Mother Earth is No Longer Accurate or Helpful

Below is a reflection and summary from Stewart Brand of the last Long Now talk by Bateson, who in reflecting on parenthood, proposed that the metaphor of "Mother Earth" is no longer accurate or helpful.  Human impact on nature is now so complete and irreversible that we're better off thinking of the planet as if it were our first child.  It will be here after us.  Its future is unknown and uncontrollable.  We are forced to plan ahead for it.  Our first obligation is to keep it from harm.  We are learning from it how to be decent parents.

More than with any other animal, human childhood dependency is enormously prolonged.  That's a burden on parents and the species, but that long childhood is what makes us so adaptive, so capable of hope and love, so able to think ahead.  It makes us the time-binding species.

Lately there's been a new development in the human lifecycle---extended adulthood.  In the twentieth century human lifespan got thirty years longer.  "Increased longevity," Bateson proposed, "may make a difference for the human species as momentous as our long dependent childhood."  A whole new stage of life has emerged---what Bateson calls Adulthood II.

In the old days a child would be lucky to have one living grandparent.  These days kids have seven or eight grandparents of various sorts, and their laps are not available because the oldsters have gone back to school, or eloped with somebody, or started new careers, or are off cruising the world.

So our elders will be active, but will they be wise?  It's not a given.  "Experience is the best teacher only if you do your homework, which is reflection," Bateson said.  Adulthood II offers most people the time to reflect for the first time in their lives.  That reflection, and the actions that are taken based on it, is the payoff for humanity of extended adulthood.