Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • RESOURCES
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • BJGP Life
    • eLetters
    • Librarian information
    • Alerts
    • Resilience
    • Video
    • Audio
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
    • RCGP e-Portfolio

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
    • RCGP e-Portfolio
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
Advertisement
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • RESOURCES
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • BJGP Life
    • eLetters
    • Librarian information
    • Alerts
    • Resilience
    • Video
    • Audio
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
Editor’s Briefing

Going Postal and Decolonising the Future

Euan Lawson
British Journal of General Practice 2020; 70 (700): 523. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X713129
Euan Lawson
BJGP
Roles: Acting Editor
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

The BJGP has come to a minor fork in the road. This is the first issue where a printed hard copy will not be posted automatically to all RCGP members. To be clear, the print version is still available but you will need to opt-in if you wish to receive it. Everyone will continue to have access to the digital flipbook version and, as ever, all the online articles, podcasts, and videos. The reduction in printing is a small environmental benefit, much requested, but wider transformation in our societies is definitely in the post. It will either come this decade as we scramble to reconfigure to a low carbon economy or the future may take on a dystopian hue if we don’t succeed.

Public philosopher Roman Krznaric has written on the future, the need for us to embrace long-term thinking, and how to be good ancestors.1 His remarkable book encourages us to think beyond our limited horizons into ‘deep time’. This is not about our own children, or even their grandchildren, but for generations beyond that. He discusses the concept, almost entirely missing from discussions of inequality, of intergenerational justice. Climate change is, of course, the most pressing example, but it can be applied to all our endeavours, not least medicine and primary care.

It is easy to look back through a rose-tinted safety visor at general practice of yesteryear. We need to recognise the fallacy of extrapolation where we assume the future will be very much like the present. Only maybe with hovercars. It won’t and we are, shockingly, colonising that future. Krznaric points out: ‘We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk and nuclear waste, and which we can plunder as we please.’1

There are, one hopes, many billions of people yet to be born. Yet they are voiceless. What responsibility should we take, as doctors, for the health of people born many decades, even centuries, from now? As just one example, antibiotic prescribing is a clinical topic begging for an intergenerational perspective.

The world of medical journals has been turbulent in recent years and future changes pose an existential threat. The RCGP’s support of the journal should be considered a fine example of Krznaric’s ‘cathedral thinking’. Research is usually a long game of accumulation and accretion. The College grants editorial independence to the journal, no small thing, and an essential component of the BJGP ’s work for these past 60 years. This is a real gift in a transactional culture where cynicism dictates that everything has a price tag.

So, while a hard copy of the BJGP will no longer land on every single College member’s doorstep, the work does continue and there are immediate benefits for us all now. Perhaps more importantly, it may serve future generations in some measure.

  • © British Journal of General Practice 2020

REFERENCE

  1. 1.↵
    1. Krznaric R
    (2020) The Good Ancestor (WH Allen, London) Visit bjgplife.com/print to opt-in to BJGP print version.
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 70 (700)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 70, Issue 700
November 2020
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Going Postal and Decolonising the Future
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Going Postal and Decolonising the Future
Euan Lawson
British Journal of General Practice 2020; 70 (700): 523. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp20X713129

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Going Postal and Decolonising the Future
Euan Lawson
British Journal of General Practice 2020; 70 (700): 523. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp20X713129
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
    • REFERENCE
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

  • Health Inequalities — It’s DÉJÀ-VU All Over again
  • Sanity and Insanity
  • Highlights
Show more Editor’s Briefing

Related Articles

Cited By...

Advertisement

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers
  • RCGP e-Portfolio

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7679
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2021 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242