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.
It seems to me that the logic of capitalism leads us to the destruction of the planet, at least to the extent as to make it uninhabitable to humans. I understand that cockroaches thrive on radiation.
The logic of capitalism is to maximize production and consumption. To follow this logic is to destroy the planetary ecosystem in order to feed the need for raw materials required to maintain this drive to maximize production and consumption.
Constantly increasing the degree of automation, which is another aspect of the logic of capitalism, constantly pushes humans into a more alienating life style. As automation increases the meaning for existence for humans becomes an ever increasingly difficult illusion to maintain because work is the principal means for developing self-esteem.
I see you mentioned the bible a few times in your question- if we’re going to go by what the bible says, then we need to understand that it doesn’t matter what we do because God will end the earth and create one anew, just as He said He is going to do- The final war will be our big worry, not something we do or don’t do to ‘save the earth’. (and no, We aren’t going to be responsible for the destruction of the earth by the supposed ‘man made global warming’ which is a complete farce and which is getting more and more honest evaluation showing that nature itsel;f is responsible for more than 98% of the warming. Our contribution to ‘greenhouse gases’ is a measley .028% and that is a fact- something that we’re not told in the global warming alarmist press. It’s a completely natural cyclical warming trend due to increased solar activity- nothign to panic about, and certainly nothing we can do about it anyways- the best advice is to sit back, enjoy the warmer weather, and wait for the next cooling trrend to occure.
If we’re goign to invoke religion for the suppsoed global warming solution, then you need to understand that we Christians know that God is in control and will end this world long before any global warming ever could even if we were responsible for the majority of it which we clearly are not despite what that panel of charlatans on global warming told us and lied to us about.
But yes, we should be concerned about polution- that in itself is another topic entirely.
Yes I think you can save the world by how we act and what we do. However over-population will trump anything we do at some point and I believe we are just about at max population for our time and technology. I think all this climate change and such is just as much an effect of over population as it is pollution since they have always been directly related even before the industrial revolution.
Not to worry though, the earth will right its self soon enough and take care of the over population if a war doesn’t do it first. Actually maybe WW3 would be a good idea in the long run.
That’s a great idea, we cant even sustain this one that is perfectly suited to life so naturally we could go to one that isn’t suited to any life what so ever and make it fine.
I think perhaps the issue is, “how can I persuade someone to care about future people”. How can we ask others to practice sustainable living as opposed to the simpler, more destructive practices in life? Perhaps sustainable practices can be more gratifying or that it would take a cultural shift rather than simple persuasion of communities. Couldn’t Kant’s categorical imperative be invoked here to argue for the immorality of unsustainable actions? Referring to this topic, the planet certainly can be saved in current years by influencing others to adopt healthier practices.
I think that we badly need to construct a new secular moral code that will allow us to live harmoniously together on this planet. It appears to me that the hour is very late.
We started trying to comprehend why humans do the things they do but our technology developed medication to calm the crazies and we have dropped our effort to understand our nature and instead have decided to medicate our self into submissive behavior.
For what form of life are we to ‘save’ the world for? Humanity? What about other forms of life that may flourish if we get rid of us humans?
Another note; I don’t think we know near enough about the environment or nature to have the arrogant notion that we know how to balance the ecosystems of the world.
That’s not to say that we don’t know anything.
However, I feel like humanity taking care of the world is like the character Baby Huey taking care of his new pet.
“I love it…
and squeeze it…
and pet it…â€
(He proceeds to squeeze it to death, then finds another pet to love and squeeze to death)
