The scarcity of the long term

> Islamic Studies

Not that different a subject. A different focus traditionally, but still related to a monotheistic religion.

> Business

Definitely very different, especially in ethos.

> There is still a number of Oxford "halls" devoted to Divinity, but the number of students and fellows engaged in that kind of work is tiny.

and I believe the powers that be at the university would like to get rid of them?

There is scarcity of scarcity, which leads to this madness. People didn't use to have a particular problem thinking at least a generation ahead, but there us no demand for such things. There is no way to make too much money on any established product. Anything that has existed for more than several years is available in vast amount, and cheap. Anything that isn't completely new is good enough to the point where only an insignificant improvement can be made at monumenta costs.

What is desirable now are things like a fidget spinner, that makes some quick cash, and gets forgotten soon after.

> the Roman Empire lasted about 200 years.

The Roman Empire lasted about 500 years - from 31 BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. If we include the period of existence of the Eastern Roman Empire it would be almost 1500 years - until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

One problem with long term projects is advancement on technology that would had made a faster, sturdier, cleaner or whatever the original project if it started from zero using it.

We send a mission to Alpha centauri that would take, lets say, 100 years to get there with the current propulsion technologies, and in 30 years we discover a new one that would take 20 years to get there. Or the same for big buildings (I don't know, arcologies) where new materials and techniques would turn obsolete how it started if it was long enough in the past.

And not only new ways to improve, but different priorities or things that are out of our control that happen during its development. What if the land where the The Line in Saudi Arabla is being built gets permanently flooded because sea level rise or the entire region becomes unlivabable because frequent high enough temperatures in the region? Even social trends may turn something built for the future obsolete, there are plenty of ghost megacities in China.

Both acceleration in technologies, and acceleration in changes outside what is the construction by itself (climate, society, etc) can turn into (potentially hamrful) waste decades of effort.

One of the unexpected effects of learning Hebrew for me, was something I didn't realize at first. Only almost thirty years since I could confidently use the language I accidentally watched a video where someone was researching the phonetics of the language (it's more or less generally agreed that nobody really knows how ancient Hebrew sounded). So, the researcher asked people from different communities (eg. Yemenite Jews, Samaritans, etc.) to read aloud a passage from Genesis.

It was very surprising to me that I could, more or less, understand what they were saying, despite the accent. Then came the realization that I could actually understand something written thousands of years ago by someone whose mind worked in a very different way, and yet I could, sort-of, communicate with that person.

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I had to move a lot in my life. So, I don't have any childhood photos, nor do I keep in touch with my classmates from wherever I studied, I had to switch the language I use in my everyday life at least twice. I always "traveled light", so, I almost don't have any objects that are more than some ten years old. Except for the razor my grandfather brought from Germany in 1945 (now, I realize that it was probably looted, but many years back I was kind-of proud to inherit that). It says on it that it was manufactured in 1939.

I've never really met my grandfather -- he died when I was one y.o. I don't know what kind of person he was in his everyday life, in fact, I've ever only seen a single photograph of him. And yet I know that in many ways, subconsciously, I continue things he was doing. We have very different perspectives on life: he was a member of the Communist party, and I'm strongly in the Humanist camp. He liked gardening, and I hate being in the country etc. But, in a more broad sense, I keep a lot of the same culture he was part of: I'm pretty sure we learned the same multiplication table, or that we both had to read War and Peace at school, we both have the same idea about alphabet or using a dinner table for, well, dinner. And in that sense, I'm distinctly farther away from someone who sits down on a mat to eat their dinner, or, like ancient Greeks, who semi-lied down on a bench for their dinner.

In fact, it's very easy to trace my and my grandfather's differences to a common ancestor. It's not hard for me to understand why would he think the way he did, even though he's in the opposite camp. It's much harder to understand those who cannot disagree with me because they don't even know what they can possibly disagree about.

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We don't have an obvious structure for projects that take multiple generations to complete. Not like the cathedrals that used to be built for hundred years or more, or even the books that used to be written by generations of scribes. But we still carry out such multi-generational projects by following conventions. We read books written by the previous generation, reinterpret them and embed their discoveries in our own.

It would've been nicer if we could organize this inheritance better, but it's not fair to say that it doesn't exist.