Taylor Dee Hawkins | Why people agree on the future more than the present, and what it means for governance

[00:00] Taylor: If you ask people what's your opinion on this today, so many different answers. If you ask people 20 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, what do you want for yourself, for your children, for your community, for the people who you love and see yourself in? Their answers start to look really similar. It is the best antidote to division I have ever seen, getting people bought in to creating a vision for the future. And it also makes navigating hard decisions easier. Because long-term thinking isn't just about the interests of young people. It's about the 65-year-old who wants to age with dignity and wants the young people whose taxes will support their aging with dignity to be able to do that in a survivable way. It's the intergenerational contract that goes both ways. But how can we make this argument in a way that is not just making the moral ethical argument of that you should do this, you should care about it? It's saying this will save us money in our healthcare system because we're investing in preventative policy.

[00:56] Beatrice: I'm very happy to be joined today by Taylor Dee Hawkins. You are the founder of the organization called Foundations for Tomorrow. Could you tell us a bit what Foundations for Tomorrow is and what is the work that you guys are doing?

[01:07] Taylor: Yeah, so firstly, thank you for having me. Foundations for Tomorrow is a nonprofit that I started about five and a half years ago now, at peak COVID pandemic time. And originally we started actually as a climate advocacy organization. We ran a national youth consultation, broke a bunch of records, heard from ten thousand young people, and much credit to my co-founder, after doing really in-depth analysis of the submissions that young people made, we realized that yes, there were themes about them wanting a more just, equitable, and sustainable future, like better climate policy and mental health and housing support. But actually underneath everything was this concern that leaders weren't thinking about their long-term future. So we did 18 months of international mapping, made a spreadsheet of every country in the world to go line by line and see what they were doing about short-termism in leadership, about intergenerational collaboration, about long-term thinking, and pivoted the whole organization to focus on long-term governance — how do we put the interests of current generations and future generations at the heart of policy? And so that's what we do now. We advocate for policy innovation. We convene. We bring together the parliamentary group for future generations. We chair the Intergenerational Fairness Coalition. And we're now bringing together over ninety partners to do an eighteen-month design process to design a national conversation about Australia's future. Because it's hard to make long-term decisions when you don't know where you're trying to go.

[02:28] Beatrice: Yeah. When you say long term, do you have like a time span that you're...

[02:32] Taylor: ...thinking about? So I think I'm fortunate to have friends across the spectrum of timelines on this. I have people working in government for whom the concept of thinking more than three years in the future is sort of entirely out of what's possible. And then people in the effective altruist community — I understand whether it's hundreds of thousands of years they're looking into the future. We find a happy medium in the 15 to 25 year window that feels generational, that has you look beyond just this chapter; it has you look beyond electoral cycles, financial quarters, and that sort of cumulative impact that you start to see at that 10, 15, 20 year time block.

[03:07] Beatrice: And was there like a special moment or something that triggered you to start this organization?

[03:12] Taylor: Well, and I'm actually so grateful. It's the classic situation where when things are happening at the time you're not happy about them, but in retrospect you're grateful. I quit my job like a week before COVID happened because I had this itching sense, and I'm a leadership development specialist by background. I design leadership programs for big companies. And I was just — I loved my job, but I was getting this itching sense that I wanted to do more and do something bigger. And in my mind at the time that was that I would just find another job to do that. But thankfully I then ended up with months upon months of nothing to do but sit and read and research and learn. And at that time my policy literacy, my political literacy was incredibly low. So COVID was basically policy boot camp, research boot camp for me. And out of that and a whole bunch of evolution — and I have two incredible co-founders, Bianca and Holly — it just sort of got built through a lot of blood, sweat and tears and a lot of COVID lockdown. But over time, yeah.

[04:09] Beatrice: Some good things came out of COVID actually, so that's good.

[04:13] Taylor: Yeah. It feels blasphemous to say, but yes, some good things.

[04:18] Beatrice: I know that one of the things that you've said is that we're doing leadership wrong right now. What is it that you see leaders get wrong, and what can we do about it?

[04:27] Taylor: So I think number one, if we come at it saying it's the leader's fault, we're always going to be fighting an uphill battle. In the same way that telling the individual that whether or not they use a straw is going to be the thing that decides how climate change goes. I think that we shouldn't look at a single leader and say within this system — that is designed almost to disincentivize you from any long-term thinking, or thinking about anything other than the dollars or the KPIs that are attached to your name — we're just going to end up punishing the very people who we need to be able to rise to the moment. And so instead I often look at what are the incentive structures? What are the systems that that person is surrounded by? And then what's the culture that's informing how they relate to themselves? So on an institutional level, you've gotta say what are the incentives around that person. And if we're saying that we actually want them to build a better future, how do we show them that in how we support them, how we hold them accountable, how we reward them for how they lead? And then on the internal part — because I'm a huge believer that in leadership you've gotta lead yourself first before you can lead anybody else — I think we're really disconnected from ourselves. I think we do not — and I speak for myself as an Australian, I won't speak for every other person or country — but I think that society the way that it is detaches us from our sense of presence with who we are now, who we were in the past, who we want to be in the future. So we don't have that sense of imperative and connection that actually drives behavior from the inside. And so I think if you can come institution sort of down and around and then from the inside out, then you can actually come up with a solution.

[05:53] Beatrice: ...term that I think you coined actually is policrastination. What do you mean by...

[05:57] Taylor: So, and credit — I'm a big believer, give credit where it's deserved. So General Strategic is a great firm that supports Foundations for Tomorrow, and they actually came up with the term, and we're sort of trying to get it in the dictionary. And it's the notion that political procrastination — we want to name it, frame it, create understanding around it, and tame it. And if we don't have a proper word for it, we're never going to succeed in doing that. Because very few of my friends work in this space, and so I often find myself in social contexts trying to explain how political delay can be. And I see the eyes glaze over because we just don't have language that feels accessible, that feels relevant, that people want to then repeat. And so therefore we're not talking about the very problems we need to solve. So our ambition is that by naming it, we can make it easier to talk about, and we can make it something that we feel more incentivized to deal with, because we're more present to the challenge that we face, which is political procrastination — delaying the investments and the actions that we know serve the long-term future, because the political cost today is too high.

[06:59] Beatrice: What can we do about this? Because I think we agree it's an issue. What do you think we should do?

[07:07] Taylor: It's a big question. But I would say number one, we need to recognize that it's a problem and also reconcile with what actually addressing that means, because it's not a case that if you start thinking long term, the decisions get easier. They actually get harder because you have to reckon with the trade-offs that must be made across a far longer timescale. Whereas it's so much easier to just be divisive and favor one group over another, just make a decision, focus on one group today and say this is good for you, and sort of buy your way through time that way. As soon as you extend the timeline — and if you're being inclusive about it, because not all long-term thinking is equal — then you have to grapple with these trade-offs. And so what you need to think about is the capability of the individual: your ability to hold the line, understand the values you represent, and implement that with a steady hand and a steady mind; the culture that person is surrounded by; and then also hopefully the buffet of policy innovations that leaders increasingly will find themselves surrounded by. So whether that is on a national level — baking it into how your government departments work, whether it is changing norms and processes, legislating for a duty to the long-term consequences of your actions and to the interests of future generations, whether it is changing the way and the path that decisions get made, how things are valued, changing social discount rates, so the way in which we calculate the cost of our decisions today on the future — we just change some of the math around that and put the numbers where our words are and say, yes, we care about the future, therefore we should change the way that we're calculating what feels like a future harm. And so I would say it's internal, it's cultural, and it's how do we change the architecture that people are navigating? Because — and I'm grateful for having worked and continuing to work with leaders in the private sector and working with them over four or five years, and seeing these passionate leaders who desperately want to make change, who get fatigued pushing against architecture that is not changed around them — so it's kind of a wish it was a simple game, but it's a multi-pronged, multi-level game. Yeah.

[09:08] Beatrice: In terms of the architecture, there are some efforts happening on this, I believe, right now in different governments around the world. Are there any that you're particularly excited about?

[09:19] Taylor: Mm. So I — and because I started working on this coming into the Summit of the Future. For the three years coming up to the United Nations Summit of the Future, when a lot of countries were trying to rally around this notion of a Pact for the Future and the Declaration on Future Generations that sort of came out of that process. There are so many countries that are doing work in this space, and I'll definitely give some examples in a second. But the best version of this work — which is that sort of presence with the intergenerational consequences of our decisions — is deep in Indigenous practice around the world. And so it's not new. What we're doing is looking at innovative ways to bake it into the systems that we have built over time. But the practice of custodianship of intergenerational thinking far, far predates this sort of recent uptick in building this into governments. Some that are doing it incredibly well: Finland, an absolute leader in integrating foresight through government. You've got the Welsh Wellbeing of Future Generations work — they were the first country to legislate the SDGs and they've really turned that into a world-leading case study of what that can look like. Singapore Center for Strategic Futures — they've got a really great sort of integrated model with government. And there's so many other examples. I think it's the Kenyan Senate Caucus for the Future. You've got these things emerging in different places, different countries trying legislation. We tried to get a private member's bill up just before our last election for the Wellbeing of Future Generations, and so think there's a lot of countries chipping away at this point.

[10:41] Beatrice: So practically, what is it that they are implementing?

[10:45] Taylor: Fabulous question. So I think all of them, I would argue, have a slightly different theory of change. And it's whether you think that the problem is the data or the insights that you need to make those decisions available. Is it a question of accountability? Is it a question of the need for support? So I think in her own words, Sophie Howe, who was the first Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, she called herself a coach and referee. So recognizing that dual role that she had, which was to encourage, to find those collaboration opportunities, to say, I think that housing should be talking to this department to find ways that you can do better long-term policy together. Because a key, key element of good long-term thinking is finding creative ways to create co-benefits over time. How can we think about health and housing policy, education and climate policy, and start bringing these ideas together so that we're not also working against each other? And I've seen this happen — I've heard it from many of my friends who've worked in like political staffing — there almost becomes this sense of competition: who's going to get the budget to make their portfolio look better? And if we can start to foster that collaboration, which is a lot of what I know Sophie and now Derek, who now holds the role, do such a good job of. If you look at the sort of Finnish foresight work — which I'm sure, given where you're based, you're well versed in — it's just, I think, the world-leading example of what actually mobilizing foresight and futures literacy in government looks like, and getting people comfortable with the concept of multiple possible futures and with how you can use data to create really compelling and useful tools in making those decisions and weighing up the trade-offs that we do have to face when we do long-term thinking. Because I think it's the classic situation: when you're in this space for too long, you forget how overwhelming it felt the first time someone said, no, it's futures with an S, rather than the future. And that's something that a lot of futurists will be very strict on. But I have to remind myself that the concept that we have unlimited potential futures in front of us, and that every teeny tiny decision we're making has path dependency — so everything will be kind of dictated by our starting point — and so it's good to make sure that we're keeping people on the journey with that. And that's a lot of the best work that I see governments doing. And I think the Singapore Center for Strategic Futures is a really good example of that: making what can feel like this very inaccessible practice of futures work feel useful, accessible, practical, and not just the nice-to-have that the nerdy futures people do in the corner.

[13:06] Beatrice: Yeah, I'm guessing it's not really a copy-paste model also, like what works in one place is not maybe what works in another place.

[13:14] Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah.

[13:17] Beatrice: Is there something that's a common misconception that people have about this kind of work?

[13:22] Taylor: I think a common misconception from my perspective is that you're prioritizing the future over the present. I think there are some people who maybe would argue that long-term thinking should be prioritized over that. I think my perspective is you have to hold both things in perfect tension all the time, both ethically but also practically and politically. You have to really look at how can we benefit both current generations and future generations. And I would say also because often a lot of the most prominent advocacy over the last ten years for this sort of work has come from specific parts of the world, there has been a bit of a narrative of privilege around it, which I think has a fair bit of validity to it. And I think the flavor of this conversation that's been the most prominent in a lot of at least the media that I consume really misses some essential parts of the conversation, and misses like the present-day burning platform realities that we need to address in order for people to even have the space to think about the long-term future. And so I think we do have to be very careful. I'm someone who spends far too much time thinking about the future, but really making sure that we are holding ourselves accountable to holding the strife and difficulty both of our communities but many others in tension with the better future that we're trying to create.

[14:29] Beatrice: And it's something that I think is interesting is also that, for example, as I understand it, you got cross-party support in a pretty polarized parliament. So what is it that sort of works on both sides? Are all sides sort of supportive of this kind of work?

[14:33] Taylor: It's...

[14:44] Taylor: ...this kind of work. I wouldn't go as far as to say everyone from all sides is supportive, but I would say that if you go to the purest values that at least the parties that we were engaging with stand for, it's right there. It's caring for their communities. And that's more than just today. It's more than just tomorrow. It's about every generation. It's not just about young people. And that's probably my second misconception: long-term thinking isn't just about the interests of young people. It's about the 65-year-old who wants to age with dignity and wants the young people whose taxes will support their aging with dignity to be able to do that in a survivable way. It's the intergenerational contract that goes both ways. And so how we were able to do it — and we're leaning more and more into this — is, what's the economic argument? And there are flaws and pitfalls and challenges to that at times, but how can we make this argument in a way that is not just making the moral ethical argument of that you should do this, you should care about it? It's saying this will make your job easier to do. This will make delivering great social policy cheaper. This will save us money in our healthcare system because we're investing in preventative policy. We are reducing the mental health consequences on our population because we're improving housing, and those two things are connected. And so I think it's making arguments that resonate with people's values, still being completely authentic and completely accurate to the nature of the movement and this policy agenda, but doing it in a way that people can understand how it serves what they're trying to build.

[16:06] Beatrice: And if we get this to work, and this is implemented hopefully at some point in every country — every country has a future generations commissioner — what do you think is actually going to change?

[16:19] Taylor: For just your average person. I'll quickly adjust the question slightly because I think in the ideal world, every country has taken this super seriously. And in the dream, dream, dream future, you don't necessarily need a single commissioner because it's embedded into every leader's role. But you can also look at different models, whether it's a ministerial office, whether it is standing committees, etc. So many different models. But if I take your question to mean, if every country in the world has people taking this really seriously, it's embedded technically and culturally and in the leadership capabilities — I don't like to sort of take public stances on policies, but I think a lot of the challenges that are causing the most polarization, the most division, will be somewhat resolved. You know, humanity is complicated because, and the reason I say that with confidence is one of the reasons that I started developing my skills in foresight and futures work is it is the best antidote I have ever seen to polarization. Because if you ask people, what's your opinion on this today? So many different answers. If you ask people twenty years from now, fifty years from now, a hundred years from now, what do you want for yourself, for your children, for your community, for the people who you love and see yourself in? Their answers start to look really similar. And so then you have a common ground to work from. And yes, as you step it back and start asking, how do you think we get there? That's where definitely the differences emerge. But it is the best antidote to division I have ever seen, getting people bought in to creating a vision for the future. And it also makes navigating hard decisions easier. Like we've seen this in Australia just yesterday, day before, with the release of our federal budget, where we saw that it's this absence of a sense of vision of why are we making some of these sacrifices, why are some communities being stung with more taxes — there's not a clear enough why for people to be able to tolerate it. And so there's been huge pushback. Whereas you see countries and communities rally so strongly behind leaders who can say: this is where we're going, this is why we're making these sacrifices, and this is why it's worth it.

[18:14] Beatrice: Yeah, that makes sense. That feels like a very, very common challenge to have in general in governance. If we look at more like what the tensions are around these questions, is there any time when you think long-term thinking can go wrong? Because I feel like there are maybe historical examples of when you sort of do harm in the name of the greater good. Is that something that you've thought of, or how can we avoid this?

[18:39] Taylor: And it's — I'm pretty sure there's a whole section recently wrote a book on future generations policy and we had a whole section on like not all futures are equal. You can make really bad long-term plans — ill-informed ones, ones based on poor information, ones that assume secondary and tertiary outcomes that are incorrect. You can also design for very exclusionary futures. You can design a great future for one or ten percent of your population, and that can be done through incredible long-term thinking. You can make mistakes and blunders that accumulate over time. And so I think it's not just about are you doing the calculations over the long term, are you thinking about the long-term consequences, but what are the criteria, what are the values behind how you're making those decisions? And coming back to that trade-offs word: what things are you, and are you not, willing to trade off along the way to achieve that?

[19:25] Beatrice: Is there anything in this type of thing that you think is overhyped, that people tend to hype up too much?

[19:30] Taylor: I think just a focus on any one solution, because the reality is there is no perfect solution. So there's — every model that I have seen, I've spent enough time researching it, following it, talking to people who work in it — there are pitfalls to all of them. And so it's about ecosystem building. It's about, let's say, the example you raised of a future generations commissioner: you just plonk a commissioner in the corner, they're not going to be able to do too much. It's about the relationships they build. It's about the policy changes that support that. It's about the ways that public servants — people who work in government — are enabled to then connect with that. It's about the other anchors that you put into the system to hold this intention down when times get tough and when the temptation to make quick short-term decisions comes into play. So I would say the hype is that we'll find one model that solves it all. And actually, it's what comes back to that idea of cultural change, which is, in the leadership programs I run, we talk about culture as what happens when the leader's not in the room. So when the accountability is not in the room, how do people behave? And that tells you what your culture is. And I think it's the same thing. We need to get our cultures to a point where even if they're not currently impacted by whatever institutional mechanism, tool, whatnot that's been set up, or the eyes of voters aren't on them, that they will hold that mantle and they'll hold it with pride.

[20:44] Beatrice: That's a great saying. I hadn't heard that. Culture is what happens when the leader isn't in the room. Is there any type of argument that you have received against your work? What's the smartest critical argument against your work that you know takes your...

[21:00] Taylor: Yeah. And my team will agree with this. My critics are probably my favorite people, especially the really smart ones, because no idea is perfect. And if I look at the way I conceptualize this work two or three years ago versus how I understand it now, I have our biggest critics to thank for the maturing and development of that. I think the two biggest ones are: speaking about the emotional fatigue that people face, and that this ability to raise your gaze and think about the future is demanding, is labor, is hard to do in a society that is conditioning us for instant gratification. So it's from everything from your phone to the institutions we work in to the way that our financial quarters and electoral cycles run — at least in Australia — incentivizing you to think that way. And so I think it's being more realistic and pragmatic and having patience. I have learnt a lot of patience in doing this work, which is understanding that yes, there's opportunity for deep innovation and changing things with urgency because we face an urgent situation. And also understanding that — I heard someone say this phrase, radical incrementalism, recently, and I think there's something to it — which is, what's that balance? The other critique is that thinking about the long term is complicated, takes time, and there is a risk of bureaucracy that comes with that, that you can't possibly make that small decision until you've calculated all the ways that that flows into the future. And so I think that's when it comes into how do you apply this work — how do you make sure that the people that you're putting in charge of this work have enough EQ and understanding of when is the time to do the most in-depth calculations of consequence, and when are the areas where we can afford to rely on sort of existing standards? So complicated, but both very good critiques. Yeah.

[22:42] Beatrice: Another thing that I was thinking of is just that technology is moving so fast, like technological progress is moving so fast. So a lot of questions are maybe in flux because of that. How can governance move rapidly enough to keep pace with technology, or how should one hold those tensions?

[22:59] Taylor: This is — and the funny thing is, and I often say this whenever I'm talking to people, my sister is probably the best person to answer that question. She runs Australia's only independent tech think tank. And so she will, I'm sure, be moderately disappointed in any answer that I can give to this. I think the concept of lock-in with policy is a real risk. And so we have to be thinking with pace and thinking deeply about how do we look at the policy settings that we're putting in place with something so rapidly emerging, such as technology, and get things in place quite quickly, because otherwise we will bear the consequences, and these things are really hard to unwind. It kind of comes in on the flip side, though, because technology can also be used to make foresight more available. I'm seeing so many more people participate in scenario building, in a horizon scan, seeing the signals, seeing what's changing. The problem is that that, poorly done, dilutes the practice of foresight. Futures work can feel less valuable because if we start churning out AI sludge and claiming that it's futures work, I wouldn't blame people if they get exposed to that quality of futures work and they go, well, that's pointless. And so we've got to be really careful how we're using technology. Technology is not positive or negative — it is kind of a neutral vehicle. And we have to look at the policy settings, at the skills that we're using it with, so that we can really deliver positive results.

[24:12] Beatrice: Yeah, that's a really good point. In terms of there's a lot of exciting AI scenario work and stuff happening, but I'm sure there's also a lot of less exciting stuff happening. I know that you've often been sort of the youngest person in the room where a lot of these discussions are happening. What is that like? Is it useful? Does it give you a different perspective? How do you manage that?

[24:40] Taylor: It's a really good question. I think it depends at what point in my journey you were to get me to answer that, but I'll do my best to give a fulsome depiction. I think I am really fortunate that I was raised by a strong feminist and I was encouraged from a young age to do the work, to be well-informed and do my homework up front, but then to be confident with what I had to offer. There have definitely been exceptions to that. You know, I think once you build a reputation for being a reasonable and considered and thoughtful young person, you start to get quite a lot of invitations into different roundtables and policy debates and whatnot. And it has happened definitely over the last few years. I think people get a blind spot when it comes to young people. They think adults have specializations, but young people know all — and it's quite funny. So invitations to policy areas to debate at a roundtable that I just simply did not know enough about. And my approach has tended to be, thank you so much for the invitation, here's the link to three other young people who are specialists in this area — maybe you don't know of them as much, but I encourage you to go to them because they can actually bring substance — versus other areas where I have been, for absolute candor, so terrified, but really seen the value in me stepping up and actually being able to sit in what we have achieved over the last five and a half years and the amount of insight I have been able to accumulate and just trying to make that valuable to other people when they do generously invite me into their processes.

[25:58] Beatrice: Hm. Yeah, that's a great point. You have your areas of specialization as well. If someone young is listening to this and they feel inspired to help, for someone who wants to help with long-term governance, where should they start? Do you have any resources to point people to?

[26:13] Taylor: That's a great question. So I think the first thing I would invite them to ask themselves is what is their superpower? What are they good at? And the superpower can either be the thing you are already good at or the thing you care so much about that you will make yourself good at. And so for me, I was very much in this camp. I did not come in with a great deal of policy knowledge, but I became obsessed with it. And I have now, I think, outread most of the people that I work with in this space. And so I think do your homework, build the skills so that you can then be useful. And the building of the skills might be finding an organization that you really believe in what they're doing and joining them and learning along the way. It might be saying, I want to influence policy, I see myself as someone who would work really well inside an institution, so I'm going to get a job in a place where I can influence that work. I would just say you need to try and know yourself as best you can. Like, I know myself very well, which is I would not survive well working inside a bureaucracy. I do very well having the patience for the bureaucracy to pester quite insistently around it and try and be helpful to it. But I would not thrive working within it for an extended period of time. And so if you know yourself and what sets you up for success — because this is going to be a long-term game. Getting long-term governance in place is going to require sustainability from the people who are committing themselves to it. So find a place where you can actually be happy and thrive, and then absolutely sink your teeth in. And don't be afraid to ask questions. The amount of times that I have asked a question that felt silly to ask because it felt so obvious, and people have turned and gone, no one has ever asked that question, I don't know the answer to that, I don't know why it is that way, we should look into that — it happens far more often than I would like to believe. And the thing that's always shocked me is whenever you get into a bigger, more important, scarier room, people often are just as uncertain, but they're just moving with more confidence or they're moving with more information. Like, everyone is learning — with the world being so unpredictable, everyone is experiencing so many things for the first time. And so it's just about: can you offer value? Can you be both humble and confident in the value that you can bring? And just investing in building that.

[28:13] Beatrice: Do you have any recommendations in terms of like maybe a book, or a person, or an organization that you think more people should know of?

[28:20] Taylor: I'm a huge fan of Arathi Krishnan. She runs RAKSHA Intelligence Features, and I have the great privilege of getting to do some work with her. So a little bit of bias there, but I have directed enough other people to her work and their responses have validated that I'm not crazy. She is fantastic. I think she represents the kind of institutional rigor and understanding, head also with just absolute bold ambition, insight, creativity. She's incredible, doing really great work in sort of the emergent space of AI and how we can use that in foresight. I think she's incredible. But I would also say reading broadly, making sure that you are challenging and re-challenging the ideas you digest. I don't think that you should subscribe to any one person's view of the world. I think you should read broadly and, to the point I made earlier, find the people giving critique to your approach. Find the people who disagree with you and challenge yourself to be curious. With that, often when I'm searching for information, I will search for the opposite information. I will actively try and find what disproves this concept or this idea to make sure that there's a sense of resilience and durability in the concept I'm developing. So I do that as well.

[29:29] Beatrice: Yeah, the LLMs are really good at this. So you can ask them to strawman and steelman your — is there anything that you do to stay, you know, considerate of the long term when there's so much that is pulling us to short-term thinking in our lives?

[29:45] Taylor: I think everyone will have their own approach to this. For me, it comes down to just humanity, and I think being connected with yourself, with your values. I think once you do that, the rest is actually quite simple. Yeah, being values-driven, understanding what kind of future you're dedicated to creating and creating this space to be present to that. I think a lot of when I see myself start to get very short-term is because I'm so run off my feet — I'm not present with myself, I'm not present with the consequences of my decisions. And so then bad habits take hold. So I think it's just developing whatever your practices are of knowing yourself, being present with your concept of the world. I think investing in that — that's at least how I stay sane doing this work, because to be honest it can get pretty heavy. Yeah.

[30:26] Beatrice: Yeah, I can imagine. Some rapid fire questions to finish. What's your existential hope vision for the future?

[30:34] Taylor: My existential hope vision is that we can truly show up for each other and that you could have confidence that other people would do that. I think that we're losing faith in humanity. And I think that's the most dangerous thing. I think we will continue to have hope so long as you can look a stranger in the eye and believe that there's something good there. And I see it eroding away. And so I think just leaning into: people are inherently good. And my vision is that we scale that, we activate it, and we build on it, because I also find that when you treat people with that expectation, that is also often what comes out of them. When you expect good from people, I do see a correlation between how they then show up. So that would be my hope. Yeah.

[31:13] Beatrice: People rise to the occasion. What's a technology that doesn't exist yet but that you would want to see...

[31:18] Taylor: ...built? Like time travel. Or the ability to teleport, to not do a long-haul flight again. This is a very selfish answer. There are, you know, I'd love to end climate change, I'd love to solve all the world's problems — that as well, absolutely. My selfish answer: teleportation would be great.

[31:34] Beatrice: Especially as an Australian, I guess that would be lovely.

[31:37] Taylor: We’re so far away.

[31:39] Beatrice: If you weren't doing this, what would you be doing?

[31:43] Taylor: I think I'd be a ceramicist. I was very obsessed with pottery, with art. I think I would be a sculptor or a ceramicist.

[31:50] Beatrice: Yeah, that's very nice. I see a lot of people doing it these days, so I need to try it.

[31:56] Taylor: Of course.

[31:57] Beatrice: Last question — what's the best piece of advice you ever received?

[32:01] Taylor: Best piece of advice — I think, and it's an accumulation, so many people have given me this one bit of advice — is just know yourself. And I think that's how I sleep like a baby at night, even though I'm often making very hard decisions. And I think it's because I have pretty unshakable clarity on who I am, what my values are, and I'm happy to hold myself accountable when I see myself not showing up in the way that I would have wanted. But I think the advice is just know yourself, and show up as consistently as the best vision of yourself as you can.

[32:27] Beatrice: Beautifully put. I've never actually heard that phrasing of like I'm happy to be held accountable when I'm not living up to my own values. But that's a really great point. Thank you. Thank you so much, Taylor. Thank you for taking the time and thank you for doing the work that you're doing.

[32:40] Taylor: Thanks so much for having me, Beatrice.