Community Conversations

Stewardship

A Position Paper by Dr. Deland S. Anderson prepared for the Pratt Museum in conjunction with a Community Conversation on 17 September 2004.

More than two dozen people participated in the conversation on stewardship. Gathered around a campfire in the heart of Homer, we discussed the topic in a sincere and lively dialogue. The setting was the new center for the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, the completely refurbished cabin and grounds of the late Poopdeck Platt. We had all just enjoyed a sumptuous potluck dinner on a glorious, sunny afternoon. Somewhat reluctantly we shifted gears from private conversations to a public dialogue. But, as the sun sank toward the west, and the temperature dropped off, people began to gather closer and listen more intently.

The facilitator kicked things off by mentioning the ordinary meaning of the word stewardship, care taking, and connecting it to its root word, sty. A somewhat crass way to begin, but effective nonetheless, as it stimulated the group to begin to think about the meaning of a word they used frequently and often uncritically. Many of the people present employ the word stewardship in a technical sense, defined by the priorities and parameters of their professions or by their philosophical and political beliefs. Authoritative sources were cited, camp definitions were stated, synonyms such as care taking and caring were offered. But, the facilitator encouraged the group to consider what was in common between their definitions and the root definition of stewardship, which is to look after hogs in a sty. The resulting conversation took many turns, stalled in eddies occasionally, sometimes peaked in passionate pleas, but ultimately centered around a consensus: one participant described the logging practices of the Menomonee of northern Wisconsin which leave traces too subtle for the untrained eye to see. The chorus around the fire exclaimed, “Now, that’s stewardship.”

This sense of taking care of the land while making use of its resources was clearly the predominant meaning of stewardship subtending the conversation that night. However, it was certainly not the only sense. Others suggested that stewardship meant not touching the land, just protecting it from the “bulldozer crowd.” One participant implored the group to see stewardship as pervasive, limited not only to land use. It also includes a sense of community, even cultivation of the self. Stewardship, another stated, had to be conceived as multigenerational, long term, sustainable, permanent—to take the long view is to take care. In principle these various meanings of stewardship are compatible. We must have a long term view of caring for the land, including not touching some of it at all, and we must see that not only our economic and material culture depends on best use practices, but also our spiritual well being. To waste, to destroy, to defile is to pollute the self as well as nature. But in practice, the different meanings of stewardship can lead to confusion and conflict.

Even though the participants formed a fairly homogenous group of nature lovers, real differences emerged over particular practices. The most conspicuous instance was logging, especially clear-cutting. Most people responded to this term as though it were a dirty word. When someone with a background in forestry began to explain that there are better and worse methods of clear cutting, the group began to soften up a bit. The facilitator pointed to forest fires, landslides, avalanches, and volcanic eruptions as natural events that have effects that are roughly similar to those of clear cuts. Again the group bristled. Small clear cuts on stable ground were to be preferred to the vast, steep cuts so obvious to one who has flown over the Pacific Northwest, but no clear cuts at all is preferable even to small ones. One participant held out against the rest, insisting that there are positive effects to clear-cutting besides the revenue generated from the sale of timber and the use of the lumber or chips. Diversification of species is one such effect. This reflects the point of view of a representative of the Seldovia Native Association—We have to log off that beetle kill. It’s our responsibility. We have to take care of the land. When the spruce are gone, berries, grass, and alder move in. Who is to decide which is better?

The practice of logging brought up a major theme, namely, the economics of stewardship. Someone remarked that conservation was the pastime of the affluent. Another countered that conservation leads to affluence: Alaska is more valuable in the long run if left undeveloped rather than worked for short-term gain. Imagine, for example, what will happen to the common good after the development of the fabled gold prospect at Iliamna? A bust and long term environmental degradation will follow an economic boom. One participant encouraged the group to consider the real-world cost of producing such products as raw logs or an ounce of gold. Taxpayers subsidize private corporations to strip them of their common wealth and then pay the cost of cleaning up the mess left behind by the corporations. In most cases neither the political will nor the finances exist to do the clean up, and even if things are cleaned up, they never return to the way they were before. Superfund dollars, for example, do nothing to repair the emotional and spiritual damage done by toxic spills. Shortsighted, rip off and run attitudes must be replaced with visions of sustainability and quality of life if the covenant of stewardship is to be fulfilled. Several strategies were discussed.

One very simple strategy was offered: shop locally. Simply said, but difficult to implement. Not only money is involved; time, too, is required because one must resist the urge to shop at the SUPER STORE, the one stop shopping center that has everything from everywhere. More stops, more discretion, more education is required to shop locally. But the positive outcome is immediate: the local shopper is taking care of his/her place, and both town and planet benefit. For those who are intimidated by the thought of shopping locally, a farmers market appears every summer in Homer to help them make the transition to local living. Some are even encouraged by the example to homestead on their own urban or suburban properties, planting gardens and harvesting berries and fish. Another major strategy mentioned was legislating. Organizations such as the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust provide a means to legally bind people to the land—not the reverse. That is, instead of merely thinking of land as property belonging to an individual or corporation, land can be seen as a place that people belong to in common. To preserve land in its undeveloped state is to keep it for future generations, generations that must in turn keep the land. This enacts in law one of the leading values of stewardship.

An organization like the Cook Inlet Keeper employs the law in another sense, much to the same end. The Keeper is a so-called environmental watchdog organization, ensuring that the laws of the land are in fact upheld. All too often private entities thumb their noses at the people, depleting common resources while extracting private gain. Even politicians become scofflaws under the heady influence of ideologies of private wealth and the influence of major corporate lobbyists. And so “watchdogs” are required do slow down the process of resource extraction enough to allow public input, report when laws and agreements are violated, and to compile a baseline of information on the state of the environment relative to ongoing and future development. Various state, federal, and international agencies also serve to enforce laws regulating use, development and extraction. Sometimes, however, such agencies aggressively use legislation specifically designed to streamline overexploitation of resources and the environment.

Education is a crucial strategy in realizing the vision of stewardship. The Pratt Museum, Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, Kachemak Bay Conservation Society, Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Visitor Center, many teachers in local area schools, Homer Alaska Youth for Environmental Activism, etc. use education as a primary means of instilling a sense of caring for the environment. A constant vigilance and dedication is required to teach people the values of stewardship in the midst of a culture obsessed with world domination for the purpose of unlimited consumption. Reflection on three simple propositions illustrates this point: 1) too little is not enough, 2) too much is more than enough, and 3) enough is enough. Because of the economic teachings of Malthus and the biological theories of Darwin published in the 19th century, the first proposition is engrained in our society’s way of thinking. Both taught that scarcity is the basic condition of the world. Because of the philosophical concept of private property and profit advanced by 18th century thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith, the second proposition is actively fought against as wrong-headed. Instead, we are inclined to think that we have a God given right to unlimited wealth. And so the third proposition is ignored outright. People often say, they don’t want to be rich, they just want to have enough to be comfortable. But few people in this culture know what they mean by enough. If your house or garage is over full, you are a case in point. Perhaps a corollary is appropriate here: the less stuff you have, the better steward you are.

At one juncture the facilitator encouraged the group to consider the fears lurking behind these various strategies for instilling stewardship values. Arguments for long term thinking about the environment are often cast against a backdrop of fears about catastrophic collapses. Population explosion, over extraction of nonrenewable resources, pollution and resultant degradation of the environment, human generated changes in global climate, total war, and other threats are pointed to as reasons for fearing the loss of stewardship values. But, such an apocalyptic outlook can as easily be the cause of irresponsible lifestyles as the cure. End of the world scenarios, when conformed to, foster desperation and a sense of doom. In such a climate, people often respond with a “what the hell” attitude toward sustainability. They take what they can get for themselves, and ignore the big picture just because it is too dire. Educators also often act on fear. They fear an ignorant majority, people who do not care. But not caring is less often a result of ignorance than it is of willfulness. People don’t care because they have weighed the evidence and decided to live for the short term, to act on selfish gain rather than toward the common good. Perhaps, as one participant suggested, it’s not that people are stupid, but that they believe in principles, ideas, and practices that undermine stewardship, to wit, the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mythology of ruling the earth. In Western culture, the majority view is that man was appointed by God to subdue nature for his own ends. This mythology is being exported around the world under the banner of Freedom. FedEx, CNN, Shell, these and countless other global corporations propagate world domination by Western culture. Until this worldview is examined, criticized and replaced, little can be done to change the habits of modern humans.

The facilitator offered an ancient Roman myth as a means of beginning to think differently about our role here on earth:

Cura (care) was once crossing a river and noticed the richness of the soil on the riverbank. She sat down and began to form a human from the fertile silt. As she was finishing, the sky god Jupiter came along, grabbed the as yet inanimate figure, and breathed the breath of life into it. Jupiter, proud of the fact that he had given life to the human, said it should be named after him. Cura countered that, as she had formed the figure, it should bear her name instead. Just then Humus, or Earth, appeared and claimed that, since the human had been made from her, she should give her name to the new creature. An argument ensued, and finally Saturn, the god of time, was called in to arbitrate. His decision was that, since Jupiter had given his spirit to the human, when the human died, its spirit would return to the sky, the realm of Jupiter. And, as Earth had given of her body to form the human, when it died, its body would return to her. But, because Cura had originally formed the creature, as long as it lived, it would belong to her.

But, the Roman culture has long since vanished from the earth, and so this story about care is but a fable. It has no mythological force. Furthermore, caring is unlikely in a situation of displacement, a condition that is becoming ever more pervasive in the modern world. When people are displaced from traditional lands, or ancestral realms, they find it very difficult to have a real sense of attachment to the land. Thus, in order to care, people must reattach themselves to the land.

One strategy for fostering stewardship mentioned in the conversation is crucial to this endeavor. It is participation. People must participate with the land if they are to belong to it. And participation begins with listening. People must listen to the land, see it for what it is, not just for what it can be made into. The ways of doing this are myriad. All of the above mentioned local organizations provide avenues of participation in the land. Knowing the land, protecting the land, recreating in (with?) the land, subsisting in the land—all are ways of belonging to the land. Even painting a picture of the land or writing about it is to belong to it. In some cultures people don’t watch the sun rise—they sing it up.

Few people living today believe that the earth itself is a living, conscious, intelligent being that can take care of itself. But this has only been the case for a small fraction of human history. For vast eons, peoples throughout the world venerated the earth as a personal deity. But as urbanization spread around the globe, belief in “Mother Earth” was rooted out and replaced with male sky gods.

It is precisely because of this failure of mythology that we have come to form the concept of stewardship in modern times. Peoples still exist who see the earth as a single living organism of which they are a small part. They are virtual remnants, however, isolated amidst our mass culture. But we can learn from them if we listen. And what they say in their many different voices is surprising: the earth does not care about us—rather we belong to the world.

The first part of this wisdom is easier for us to grasp and to believe in than the second part. Nature doesn’t care where trees fall in the State Forest, for instance, let alone if any visitors hear them. Natural catastrophes of all sorts abound in our environment. And they are a clear threat to human life. Those who remember the ’64 earthquake, for example, recall being afraid of the terrible force of nature. And who in Florida today can think nature is fond of them when seemingly it is using an arsenal of hurricanes to brush them back? The Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Tuvalu in the South Pacific are disappearing under the waves. The community of Shishmaref on the Bering Sea is pulling up stakes to move back from a beach that has become uninhabitable for land based life forms. Who in Homer can forget the fall rains of 2002 or the summer sun of 2004? So, though nature in a sense gave birth to our species and has sustained it over countless millennia, it cares nothing for the individual, nor is it written that our species will survive into perpetuity.

Now for the second part: we belong to the world. Provisionally this means that the world provides us with all we need to live at present. We cannot live in the water or in the air or on other planets. We need earth beneath our feet, air above us, and water all around. But to say that we belong to the world is to say that we owe our existence to it. But how are we to pay such an ultimate debt? In what currency can we make the transaction? Simply put it is consciousness. In being conscious of the world as a whole, including our part in it, we fulfill it. According to the cosmology of the leading astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, humans are the necessary outcome of a random process. Known as the anthropic principle, this notion states that the universe came into being so that we could understand it. In fine, the Big Bang resulted in the theory of the Big Bang. This is a recursive proposition and that tends to make logicians nervous, but to others it is a great comfort because it tells us what our role is. Humans are meant to know that they belong to the world. How can such a simple truth be so hard to realize?

In closing let us reflect on two contrasting views of the world. The Pitjantjatjarra people of central Australia practice a way of life based on a simple principle: if the world is to sustain you, you must not change it. It sounds simple, but it requires a fine sort of wisdom. The key is to own nothing more than what you absolutely need. In traditional settings, women owned five objects and men owned nine, which included shelter, clothing, and items for subsistence and entertainment. Any more than that would throw their way of life out of balance, a way that for many millennia sustained them in an extremely harsh environment. Furthermore, they insist that if they leave their land, the world will cease to exist. Contrast the worldview that has driven the construction of the Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay, Japan. The Japanese government and multinational corporations have worked together to create a new international hub in the Osaka area in order to dominate the Asian air travel market. In the process of construction, a mountain was removed from the island of Honshu and dumped in the bay. Violent protests by the Japanese people have erupted on a number of occasions over the project. The venture is insolvent, overburdened by debt. The airport is sinking into the bay, just a little bit faster than the engineers calculated. There is no fix for what is wrong because what is wrong is the worldview.