I was recently watching episodes of Torchwood (second season), a spinoff TV series from the rebirthed Doctor Who series. There was an interesting thought in one episode .. but first, to explain a little .. The Doctor Who genre is science fiction and time travel and saving the world from threats which threaten total destruction. The Torchwood franchise takes one character who had accompanied The Doctor, and plunks him in Cardiff Wales as the backdrop from which to save the world. It's a little farfetched but at the same time, like any creative work, they're able to explore bigger themes.
The episode in question was a time travel story. A time warp connected two time points in a hospital, 1918 and 2008. A WWI soldier was a key person who was able to resolve the time warp, and at the same time have some real quality time with the Torchwood team in 2008. At the end of the episode one of the team was looking over the Cardiff cityscape and said "Without him all this would not be possible.. I hope we're worth it"
It was the briefest of lines, at the end of a tense science fiction drama full of intrigue, and most people probably skipped over it. But it caught my attention and I want to focus on it.
Reframing a little bit... Without our ancestors this society would not be here. Our ancestors made possible the society we're living in. Our ancestors had dreams of what future society would be. I hope the society we have now is worthy of their effort.
Who we are, what our society is, the quality of our society, all that is a direct result of the decisions of our ancestors.
Likewise our descendants, their society, etc, will be a direct result of our decisions.
This is the way it's always been, and the way it always will be. But to the extent that we disconnect ourselves from this model, that disconnect from the dreams we have of the ideal society leads to our descendants instead having a far-from-ideal society.
For example.. much of American Society is driven by different dreams than those of an ideal society. The dreams driving our society are designed by marketers to sell more stuff. The dreams driving our society are also designed by political masters who are striving for greater and greater power. Both of those dreams cause our future to be shaped by those dreams. To recapture our future requires acting in accordance with the dreams of ideal society.