The Iroquois... or some of them, anyway... had a philosophy that held that people should consider the effect of what they do on the next seven generations. Of course, if all the rest of the "Indians" had shared that principle, and had adhered to it, and had been a little sharper in the foresight department, they probably would have tried a lot harder to raze Plymouth and Jamestown to the ground right at the very beginning of the European invasion. They didn't, though, and I guess you can't really blame them. The original settlers were few, and seemed a lot more sick and starving than scary at first. But...
Anyway, I'm not saying that the "Seven Generations" thing would have saved the Indians. After all, there were relatively few of them (especially after the European gift of smallpox hit) and there were a whole lot of Europeans. And the Indians had an abundance of resources, were living the good life, and reasonable minds among them pointed out that in a land of plenty, everybody could live in peace. Well, as it turns out, the reasonable minds among the Indians were dead wrong, and they pretty much all wound up being dead for their mistake, along with their friends, neighbors, families, tribes and way of life. It remains to be seen whether the former masters of this continent will succeed in clawing their way back to the top via the casino business, and since they took Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals, that looks like their last best chance.
The other big mistake that the Indians made, besides not thinking things through well enough at the very beginning, was to think too much later on. Despite overwhelming evidence that the European invaders were real bad news and not to be trusted, generation after generation of Indian leaders kept trying to reach an accomodation of some kind with them. (Well, not too many generations; once the ball got rolling, it really didn't take the invaders all that long to wipe the continent "clean" of the Indian way of life, and most of them, too.) But we know how well the "appeasement" and "co-existence" approach worked out for the Indians. One of them... probably Red Cloud... summed it all up very succinctly by saying something like: "Of all the promises the white men ever made, they only kept but one. They promised to take our land, and they took it."
The definition of "insanity" is sometimes given as "trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." But another way of putting it is "if we try hard enough to make them see reason, they'll change."
You would think that perhaps, having witnessed what happened to the Indians from a front-row seat, we might have learned a couple of lessons from their experience. Have we? Well, let's consider. How about the Seven Generations thing? Well, deficit spending is a way of life for us, individuals and government alike, and the one thing that Congress absolutely won't touch are benefits for the elderly, who have a tendency to vote against people who even mention the idea. And when the government does make cuts, it favors cutting funding for things like the space program, which isn't expected to pay off for a while (say those who are obstinate or stupid enough to fail to recognize that it already has paid off with scientific advances that have transformed civilization.) Corporations for decades have juggled their books and finances to show quarterly profits, at the expense of funding modernization of their facilities and research and development that doesn't have an immediate payoff. And, as for the wise American people, many of them are living from paycheck to paycheck, and about half of them have nothing at all saved for the time when they will no longer be bringing in a paycheck.
If that doesn't convince you, take a peek out of the window the next time you're downtown or on the freeway at all the lumbering "SUV's" with one passenger in them, blasting fossil fuel emissions into what's left of the atmosphere. Does that look like we're thinking seven generations ahead? And if you think electric cars are the answer, ask yourself this: What's in those batteries, and how do we dispose of them when we're through?
Second question: Are we crazy? (Collectively, I mean.) Is our world view realistic, or are we indulging in denial and wishful thinking when we careen merrily along, serene in our assurance that the future will take care of itself without any immediate, painful sacrifice on our part? Well, there are more than 7 billion people in the world right now, 300 million of whom live in the U.S. For those of you who are mathematically challenged, I'll tell you that that translates into less than 5% of the population of this planet. It is estimated that this 5% of the planet is currently consuming 25% of the world's available resources. Much of the rest of the world is wallowing in disease and poverty. What happens when the 6.7 billion "others" in the world demand their fair share of those resources? And what happens when there are 9 to 11 billion people in the world, as is projected to be the case by 2050? Some of you may already have guessed what I think about Question Two. Yes, we're nuts.
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