This is my land! (not)

Great Debates
1

This is my land! (not)

Stewardship-- the conducting, supervising, or managing of something… the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care…

Stewardship is a word used often in the Bible and was at one time used often in England. It was used in England because the youth of the landed aristocracy was taught that they were responsible for the care of the family properties in such a way that they passed on to the next generation an inheritance equal to, but more appropriately larger than, that received. Each generation was not the owner but was the steward for the family estates. Any individual who squandered the inheritance was a traitor to the family.

I am inclined to think that each human generation must consider itself as the steward of the earth and therefore must make available to the succeeding generations an inheritance undiminished to that received.

In this context what does “careful and responsible management” mean? I would say that there are two things that must be begun to make the whole process feasible. The first is that the public must be convinced that it is a responsible caretaker and not an owner and secondly the public must be provided with an acceptable standard whereby it can judge how each major issue affects the accomplishment of the overall task. This is an ongoing forever responsibility for every nation but for the purpose of discussion I am going to speak about it as localized to the US.

Selfishness and greed are fundamental components of human nature. How does a nation cause its people to temper this nature when the payoff goes not to the generation presently in charge but to generations yet to come in the very distant future? Generations too far removed to be encompassed by the evolved biological impulse to care for ones kin.

How is it possible to cause a man or woman to have the same concern for a generation five times removed as that man or woman has for their own progeny? I suspect it is not possible, but it does seem to me to be necessary to accomplish the task of stewardship.

Would it be possible to cause the American people to reject completely the use of air-conditioning so that generations five times removed could survive? Is it possible to create in a person a rational response strong enough to overcome the evolved nature of greed and selfishness? I cannot imagine any rational motivation of sufficient strength to divert the natural instincts of a whole people for an extended time. Therefore, the motivation force must be emotionally based.

A compelling sense of stewardship must come through religion. Rationality is insufficient to creating a compulsion to sacrifice immediate gratification for such remote ends.

If religion were capable of creating this sense of stewardship the next problem would be how to create a credit/debit technique which would allow a nation to develop a balance between what is subtracted from the legacy to that which is added to the legacy; how to place a value upon the creation of additional highways which might balance the effect of destroying so many acres of a forest; how to value the development of a new vaccine and how to value the increase in atmospheric CO2. The people must have an easily understood valuation scheme so that they could make the necessary judgments to maintain the balance sheet.

Is it possible to create in people a true sense of stewardship?

I think it is but only through a religious means. Do you think reason could be a means for instilling a true sense of stewardship?

2

Isn’t there a great deal of circular reasoning in this. You have this almost religious belief in the stewardship of the land. This you want to extend to the rest of humankind by inventing a new religion.

Is there any indication that humans generally show more respect for stewardship or rent than ownership? I’d say the evidence is to the contrary. A man renting a property normally don’t treat it with the same thought as the man owning it.

3

I am not suggesting a new religion. The present religions will do fine.

The point of the post is that we are all renters if you take a long view. We are not good with the long view unless it is installed within a religious context. Perhaps that is why religion is so important to the world.

4

Invent a new religion and you’ll alienate a good proportion of people who might otherwise be useful.

Sure in the UK we had primogeniture and entail, I am not sure what good it did us, as to quote from one of my old politics essays:
‘the major problem with a hereditary monarchy is that of an idiot in the family’

In my blacker moments, I’ll say ‘what has posterity ever done for me’, but mostly I subscribe to the principle of: ‘Don’t p/ss in the jaccuzzi’

Now look at what you are doing here:

Rationality is insufficient to creating a compulsion to sacrifice immediate gratification for such remote ends.

Richard Dawkin, the author of The Selfish Gene would have you shot for making such a sweeping statement that denies the premise behind his theory.

Personally I reckon ‘the people’ are sufficiently thick that one does not need to consider their opinions

  • and the whole Enron style idea of CO2 trading makes my Bullsh/t detecter scream.

Just tell them that they are thicker than their parents were at the same age because of lead in petrol, and they’ll follow you anywhere.

Did you follow up that Parfitt lead I posted for you ?
If so you would realize that your question boils down to ‘how to deal with cheats?’

5

I think you have misses that advancing technology will better take care of the land, or at least that capability exists, and that requires a growing economy to support development of new technology. We owe it to future generations to use our current resources to advance humanity so they (future generations) can do the same. By stepping back we cause them to step back.

Taken to it"s limit we have to use the resources available to us here on earth to find a way to get to the stars before we have used up so many resources that intersteller travel is impossible.

6

The next problem would be how to create a credit/debit technique which would allow a nation to develop a balance between what is subtracted from the legacy to that which is added to the legacy; how to place a value upon the creation of additional highways which might balance the effect of destroying so many acres of a forest; how to value the development of a new vaccine and how to value the increase in atmospheric CO2. The people must have an easily understood valuation scheme so that they could make the necessary judgments to maintain the balance sheet.

7

FRDE

I do not remember the Parfitt lead. I thumbed back through our discourse and cannot identify that reference.

8

Do a search on SD

  • if you fail I’ll have a go or re-post the stuff

  • you will like it, the guy actually came up with a theory behind Ethics

  • I was blo/dy impressed when I heard it

The trick is simple language and minimal assumptions

  • Christianity (whose ethics I quite like, and premises are abhorent) would have got nowhere without the parables.
9

This could never happen with the current ‘global’ nature of economies. Nothing of the sort would happen unless there was a complete zeroing of the clocks, otherwise how would one account for damage already done (or the positive things done)? How do you weight them?

10

It would be tuff but necessary.

11

Actually, I’d say religion (at least Christianity) is the last thing we need to promote this. One of the main tenets of Christianity and many other religions is the unimportance of the physical world in comparison to the spiritual world. People who believe they’ll be spending their afterlife in another plane of existance are the ones most likely to trash this world.

12

We are not dealing with the after life here. We are considering how to pass on this planet to future generations.

13

I am from Britain

We are doing a pretty good job of cleaning up the mess left to us by our forebears.

Possibly future generations will do the same.