Conclusion

Abstract

A key research finding is that when people reach for creativity, a strong past-to-future narrative emerges connecting the generations. It involves generosity and gift-giving between generations and shows the importance of collaboration and companionship through time. I summarise some of the risks and dangers involved in haunted relationships between people(s) and nations and how these can lead to a further understanding of the differences between inter- and transgenerational memory. Working with this distinction can facilitate a social and psychological map of how to approach particular social problems. The ways in which we might live in the future in an extended ‘present moment’ of several generations is coupled with a rekindling of our sociological imagination. The ebbing and flowing of a multigenerational self underpins the ways in which we can cultivate a ‘sensibility for the long term’ that is between personal, embodied and social. The idea of the generations being part of wider nature and deeper time helps us think about ecological and ancestral issues as being connected.