Time Scale

We talked about time scale last week.

This subject was brought up with the question of what is our time scale for achieving goals in Mikraite.

For example if I was to say I want X accomplished. I can say I want X accomplished within:

- 5 years of my life time..
- My total life time..
- My children's life time..
- 200 years..

I don't know how others feel, but I joined Mikraite to see things accomplished in my life time. I'm not interested in abstract posterity. An example of this would be Karaites whom have earned a place in history but are practically speaking a small group with limited offering. I do not just want to be a footnote in history.

My view is also that if we can't accomplish anything in our life time then we'll have diminishing probability. For example we discussed how the internet has already degenerated over the last couple years and we probably won't recruit any more people.

fschmidt raised a point that Islam insists on an after life. The reasoning is that if you don't believe in one there's no incentive to behave well for the next generation. This point leans towards supporting goals beyond your life time. I don't know the history of Islam but I'm guessing in early Islam  followers still got benefits within through territorial expansion in their life time.

The idea of doing things for the benefit of your decedents is a repeated theme in the Old Testament. But practically speaking even the Jews according to the Biblical account were freed from Egypt within the first generation.

So I think it's vary challenging to incentivize only on distant time scale. I think we should incentivize based on both.