Different people and cultures vary dramatically in how much thought and effort they apply towards the future, and how far ahead they mentally travel into the future. We all know people who, a bit like the Pirahã, seem to live day by day—they are the ones who generally appear to be content, despite seeming to run into more than their share of financial and personal difficulties. At the other end of the spectrum are those whose every thought and action is aimed at achieving some goal in the distant future.14 And then there are the visionaries who dream decades and centuries into the future. This
...more
