Thread: What about stewardship?

What about stewardship?

Stewardship-- the conducting, supervising, or managing of something... the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care...

Stewardship is a word used often in the Bible and was at one time used often in England. It was used in England because the youth of the landed aristocracy was taught that they were responsible for the care of the family properties in such a way that they passed on to the next generation an inheritance equal to but more appropriately larger than that received. Each generation was not the owner but was the steward for the family estates. Any individual who squandered the inheritance was a traitor to the family.

I am inclined to think that each human generation must consider itself as the steward of the earth and therefore must make available to the succeeding generations an inheritance undiminished to that received.

In this context what does "careful and responsible management" mean? I would say that there are two things that must be begun to make the whole process feasible. The first is that the public must be convinced that it is a responsible caretaker and not an owner and secondly the public must be provided with an acceptable standard whereby it can judge how each major issue affects the accomplishment of the overall task. This is an ongoing forever responsibility for every nation but for the purpose of discussion I am going to speak about it as localized to the US.

Selfishness and greed are fundamental components of human nature. How does a nation cause its people to temper this nature when the payoff goes not to the generation presently in charge but to generations yet to come in the very distant future? Generations too far removed to be encompassed by the evolved biological impulse to care for ones kin.

How is it possible to cause a man or woman to have the same concern for a generation five times removed as that man or woman has for their own progeny?

I suspect it is not possible, but it does seem to me to be necessary to accomplish the task of stewardship.

The questions I would like to ask everyone are:

Do you agree that the acceptance of stewardship responsibility for this planet is vitally important?

Do you have a different idea whereby this stewardship might develop?

The idea of stewardship appeals to me as a role and as a societal need. But I think as a word it has a vagueness that would need refinement (stewards in what sense, and of what, and what about the multiplicity of conflicting needs and resources, is it a personal role or a social role or a legal role, are we restricting this to ecological stewardship or expanding it to humanitarian issues or economics, how are the appropriate boundaries and concerns of stewardship arrived at and by whom) beyond the capacity of a single post. I feel we are each a steward in life of our values, with an obligation live them and to pass them on. I would disagree that those values are or should be the same for all, but that the behaviors derived from those values must be bound by legality, and a moral consideration for others.