We can take any issue that might enrage any one of us and we can discover that the root cause of ‘whatever’ is the fact that we the citizens are not doing our job. In a liberal democracy wherein the sovereignty rests on the shoulders of the citizen any outrage committed by that society can ultimately be traced back to the lack of enlightenment by the citizen.
Enlightened does not equal informed. Information flows over us in a daily deluge but consciousness is the missing catalyst for action. Our daily dose of information might be compared to our drive to work each morning. We are deluged with information reaching our perception on our drive to work and very little of that information becomes an object of consciousness.
Humans are pattern recognition creatures. We survive by the patterns of which we are conscious. To be an enlightened citizen is to be a citizen who has rationally organized a matrix of pattern detecting systems.
We have in our genes some pattern detecting systems. When hiking in the woods I am occasionally stopped in my tracks with a deep chill by some kind of form or movement. Among this infinite amount of movement and pattern one particular set penetrates my consciousness. We have evolved with this detection system so as to survive the predators.
Following this OP I have posted an example of an essay that can create such a pattern for recognition. I think that if we make the intellectual effort to understand some domain of knowledge and perhaps take the additional effort to write out our understanding of that matter that our essay will serve as our pattern for recognition for matters pertinent to that domain.
I consider that writing an essay is a major means for reaching an understanding of a domain of knowledge.
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 seem to be 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.