.”
But war breeds more war. Broken economies, traumatised veterans, grieving families — these are not the seeds of peace. They are the seeds of the next conflict.
The same with deliberate division. Families split by ideology are told: “This struggle is necessary for justice.” But a generation raised to distrust their own kin does not inherit justice. It inherits fracture.
Rome in its final centuries shows this clearly. Internal division, endless wars, and economic strain hollowed out the empire. Each generation inherited not peace but deeper crisis. The empire did not fall in one blow; it degraded link by link, until continuity itself snapped.
The Mayan collapse carried similar lessons. Elites consumed resources in ritual display, believing they secured cosmic order. Instead, they degraded their cities, and when drought came, there was nothing left to inherit.
Debt and Dependence
Finance follows the same logic. Governments borrow endlessly “for the future,” but it is the future that inherits the chains. Students are told to “invest” in education with crushing loans. Taxpayers are told to fund bailouts “for stability.”
But debt is not stability. It is dependency. The present is hollowed out, and the future inherits only obligations and diminished possibility.
Generations raised under permanent debt grow accustomed to powerlessness. They inherit not opportunity, but captivity.
Even the Romans knew this danger: they warned against “devouring the patrimony of our children.” Modern states do it daily.
Psychology of the Trick
Why does this false bargain work? Because humans know that self-discipline pays off. The famous “marshmallow test” showed children who could wait for a second treat often thrived later in life. We respect patience, thrift, and saving.
Religions and philosophies taught the same. Stoicism urged endurance of hardship. The Protestant ethic praised hard work and sacrifice. Wartime propaganda asked citizens to ration and save “for victory.” These appeals worked because humans know that discipline builds resilience.
But that instinct is now being twisted. Instead of asking us to store food for winter, they ask us to burn the field. Instead of saving money, they ask us to accept poverty. Instead of temporary restraint that builds strength, they demand permanent sacrifice that breeds weakness.
The result is obedience, not flourishing.
Continuity and the Sporting Mindset
Even in sport, continuity is everything. Momentum, rhythm, confidence — once they break, they are hard to restore.
Formula One World champion Jackie Stewart once said that he never, ever gave up in a race, no matter how badly it was going. Because he knew that if he gave up once, the precedent would be set. The next time things got tough, giving up would feel easier. Then easier again. Until giving up became the habit.
That is exactly the danger humanity faces. Every time we are asked to accept a little less freedom, a little more control, a little more division, we are told it is temporary, or necessary, or “just this once.” But once we accept, the precedent is set. The next concession feels easier. Then easier again.
It’s about refusing deliberate surrender anywhere, because each concession lowers resistance to the next.
Jackie Stewart knew that his continuity as a driver depended on never giving in, not even once. Humanity faces the same truth. When we accepted lockdowns — with all they entailed — did we break the very instinct that keeps continuity alive?
Humanity cannot afford to give up even once.
The Smoking Gun
Across all these domains, the pattern is identical:
Promise a better future.
Destroy the present in the name of that promise.
Ensure the future inherits only ruins.
This is not clumsiness. It is not bad planning. It is deliberate. Because a degraded population is easier to manage.
A good future is not the reward for obedience today. A good future is the continuation of a good present. And those who demand destruction today know full well that destruction tomorrow is the result.
Why They Want Us to Sabotage Ourselves
In war, a retreating army sometimes destroys its own weapons. The logic is brutal but clear: if the enemy captures those weapons, they will be turned back against you. Better to weaken yourself than to arm your opponent.
But what happens when there is no enemy? What happens when a people are told to dismantle their own prosperity, freedom, and culture — not because of an invading force, but because their rulers fear that those same tools might one day be used against the rulers themselves?
That is the real logic of our time. We are told to accept less wealth, less privacy, less autonomy, less community. Always “for safety,” or “for the climate,” or “for the next generation.” But the truth is simpler: a strong present produces strong people, and strong people cannot be controlled.
So we are made to destroy our own weapons — speech, family, wealth, memory, confidence — in the name of protection. In reality, it is disarmament.
This is why the slogan “sacrifice today for tomorrow” is so poisonous. It is not a sacrifice for the future. It is the dismantling of our strength in the present, so that resistance never becomes possible.
We are not just being asked to endure hardship. We are being asked to break our own tools — the very tools of continuity — so they can never be turned back on those who rule us.
History’s Warning
The Soviet Union promised sacrifice today for the workers’ paradise of tomorrow. It delivered shortages, repression, and fear — and the next generation inherited collapse.
Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” promised abundance after deprivation. It delivered famine and a society traumatised for decades.
Even in the West, the so-called “wars to end all wars” produced only more conflict. Sacrifices were demanded in the name of peace, but the sacrifices themselves seeded further war.
Religions, too, show the danger. When faith becomes a demand to suffer now for reward in some distant future, it can be twisted into systems of control. True faith strengthens the present community; false faith degrades it.
The pattern is ancient, but the logic never changes: degrade the present, and the future is degraded with it.
The Philosophies of Surrender
Even in the world of elite philosophy, the same trick is dressed up as wisdom. Two schools of thought have risen to prominence in recent years — longtermism and accelerationism — both claiming to serve humanity while actually destroying continuity.
Longtermism argues that the most important moral duty is to protect the far future — not just the next generation, but the trillions of hypothetical lives that could exist over millennia. Its proponents — Oxford philosophers like Nick Bostrom, Toby Ord, and Will MacAskill — openly state that the present is less important than safeguarding those unborn futures. By this logic, present-day poverty, restrictions, or even authoritarian controls can be justified, because they supposedly reduce “existential risk” for the future.
But this is not continuity. It is chronocide disguised as moral concern. If you degrade the present, you are not protecting the future — you are ensuring the future inherits degradation. Longtermism turns humanity itself into a disposable stage on the way to an abstract utopia that never arrives.
Accelerationism offers the mirror image. Instead of urging restraint for the far future, it argues we should intensify collapse and disruption now. The idea is that by speeding up crises, technology, and breakdown, we can force the birth of a new order — often imagined as a post-human, AI-driven civilisation. In practice, this means treating the destruction of the present as desirable, a kind of creative fire to burn away what exists.
But collapse is not creation. Burning continuity does not yield flourishing — it yields ashes. The idea that humanity should be rushed into misery and instability so that a “better” system can emerge is not philosophy; it is surrender by another name.
Both longtermism and accelerationism converge on the same fraud: degrade the present in the name of a hypothetical future. One does it with the language of morality, the other with the language of inevitability. Both destroy the living chain of humanity.
These are the academic justifications — but the public slogan says it even more plainly: the “Great Reset.” Remember that? Humanity does not need a reset. A reset means breaking continuity, erasing memory, starting from zero. Continuity is not reset. Continuity is lived, protected, passed on. Anyone calling for a reset is not trying to preserve life — they are trying to end it.
A good future is not built on sacrifice or ashes. It is simply the present, improved.
The Continuity Test
Here is the rule anyone can apply:
If someone tells you to destroy the present for the sake of an abstract future, they are not protecting humanity. They are sabotaging it.
The future is not a utopia waiting to be unlocked. The future is simply today, carried forward. If today is free, tomorrow can be freer. If today is broken, tomorrow will be worse.
That is the iron law of continuity.
The Real Path Forward
So what should we do?
We should refuse the false bargain of destruction. We should make the present as strong, humane, and free as possible — for ourselves, our families, and our communities.
Then the next generation can build on that strength. That is how humanity has always continued. Each link in the chain does its part. None is asked to shatter itself for the sake of an abstract promise.
A good future is simply the present, improved.
This is what every enduring culture has done. Ancient traditions preserved stories, rituals, and laws not for the sake of utopia but to protect the present so it could be handed on. Families worked their land, taught their skills, passed on their names. Each act said: protect today, and tomorrow will follow.
Continuity means art, music, and story alive in the present. It means freedom of movement and thought. It means children seeing joy in their parents’ eyes, not fear. These things are not luxuries. They are the foundation of any real future.
The Missing Philosophy
I call this philosophy Continuism. It is the framework we are shaping together at www.continuism.org — a philosophy built on one principle: the present must be strong enough to hand something on.
Continuism is not about utopias. It is about continuity itself: lived, protected, passed on.
That is why it rejects the false bargain of “sacrificing the present.” If the present is degraded, the chain is broken. Continuity cannot be deferred.
The future is only ever the present, carried forward. If today is strong, tomorrow can be stronger. Anything else is sabotage dressed up as virtue.
Closing
The elites will keep repeating their line: “Sacrifice today for tomorrow.”
But the truth is obvious.
A good future is the present, improved. Break the present, and the future can only inherit brokenness.
That is the truth we must recover — and the truth by which humanity can continue.
Continuism is the missing philosophy of our time. Find out more at www.continuism.org
Here’s a story: A now-distant cousin of mine and I went on a trip together as kids, we were both around 8 years old. We had visited the Redwoods. A few years ago, 40 years later, I met up with this cousin. His version of the trip was that the car broke down and we had to spend a whole-day at a little old motel, while the car was being fixed. My memory of the trip was how awesome and captivating the giant trees were and how we could drive through an actual tree with our car. I didn’t even remember the car breakdown part. My cousin said he hated the trip. Back in those present moments as 8 year olds, he created his reality, and I created my reality. We are responsible for manifesting our own realities, it can be good, bad or other. Guess who is the optimist today?
Creation may require some destruction e.g. cutting down a tree to build a house, but wholesale destruction by government of freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. in the name of 'protection' is only ever been a control operation.