The measure of success: How Australia can become a long-term civilisation - ABC Religion & Ethics

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Many of today's most fraught geopolitical and economic dilemmas come down to this deceptively simple question: What time-frame are you using to judge success?
Patrick McGee's recent book Apple in China offers a vivid illustration. Its subtitle — 'The Capture of the World's Greatest Company' — frames Apple Inc. as the victim, and Chinese communists as the captors.
McGee's narrative begins with the Apple of Steve Jobs, a company that fused technological ambition with an artistic sensibility. Jobs once said: 'Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.' Apple's DNA was edited under his successor, Tim Cook. Cook became extraordinarily efficient at monetising Jobs's heart songs. Shareholder value soared. It was a great time to be an Apple investor. Cook leveraged partnerships with businesses like Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract electronics maker whose efficient factories in China enabled Apple's extraordinary margins.
Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on 10 June 2024. (Photograph by David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
One lauded architect of this success was Apple's Vice President of Procurement, Tony Blevins. His negotiation strategy was legendary, playing suppliers off one another to extract the maximum concessions. Blevin's tenure came to an abrupt end in 2022 when he was terminated for making jokes about fondling big breasts — perhaps not surprising given his preferred moniker, 'the Blevinator'.
If a significant share of Apple's profits came from the sweated labour of Chinese workers, we should ask what China got out of all this? These benefits become apparent only if you are able to look at the deals celebrated by the Blevinator and Apple shareholders in the long term. One hint lies in frequent references by Chinese officials to China's 5,000 year continuous civilisation in their engagements with Westerners.
This is where time-frame becomes everything. Milton Friedman famously argued that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. That principle dominated Apple's approach to China. But China wasn't playing Friedman's game. Viewed in the time-frame of 5,000 years, Apple's greedy engagement with China looks like an imagined decision by British radar pioneer Robert Watson-Watt to sell his intellectual property to a German business in 1935 because its offer significantly exceeded what any Briton would pay.
Just as fragments of Neanderthal DNA survive in modern humans, fragments of Apple's DNA survive in today's Chinese tech giants. China didn't just get factories. It got experience. It got exposure to Apple's standards, its design philosophy, its logistical precision. Huawei, Xiaomi and other Chinese firms may now express that inherited DNA more confidently than Apple itself. We know that the Neanderthals went extinct. We can speculate about how Apple will weather today's tariff wars. Trade wars are awkward for any multinational tech company, but particularly so for one straddling the war's principal antagonists.
A 5,000 year time-frame or a 65,000 year one?
It shouldn't be surprising that political use of a 5,000-year-old Chinese civilisation has prompted sceptical replies. Rather than engaging with that debate, Australians should ask a different question: If China adopts a 5,000-year perspective, what might Australia do with a 65,000-year perspective?
Indigenous Australians represent the oldest continuing culture on Earth. That longevity reflects not only resilience but a distinctive mode of thinking — one that is radically long-term. Instead of viewing this as an anthropological curiosity, Australia could view Aboriginal ideas as a strategic resource. Governments and corporations strategise in election cycles and financial quarters. How might curbing consumption now increase the prospects, financial and otherwise, for Australians living in a sixty-millennia distant future? The fact that seems like an absurd question strongly suggests the short-term bias in our political culture.
Aboriginal rock paintings at Arkaroo Rock (Akurra Adnya), Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia. (Photograph by Auscape / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
We wonder how Australia can compete in tech. It could be useful to find a Brisbane version of OpenAI's Sam Altman or an Adelaide equivalent of Nvidia's Jensen Huang. But, once identified, the best place for them is likely California. To adapt bank robber Willie Sutton's line about why he robbed banks, that's where the venture capital is. Aspirational billionaires who relocate to California may not have much use for the 65,000-year time-frame. Who uses that as a guide for their investments?
The true value of the Aboriginal time-frame is closer to home. For example, it challenges the lucrative short-termism of Australia's mining industry. Gina Rhinehart, mining magnate and Australia's richest person, would likely find herself having to donate to a lot of politicians if she sought to become a Californian billionaire. She and her business are tethered to the land. What if those same politicians required her to compromise with the 65,000-year time-frame of indigenous Australians? Doing so would involve accepting the ideas of indigenous peoples as a strategic resource alongside the minerals under their lands.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart invites Australians to walk together 'in a movement of the Australian people for a better future'. It is more than a plea for recognition or reform. It is a strategic proposal grounded in the radical continuity and wisdom of a culture that has endured for sixty millennia. To heed this call is to imagine a political and environmental future measured not in electoral cycles but in millennia. Seen in this light, the Statement is not just a moral appeal — it's a reminder of Australia's unique potential to be a long-term civilisation.
Nicholas Agar is Professor of Ethics at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of How to be Human in the Digital Economy and Dialogues on Human Enhancement, and co-author (with Stuart Whatley and Dan Weijers) of How to Think about Progress: A Skeptic's Guide to Technology.