Children & Seven Generations Commitment

Joseph Chilton Pearce says that if we raise children in a nourishing, loving, and skill building manner, most of society's problems can be cured in two generations of remediation.

Our modern lives make this quite a challenge, with our need to work an extraordinary amount in order to earn a living and, in many households, have to additionally endure long and timely commutes. On top of that, the fragmentation of families to far flung cities eliminates the traditional extended family relationships that can be so powerful in raising children. In only one generation of this fragmentation, we can lose the wonders of the generation-to-generation transfer of parenting skills refined over the ages.

Reconsidering how our cities are planned and built can help bring back the needed resources of time and near-by family back to our lives. Indeed, good urban form can organize our lives productively in numerous ways, which we are only now realizing because of the paralyzing cost and emotional discontent of our having done it ineffectively for some time now. We are soaking in it.

THE CONNECTION

In addition to local inefficiencies, a new layer of our problem is now being recognized, though this layer has been building for decades. Global climate change and economic dislocations based upon petroleum market conditions are becoming the tail that wags our dog.

Tails are not supposed to wag dogs.

If the current equation of environmental, social, economic, and humanitarian conditions are not immediately and widely recognized as our call for self-preserving behavior, we will have--in a deterministic view--"cooked our goose," and it wasn't necessary at all.

With all of the new and elevated talk about sustainability, the reality is that our systemic equations for our use of water, petroleum, and other natural resources are essentially unchanged. This means that our systemic risk is essentially unchanged.These circumstances were not fated. In fact, the intellectual and physical resources necessary for us to live Utopian lives have been available with abundance. It is the personal, communal, and governance decisions that we have made that has become our tragic downfall.

I'm not sure how to explain that to my Godson, when it becomes time to tell him. I do know it is an indefensible condition that my generation presents to him, as his inherited future.

If you do not see a tragedy and call for change in the current circumstance, this blog probably contradicts your worldview.

The lives that we live and the places in which we live them are interdependent. Our cities and neighborhoods are robbing us of the wisdom, the wealth, and the daily enjoyment that we once had, that we deserve, and that we should have the presence of mind to fight to restore.

We have more things, more statistical wealth than ever. But in terms of our emotions, our state of mind, our daily happiness, and the reality of our children's future--we are impoverished. We have so much opportunity and manage it irresponsibly.

DOWN TO BUSINESS

Pario is committed to urban betterment. We understand, and cannot overestimate, the systemic challenges to changing the way we build and live in our human settlements, our cities and regions. Changes must be fully understood in their complexity and risk to organizations and individuals. Failures in the betterment process create yet more obstacles to desired change.

It is human nature and willfulness that has led us astray, and human nature and willfulness that resists favorable change--often based in disproportionate self interest and preservation.

Yet it is the same human nature and willfulness that enables change.

URBAN BETTERMENT

At Pario. we are unabashed proponents of change and urban betterment. Equally, we insist on the success of every effort, which includes success for the agents of change as well as all members of the community. This requires a mature balance and interdependent relationship between Pario's advocacy and Pario's research and consulting objectivity.

Understanding what is possible, and then understanding obstacles is the first step to change. Pario can determine what should be done, the obstacles to doing it, and then we can create a successful plan for implementing the desired change. 

At Pario, because we have been doing this for many years longer than our competitors, and often over a decade longer, we understand how to accomplish the current success that is imperative in order to continue betterment initiatives. In implementing sustainability, we have over the years found that the biggest challenge is not identifying what to do, but it is finding the best way to accomplish sustainable goals. The costs and benefits change constantly for organizations. Newcomers in the mainstream development industry do not have the experience or fundamental commitment to urban betterment. They do it as a trend. At Pario, urban betterment has been the essential mission for over 15 years.

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Native North American Indians are generally credited with the idea of seven generations thinking, or conducting ourselves today in a manner that does not compromise the lives and circumstances of future generations. This is not our invention, but like many we are compelled by it. At Pario, we have since 1995 applied a seven generations commitment to our urban development work.

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Not only should we think about our children for their benefit, we should also do it for our own. Children are also consumers, managers, and citizens. Youth do a lot to energize, support, and shape our own future. We need to not only nurture them but also to listen to them.