We have met the enemy and it is us!

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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.

Re: We have met the enemy and it is us!


A good thing, too... being on the road would be much more dangerous if drivers were lost in deluges of information.

Based on the presumtion that a Nation can and should "cause its people to temper this nature"!

I would argue that life extension technologies will take care of that consideration, and present government intervention to that effect may well be ineffectual or even perhaps counterproductive.

Chumly wrote-



Try imagining 280 million Americans whose selfishness and greed has gone untempered.

I know they are somewhat less well tempered than they used to be before they allowed advertising into their homes but they are still quite tempered.

I am not suggesting that 280 million Americans should let their selfishness and greed run amok, only pointing out the presumption of National control.

Albeit some would argue that on the international stage, to some degree, that is what Americans have done at certain times, and with the sanctioning of the nation.

Perhaps national hypnotherapy, combined with hallucinogenic drugs, and daily advanced masturbatory techniques is the best answer to quelling innately selfishness and greedy urges.

Or we could cull the aggressors and sterilize them in the same way that wolves transfigured themselves into the much more successful dog by having the more docile canine aspects be the traits for survival with man.

Well it's good humors if nothing else!

It certainly is Chum.

Have you ever witnessed a bunch of virtuous ones wheeling in slow motion around a slowly dying multimillionaire.

Auberon Waugh,of blessed memory,used to say that the more a dinner guest held forth on their virtues the faster they counted the spoons.He,of course,had silver ones.A gobful actually with a Dad as good as he had.

so it seems... the more one gains power or illusion of 'relative'; the more one is subject to corruption or perversion of founding ethics...and may find there biggest enemy is themselve and constantly inflating ego.