We are trying to figure a way to resolve the conflict between the past which wants the future to be in a certain way and the present which wants to do its own thing. It is difficult. We want to trust our instincts and still treasure the ones who came before us (who are still a part of us in a way).
Prayer must have initially been an ancestral permission protocol. People didn't know whether their ancestors still cared for how things turned out anymore because they still don't know if there is life after death (and they still don't know). But they tried to ask anyway. They prayed - very hard. We don't yet know for sure if prayer is effective or not but still people keep praying. For they would rather do something that might not make any difference than be sorry that when they could have done something, they didn't.
The degree to which we should care about the future can be called "future bandwidth allocation."
Every decision involves this calibration. The entrepreneur mortgaging present comfort for uncertain returns. The parent sacrificing immediate desires to fund a child's education.
Contemporary technology complicates this ancient negotiation. Social media algorithms optimise for immediate engagement, effectively reducing our future bandwidth to near zero. Investment platforms gamify long-term thinking, turning ancestral wisdom into quarterly metrics.
Yet the tension persists. Companies embrace quarterly capitalism whilst commissioning century-long sustainability reports. Nations sign climate accords they cannot politically sustain beyond the next election cycle. The bandwidth allocation problem scales from individual psychology to collective governance.
Prayer emerges not as superstition but as bandwidth allocation technology. When we pray, we temporarily expand our decision-making timeframe beyond our mortal perspective. We consult voices that operated on longer temporal scales than our immediate anxieties permit.
Modern equivalents proliferate. Meditation apps coaching present-moment awareness. Long-term investment strategies. Carbon offset calculations for future generations' survival.
What bandwidth allocation does our species need to survive its next transition? How do we honour ancestral wisdom without becoming prisoners of inheritance?