ANTONY HEGARTY - Singer-Songwriter, Composer, and Visual Artist; Lead Singer, Antony and the Johnsons.That sounds great. That sounds reasonable. But it is like "motherhood". Who could be against it?
Seven generation sustainability is an ecological concept that urges the current generation of humans to live sustainably and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future."In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation..." — Great Law of the IroquoisThe Seventh Generation originated with the Iroquois when they thought it was appropriate to think seven generations ahead (a couple hundred years into the future) and decide whether the decisions they make today would benefit their children seven generations into the future. (Lyons O, An Iroquois Perspective.)
Well... if you think a bit, something must have gone wrong. The Iroquois flubbed their encounter with European civilization. They may have had a good line about "seven generations" but they obviously didn't think deep and hard enough to achieve a seven generation response to the emergency that European encroachment caused their civilization. Was this simply a failing of the Iroquois, or is there something misleading about having this "seven generations" motto?
My guess goes along the lines of Ray Kruzweil: we are wired to do linear extrapolations into the future, the reality more often in non-linear. We just aren't equipped to project the future using our unaided imaginations.
Here's where science is of assistance. Science has taught us that we are insignificant compared to the immense size and complexity of the real world. We need to develop models carefully using the best open & competitive ideas of science to address the future. The problem is that our primate brain loves to jump to simple answers. The politicians 'sound bite' is what we are emotionally geared to attend to. Doing the hard thinking of using tools like math and modeling to consider the future is not easy (as the misguided and ideologically-motivated climate 'modeling' proves).
I believe that it is too easy to take a "seven generations" approach and fall into the trap of "back to the land" and "eco-conservatism". Our species has been successful by always coming up with a new technology and a new way to exploit the environment. To throw the towel in and claim "technology is causing us to destroy our own habitat" is foolish. When I was a kid pollution was much worse than today. It took a social movement that worried about the environment to get us to use technology to clean up our act. Current problems will be solved not by "playing turtle" and tucking our head into a shell. We will meet the future only if we exploit the visions of our wisest people and take up the best that technology has to offer. This has been our solution for hundreds of thousands of years. It is time-tested. Doomsayers and pessimists are very attractive, but their message is really one of giving up hope and foreclosing our future.
2 comments:
One way to realize our ability to see the future is to read predictions from the past about the future that is now our past. One that comes to mind the easiest is 1984 by George Orwell, but there are many examples. As you say, we can not imagine the future and I say that part of the reason is that we just don't have the ability to see what we are capable of as a group or the developments from very simple inventions or innovations. The problems of today could be so minor in the future or the cause of even more problems, but none of us can know because we can't see the future. I hope that things will improve for future generations, but I know some things never change like man's greed for power.
So, I agree with your thoughts about the saying or proverb considering 7 generations because we don't know the future, but some things like human behavior will remain the same constant that we can use to "see" into the future in a very limited way, but I don't see how one could see well enough to make decisions that would benefit future generations. Who can know if a course brings destruction or utopia? But, we can always teach our children the basics that lead to a happy life no matter what they are driving or how they earn a living or where they live.
Thomas: You are right. We use what tools are at hand to help us figure out the future. But you work with tools, you know that you don't just pick any tool up to do a job and you certainly don't grab a tool and expect to be master of it. So our knowledge about the past is a tool, but it is a tricky tool because our understanding of the past is hemmed in by our misunderstandings and shortsightedness. We have to use our "tool", knowledge of the past, carefully.
The book 1984 is interesting because Orwell was using his experiences from fighting in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s and the machinations of the Soviet agents, the committed Bolshevik communists, and the Trotskyists to look at the post-WW II world and worry. The book isn't really a prediction, it is a warning of how political extremists can manipulate power, even "the Truth", to enslave people.
I like reading people like Ray Kurzweil with his The Singularity is Near to get a positive vision of the future. But at the same time I discount a lot of what Kurzweil says because he so desperately wants the future to realize his utopian dream. I doubt it will.
Kurzweil worries about his health because his father died of a heart attack at an early age. So Kurzweil has convinced himself that medical technology is advancing fast enough to keep him alive long enough until "death is conquered" by technology. I'm a bit of a pessimist on this regard. I think most of the "big advance" in medicine was the simple stuff: public health (clean water, sewers, more doctors, government agencies like the CDC and local health authorities). The other big advance was antibiotics. I think pretty well everything else is "noise". To put it in numbers: the average lifespan in 1900 was around 50 years, simple public health added another 15 years, antibiotics another 5 years, and all the gee whiz technology another 7 years. The cost of adding years through technology is getting exponentially more expensive, so I don't see average lifespans getting beyond 100 years.
I agree with you that planning for 7 generations is beyond our real knowledge. It doesn't hurt to try and stretch and realize this, but if we are honest, we don't know what is out there. Could somebody in 1800 really foresee the year 2000? I don't think so.
I like your point that what we really need to focus on is to teach our kids "the basics" of a happy life. In my book that comes down to learning to be realistic about your own expectations/needs/wants, be willing to compromise and get along with your neighbors, while holding up a high ethical standard to act as a moral compass.
I like the medical oath: first, do no harm. Once you've mastered that, then you can try to figure out a way to better your own life and I expect that you will discover that the best path to achieving that is to help your neighbors improve their lives. I've always marveled at the good manners of the aristocrats (at least in fiction). But they can afford it. So we all need to aspire to be "aristocrats" so that we can achieve the "good graces" of a cultured and empathetic life.
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