Pattern #17
Comments
We invite your participation in evolving this pattern language with us. Use the comment section at the bottom of this page to comment on its contents or to share related ideas and resources.
Pattern Card
Click to enlarge or download Pattern Card.
Download
To download the 70 pattern cards, an overview, and the complete Wise Democracy Pattern Language use the DOWNLOAD button.
Deep Time Stewardship
Credit: Bruce Rolff – Shutterstock
Wise people and societies do not trade long-term benefits for immediate gratification nor the lessons of the past for the impulses of today. We are all part of an immensely ancient and still unfolding learning adventure, alive in this moment. So help all people and groups play their evolutionary roles consciously and responsibly for future generations and the Earth.
Related: 4 Big Empathy, 37 Multi-Modal Intelligence, 40 Nature First, 57 Story Sharing, 62 Universal Intelligence, 67 Wholesome Life Learning, 68 Whole System in the Conversation
Going deeper …
This is an edited version of the video on this page.
“Deep time” refers to sensing deeply into the past, present and future.
The deep past refers to our 14 billion year evolutionary history as science describes it. It also refers to being aware, respectful, and appreciative of our ancestors and learning from them. It also refers to our history, considered deeply – not just “this country went to war with that country”, but history as lived by ordinary people, history that clarifies their quality of life, their experiences and relationships, and history as lessons for what we can do to avoid damage and enhance quality of life now and in the future. History is filled with lessons like that. Deep time understanding offers us deep and meaningful connections to our past.
Deep time awareness includes not being ahistorical, not thinking that everything important is what is happening now or that everything started when we were born. It is about sensing into what happened earlier, not just as history books with little connection to now, but as a lived reality. We are in the midst of a lived reality shaped by the lived reality that came before us.
The deep present is being fully present in the “here-and-now”, seeing clearly what’s going on now. It includes the future that exists in this now-ness – the possibilities, the tendencies and trends, the things we envision and long for. And this deep present can extend backwards and forwards in time, since all of time is embedded in the Now, as long as it is clearly sensed and seen in the Now.
The deep future we live in can extend over many generations or even to recognizing that our planet will one day be absorbed by the sun and turned to a crisp and disappear. Being fully present in deep time means taking our place in that unfolding time track.
Deep time is both an idea which puts our lives in perspective and a source of tremendous meaning, learning and guidance. It’s not just a mental model. Today is an essential part of deep time, but by itself – in just its most immediate forms – it is too narrow. Likewise, our self-interest is an important part of the larger needs of the world and of our community. But to narrow everything down to our self-interest is destructive, and to narrow everything down to what’s going on today and what I want today is likewise destructive.
We need to put our immediate needs and realities in their place, in the context of larger vistas of time, space and systems. Our stewardship is for the whole of deep time and for all of life, not just for us now.
Most people understand that current impulsiveness can endanger us, driving us to do things that will damage ourselves or others. Failure to think of the future, failure to ground ourselves in what we’ve been taught in the past that is potential guidance, virtually guarantees folly. Learning from the experiences of life is important. Immediate gratification and impulsiveness are not characteristics of wisdom. Our task is to apply these understandings to our own lives, to our communal lives and social structures, and to ask ourselves how we might create systems that embody this kind of stewardship of life for long-term benefit.
Because we seek long-term benefits as part of our working definition of wisdom in this pattern language. I find it particularly useful, in this regard, to hold evolution as a 14 billion year learning adventure. Even before there were humans, learning was being done by other organisms, by natural systems, even by physical laws. There are scientists today that are talking about the evolution of physical laws. At the beginning, in the first few seconds of the Big Bang, nothing remotely like today’s physical laws existed. We have a lot of physical laws that have been emerging over billions of years. The structure of the universe has been shifting and things that were not possible or likely have become more solid and real. There are ways of interacting and being in the universe which are always coming about and generating their own influence on everything else.
Video Introduction (16 min)
Examples and Resources
- Joanna Macy
Link-The Work That Reconnects
- Seventh Generation Link-Wikipedia
- Dowd/Barlow Great Story Beads Link
- Scenario work Link-Wikipedia
- Evolutionary activism Book
- Sustainability and regenerative cultures Article
- Shamanism Link-Wikipedia
- Shamanic sense of time
- Big History Link-Wikipedia
- Big History Project Link to Course
- History as lessons for today (e.g., Facing History and Ourselves Link)
- Our Children’s Trust – Link
- Drawdown Climate Solutions Link
- Participatory Sustainability (book) Link
Buddhist scholar and systems thinker Joanna Macy has a number of practices to help people become aware of their place in deep time – both lineage and context – and also of becoming responsible stewards and agents within that deep time.
The Native American idea that we should always guide our decisions by what we believe will benefit the seventh generation after us, which is an extension of acting for our children. I have understood the seventh generation concept as a deep time concept. One living individual has the memory of his or her great-grandparents and s/he is seeing in front of them their great-grandchildren. That is three generations before and three generations after – plus the person knowing those generations – so one person’s living experience can embrace seven generations. There are probably exceptions when somebody lives a very long life. Usually somebody has been around and had children and they have their own children. So seventh generation consciousness itself is a deep time past-present-future concept.
Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow talk about and promote what they call The Great Story of Evolution. This is called Big History in more academic circles. It covers the meaningful, science-based story of life from the Big Bang until now, continuing on into the future. They have this story symbolized in a set of beads, sort of like prayer beads or rosaries. Each bead represents some major event in the history of the universe, the history of the planet and of humanity. They even say you have options to add beads representing your own personal history, both the one of your family and the history of yourself personally. So you can carry and embody something that represents deep time consciousness.
Thank you so much for this tremendous pattern language resource. What a gift. When I think of deep time stewardship, I am immediately reminded of an essay by Brian Eno, called The Big Here and the Long Now (http://longnow.org/essays/big-here-long-now/). This essay, and the organization it sprouted, called The Long Now Foundation (longnow.org) are likely to be great resources for those who are browsing the pattern language and resonating with this particular concept. One of the ideas hatched by The Long Now Foundation is a 10,000 year clock – to help represent – and encourage people to think about – deep time. Even the principles of the 10,000 year clock (http://longnow.org/clock/principles/) resonate with many of the concepts you have here in the pattern language; principles like transparency, evolvability, scalability.