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Ten Key Values

Future Focus

By Brent McMillan

During the mid-1970s arose an understanding that we are part of nature, not above it, and that all our massive structures of commerce – and life itself – ultimately depend on wise, respectful interaction with our biosphere. Any government or economic system that ignores that principle is ultimately leading humankind into suicide. Green politics demands that we extend our moral thinking to consider how far do we have a moral obligation towards future generations to ensure that they inherit a planet fit to live on? Like the Iroquois, Greens seek a society where the interests of the seventh generation are considered equal to the interests of the present. We must reclaim the future for our children and ourselves.

Greens are appalled at the stupidity and human arrogance of those who would claim to be able to store nuclear waste safely over the long-term. How can we deal effectively with something that has a half-life of 10,000 years? How many generations is that? We call for a complete phase-out of nuclear power, beginning immediately. We call for the repeal of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, of the Price-Anderson Act, and of the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.

How can we induce people and institutions to think in terms of the l9ong-range future, and not just in terms of their short-range selfish interests? How can we encourage people to develop their own visions of the future and move more effectively toward them? How can we judge whether new technologies are socially useful and use those judgements to shape our society? How can we induce our government and other institutions to practice fiscal responsibility? How can we make the quality of like, rather than open-ended economic growth, the focus of future thinking?

The lack of competent future focus results in mere reformism. Attending to consequences will only buy (ever decreasing amounts of) time; what is required is an attack on the causes, and one fundamental cause of our problems is the attempt to grow beyond limits imposed by the earth itself. Our actions and policies should be motivated by long-term goals. We must counterbalance the drive for short-term profits by assuring that economic development, new technologies, and fiscal policies are responsible to future generations that will inherit the results of our actions.

There is a way forward, but it is surely not an easy one. The way forward must deal both with the vacuum between leader and led and with the interlocking problem of the “invisible” domination at the top by the corporate moneyed elite. Both, fully and together, must be joined in the struggle for change. Otherwise, there is a tendency to frame the problem in either a reformist or a pseudorevolutionary way.

What individual Greens might well think about is that our vocation is to grow into a new type of Warrior. Not in the sense of the old macho ideal of aggressive dominator-type behavior, but a serious readiness to commit ourselves to struggle in the realization that it is a profound choice we are making and a profound responsibility we are taking on. Such realization is at the core of leadership.

We are careful though not to allow our leaders to emerge as targets. We have learned the hard lessons taught by the civil rights movement that when people emerge as leaders they can become the prey of the dominant system. We keep our leadership diffused over many that are capable. It’s important for us as we gain experience and strength to empower others and to be constantly “working ourselves out of a job.”

As the empire builders gobble each other up, to create the last big dinosaur before they collapse, the cracks in the system will get bigger and bigger. More and more people will find themselves dropped from basic services. This is where our opportunity lies. We need to create the institutions of the next culture, the one that will replace the empire-building culture, now!