Intergenerational projects are worth pursuing. Those projects require intergenerational value.

Going back to the moon, going to mars, making cities more livable, building Cathedrals, healing cultural trauma, making healthy families, creating better ways of life, enhancing health and lifespan, teaching and learning how the world works, figuring out consciousness, determining the secret to a good life, eliminating pain and creating ideal adventures… that is all possible with enough dedication on a long enough timescale and with enough forward thinking and endurance/adjustment.

I get that ending deprivation in the now is important, but I can’t help but feeling we’ve been sacrificing the future to a decades long hedonic treadmill to satisfy base and immediate needs rather than future oriented striving.

I fear it's inherent to our current interpretation of democracy. Individuals have very few incentives to look past their own lifetimes (and those incentives are almost entirely summed up as "their children"), which tends to downplay even projects that are only multiple decades. If it doesn't improve my life in 5-10 years why would I care one way or the other?

And if someone tries to propose something longer term, it'll get shot down by someone who says "how about not and we spend the money on partying instead" or the equivalent.

More and more I feel that we have to "sneak" long-term projects past people without them noticing.

Sneak in a negative interest rate on cash and a land value tax while you are at it.

You know, a positive interest rate implies that people would rather have something now than later. A 0% interest rate implies people value the future and present equally. A negative interest rate implies that people have more financial capital than they know what to do with which means it must be invested into capital with a long lifespan.