What Will Become of Our Children’s Future?

“The Peacemaker taught us about the Seven Generations. He said, when you sit in council for the welfare of the people, you must not think of yourself or of your family, not even your generation. He said, make your decisions on behalf of the seven generations coming, so that they may enjoy what you have today.”

Oren Lyons (Seneca)

Faithkeeper, Onondaga Nation

This principle of the 7^th Generation dates back to the 12^th Century to the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy. A generation is generally considered to be 25 years, so that’s 175 years. The 7^th generation principle was so important to Native American cultures that it was codified in the Iroquois Great Law of Peace. It is believed, this teaching is embraced by all Native American tribes, First Nations Tribes and indigenous tribes throughout the world. Unfortunately it is clearly not embraced by most governments, corporations or people in the world and this especially applies to Americans. Few Americans look at the impact they have on the future of their children or the children of the world. This has been clearly shown in our very slow to no response to act on Global Warming.

Ted Kennedy said to Congress in 2008: “I cannot look into the eyes of my grandchildren and tell them: Sorry, I…can’t do anything about it.”

Barbara Boxer, at the National Press Club: Will our grandchildren know the thrill of holding their child’s hand watching with excitement a towering snow-capped mountain or awesome, calving glaciers?”

Arnold Schwarzenegger, signing new energy legislation: “I want to make California No. 1 in the fight against global warming. This is something we owe our children and grandchildren.”

Joe Lieberman: “Shame on us if 100 or 200 years from now our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are living on a planet that has been irreparably damaged by global warming, and they ask, ‘How could those who came before us…have let this happen?’”

David Attenborough: “If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something.”

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, addressing his Climate Change Advisory Group: “By committing ourselves to action in Illinois, we can help minimize the effects of climate change and ensure our children and grandchildren inherit a healthy world full of opportunity.”

Sir Richard Branson, chair of Virgin Airways: “I think businesses can indluence leaders thwo are not worrying enough about our grandchildren.”

Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife in Colorado: We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ‘cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

This idea that humans could fundamentally alter the planet is new. This notion was asked by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius a century ago regarding evaporating our coal mines into the air. Bill McKibben in his book, “eaarth, Making a life on a Tough New Planet,” “This idea about global warming is a huge experiment. We’ve never watched it happen before, so we didn’t know how to proceed.”

This notion that we could not alter the planet or it being a huge experiment, not watching it happen before, is nonsense. Although what is currently happening is new to us, the rapid melting of the Arctic and Antarctic; the lost of many glaciers; the extreme weather that is occurring with increased number and strength of tornados; hurricanes; the increased amount of wildfires, floods and drought that are hitting many parts of the world; increased oceans levels and the increased levels of acidity in our oceans from carbon dioxide. And this is only just the top of the iceberg. What about the impact is will have on the social fabric of human life; the economic impact; the impact on our ecosystems and all life on this planet? Many scientist believe we are moving towards a mass extinct of many life forms on this planet. And it is due to our irresponsibility, our lack of connection to the planet and to all life, our blinded appetite and obsession for consumerism, for stuff. The choices we make to live in a synthetic world vs. living as one with the natural world, to see the natural world as part of our community to protect and preserve. We have seen what man can do in a very destructive way to our environment many times, but we seem to forget and continue with this destruction. Seeing what we are doing to our planet, to the natural world is a simple process of just being aware, being connected to our natural world and probably the most difficult for modern day man is seeing all life as sacred. It is a cop-out to say we didn’t know. The Native Americans knew, the First Nations knew, the Native Hawaiians knew, and all the indigenous cultures who still lived in their traditional ways knew. And now with the effects of climate change on top of us, we are still in denial of it and its impact on the world and to all life. We are at a point of no-return on many of the changes that have occurred recently by climate change due to our ignorance and selfishness.

Here are some ancient Indian proverbs you may want to read, think about and act upon:

“Treat the earth well.

It was not given to you by your parents,

It was loaned to you by your children.

We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,

we borrow it from our Children.”

“Humankind has not woven the web of life.

We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together.

All things connect.”

Chief Seattle, 1854

“When all the trees have been cut down,

when all the animals have been hunted,

when all the waters are polluted,

when all the air is unsafe to breath,

only then will you discover you cannot eat money.”

Cree Prophecy

“You must teach our children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.”

Unknown

In ending, if we choose to do nothing, we will leave our children and grandchildren with a very uncertain world.

And now in 2022 we seem to be doing very little. Climate change is here and is impacting the whole world.

Rick Theile

COME WALK WITH ME

By Rick Theile

Come with me my child, come walk with me. I must tell you something that my generation and generations past have done. What we have done will effect your generation and future generations to come, well into the future and beyond. It will change your life as it will your children and their children’s lives. It will impact humankind as we see and know the world today in ways that will be unknown to us. It will change all life on this planet for that matter—in the plants, in the trees, in the animals, to the land, in the rising oceans, and to the weather patterns. It will have a very profound way in how we live, forever, if we continue on the path we have chosen for ourselves.

You are still very young my child and what I am about to tell you may seem like only a bad dream that once awake will disappear, or watching a science fiction movie that becomes a reality. Unfortunately, in my heart I believe this to be a true vision that will happen if we continue to do nothing about how we treat our planet and how we treat all life on the planet.

I can say for most of us living in the United States and elsewhere in the modern day world who believed our world would provide us with limitless resources, we lived our lives in a delusional world of everlasting abundance. We truly didn’t know nor think about what we were doing, what negative impacts we were having on our planet. No one really knew. And now that we do know for the most part, whether we want to believe it or not, we still choose to do nothing or very little to change our ways—our relationship with the earth—even if it means our very survival as a species. We continue to live in this illusion we cannot let go of—a make-believe reality that is doing reprehensible harm to what gives us life and leaving our future generations with a potentially bleak and harsh environment to survive in.

I will briefly share with you my time growing up. I hope it will help you understand a little about my life at your age. It was at a time after World War II had ended when America had renewed energy, hope for growth, prosperity and a new beginnings—it was of what dreams were made of. We focused on the future and forgot the past. We were taught in school, on the radio and on television, to be part of the machine of progress. We were taught that America was the best and strongest country in the world and no other country compared. We considered our country as the leaders of the free world. Americans loved the ideals and values of what we thought America was and would become—they were exciting times growing up. We loved everything about being American. We gained this arrogance that we were the best, that we were unstoppable. We never stopped to think what America would have been like if the winds had turned and Germany and Japan had won the war.

I still find myself on occasion, going back in the past seeing and feeling those things that gave me so much joy and happiness. It spurred my imagination with endless possibilities of my future and what was to come. It seemed this could be found in America.

There were a few peoples back then who had the insight, the knowledge and wisdom to see the future. These people were the First People of this land and had occupied America for thousands of years prior to the colonization of America by the Europeans. We saw these indigenous peoples as primitive, salvages, and uneducated pagans. During my time they were a people of the past. One of these cultures, the Hopi, warned its people through the Hopi Prophecies to travel on the right road, the good road, rather than taking a road or way of life that only will lead to a life of deep misery in the end. These prophecies were not just for the Hopi People, they actually were for all of us—every man, woman and child who walks on this planet. These teachings were about respecting the earth and respecting all life.

As you and I are walking on this dirt path together, among the trees, listening to the voices of the birds singing, we have forgotten in our modern world that every step we take we make an imprint on the land. If we choose to walk with no direction, walking with a heavy foot, our footprints will begin to disrupt life around us. It will begin to scar and never return to what it once was. If we are careful where we walk, being considerate of other life, of what we may disturb on our path, our footprints will lay softly upon the earth in respect and reverence to all that is.

My child, I must tell you, I am very saddened to say, we have chosen the wrong path. We refused to listen to a growing voice of people telling us we must change our ways, but we continued walking on the wrong path. We refuse to hear the earth’s cries and the animal’s death songs. They too, were telling us, but we did not listen. We had become blinded by progress and wanting more.

I must tell you my child, I am very sorry for what we have done to your generation and to the future generations to come.

I am deeply sorry.

“While we may remember the sacredness of human beings, we have forgotten that the Earth is also sacred, and that its soul can speak to ours. If we were to understand this dimension of creation, we would realize that our guardianship of the planet means taking responsibility for its physical and its sacred nature, and their interrelationship. This responsibility was always understood by indigenous peoples and their spiritual leaders or shamans. Many of the rituals of daily life as well as their ceremonies, prayers, dances and songs were enacted for the purpose of looking after the sacred nature of creation, keeping the balance between the worlds. For example when the Pomo Indian people of Northern California wove baskets, the women would go out and pray over the grasses before they cut them. As they wove their baskets they would put the reeds or grasses through their mouths to moisten them, praying over them. The basket thus wove together the physical and the spiritual parts of life. All aspects of life were approached in this way, the warp and woof of the physical and spiritual woven together into the single fabric of life that was never anything other than sacred. Indigenous peoples saw their life as a communion with earth and spirit that nourished them and at the same time nourished creation, the two being so interwoven it would not have been possible even to think of nourishing the one without nourishing the other.”

~Author unknown

I wanted to republish this writing making some revisions to the original and to add to this writing. I also modified the title of the article. I wrote the original article in November 2013. It was published in July 2015.

Very little has been done to deal with the impact climate change will have on our planet in America because of the divisions we have created in our country as with our beliefs pertaining to this issue. More and more young people are becoming increasingly aware of what their future might be due to climate change and they are doing something about it—they are organizing and speaking out on this injustice to their future and the future of the planet, unlike most of the grown-ups who are not doing enough.

The reason I wrote this is again to bring awareness to the importance of the impact climate change will have on our planet and to all life. I asked the question, if I had children what would I tell them if the inevitable were to happen where we reached the point of no-return on Global Warming? And I began to write. I hope you will consider this same question and better yet, ask them what they think of what their future will be like if we continue doing nothing about Global Warming?