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generations

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Saved by Dave Calotta
on May 30, 2008 at 10:52:33 pm
 

Intergenerational Horizon

The Brundtland Commission (called simply "Brundtland" here) made a strategic move by expanding the time horizon (and also geographical scope) within which to interpret sustainable development: generations. For traditional, land-based people, this comprehensive, long-term thinking is common but for modern society, our time frame tends to be shorter: 

  • Economic decision-making within corporations tends to emphasize the next fiscal quarter, by which analysts and stockholders value the worth of the corporation. Future thinking is challenged, but may occur -- a matter for Part IV of the course, the enabling analysis.
  • Political decisions hinge with the popularity of a candidate in the next upcoming election. Not only is the time horizon attenuated, but the emphasis here on popularity raises a concern about pandering to conventional thinking that is subject to the manipulation we call propaganda.

Such time horizons discount the future, valuing the present over the future. To Brundtland, this is unacceptable.

 

The Challenge to You

Consider this proposition: Your generation (meaning the students in ENST209 and the readers of this page -- really all of us) faces daunting challenges:

  1. The rate of social change has never been more rapid, and appears to accelerate. This introduces Future Shock: "too much change in too short a period of time". We must expand our time horizon to think in terms of decades and generations. This implies what we call later social learning.
  2. The complexity of our world -- meaning the way that we understand and conceptualize the real world around us -- has never been greater. This also tacitly admits that our world is itself a social creation, not merely the objective social and physical environment within which our lives unfold.
  3. The vast scope of geographical interdependence known of globalization demands that we transcend our experience, necessarily limited and parochial, and expand our horizon to include, well, the entire planet.

 

Imagine this scenario. You were born, like many college-age students, in 1988. After college, you form a family. You and your spouse have a child in 2018 at age thirty (perhaps not your first, nor your last). Your son or daughter lives to be ninety, a likely demographic scenario. Therefore, you, through your child, have a stake in the state of the world in the year 2108. Your interests and concerns have crossed into another century.

 

Later, we will examine, the precautionary principle, that brings into question the level of risk you wish to perpetrate on others -- like your children. This begs the question: What shall be the human condition at the start of the 22nd century? Thus World Sustainability demands that you ponder the responsibility to the future, the gauntlet set down by Brundtland.


 

Think about this: If traditional cultures think in longer-term, comprehensive frameworks, does the shorter and more narrow mindset of modern society pose an artificial and alterable "dis-ability" which poses a barrier to achieving world sustainability? Does this also challenge the presumed superiority of modern (globalized) cultures over traditional, localized cultures? Are our cultural assumptions about individualism (perhaps egotism) and materialism challenged by our concern for the 22nd century's sustainability? Does this not open up a fertile opportunity for what we will call here social learning? This also points to the significance of the term paradigm (underlying world view) used here. (Being stuck in a paradigm is called paradigm paralysis.) My notes on paradigm are under construction.

 

Also see my statement of concern.

 


This Student's Thoughts

Those who came before us laid the first step in world sustainability -- that is, they forced us to think about it by their actions and inactions. Rapid, post-WWII industrialization expanded without an understanding that our actions may have long term consequences; long term that for those who fought in WWII, it will be their great grandchildren alive in 2108, per the above example (figured given that my grandfather fought in World War II). Accordingly, without that generation doing what it did, we would never be considering what effect our actions will have on generations succeeding us. Obviously, that is not meant to demonize the progresses that were made and the advances that have shaped our world. Most of them have improved our lives, and some of the technologies developed in that period (in a broad sense) are technologies that we will be reliant upon to minimize our negative impact on future generations; for example, the first working solar cell was developed in 1954. So while it is a useful and critical exercise to look to forward generations, it is also interesting and thought provoking to not forget the generations behind us. - DC

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