Values for the seventh generation

It’s the time of year when fawns and goslings and cygnets and sandhill crane colts are adulting, i.e., growing into their adulthood. It’s never been very clear to me how much of animal behavior is genetic and instinctive versus learned from adults of the species. If anyone has a recommended source on this topic, please leave a comment.

almost grown Canada geese goslings and adults

Photo by J. Harrington

I recently watched a video of our almost four year old (more than 3 1/2) granddaughter learning to lead and ride a pony that’s several orders of magnitude larger than she is. She looks comfortable and unfazed both in front of and on top of the pony. I think I was in my late teens or early twenties before I took riding lessons. I never did get really comfortable on a horse.

Part of today’s theme is prompted by an article I recently read on Slashdot: Should Kids Still Learn to Code in the Age of AI? The phrase that caught my attention is “... the idea that learning to program is the cornerstone of computational thinking and an important gateway to the problem-solving, critical thinking, and creative thinking skills necessary to thrive in today's digitally driven world.” It left me wondering what other gateways are there in today’s curricula to problem solving, critical thinking and creative thinking and where does humanism and characteristics that define humanity fit in?

Before I cane across the Slashdot trigger, I was considering getting my hands on a copy of The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience, although first I need to finish reading The Systems View of Life. I’m about 2/3rds of the way through at the moment. Recent events, compounded by a pandemic and four years under the rule of a wanna-be dictator, have made me concerned about the kind of future our Granddaughter and her cohorts will grow up in and if anyone can anticipate the kind of country she’ll have to live in when she is grown up. It seems to me that the seventh generation principle becomes more challenging to apply the greater the rate of change triggered by (mostly) human factors.

All of the preceding is a convoluted and long-winded way of expressing my view that we have become too short-sighted and focused on the cost of things rather than their value. For some years now I’ve tried to be guided by a speech of a former presidential candidate, Bobby Kennedy. Here’s an essential excerpt:

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

These are the values I want to see expressed by any presidential candidate that wants my vote. These values are timeless.

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Gary Snyder
From: Turtle Island

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