In 1977, Jonas Salk posed the question that opened this series: are we being good ancestors? It is a question the secular world is still learning to ask seriously. The frameworks examined across these twelve pieces, from the Haudenosaunee Seventh Generation Principle to Japan’s Future Design movement, from cathedral thinking to the empathy gap research of Hal Hershfield, represent the world’s best current attempt to build an ethic adequate to the scale of intergenerational responsibility.

Latter-day Saints reading this series will have recognized, in every framework, something already present in covenant life.