Considering the Seventh Generation

I attended a chamber luncheon today and our speaker was the head of our county government, Judge Ed Emmett. He has a background in transportation and is so extremely knowledgable about regional transportation issues and that is a big, big thing here in Houston. Home of 4 million ++ distracted drivers! He speaks in layman's language about what our challenges are in our county, the third most populous in the country. He spoke today about the financial challenges facing Harris County, to a lesser degree than many places, and what that means for the future. One of the members of the audience asked how elected officials can communicate to and educate the public about the need for additional funding to support the needed changes over the next decades. All of this conversation got me thinking about how leadership isn't just a "here and now" endeavor. Leadership should take in to account the long term:

"In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine."
—Great Law of the Iroquois

Aren't we in the pickle we're in now because we've become focused on the immediate at the expense of that seventh generation? Enron being an extreme example of focusing on short term gain and the ever increasing share price, seems to me to be a symptom of a much larger sickness.

The health care/insurance reform debate would be another example: so much fear of change in the short term and little consideration of long-term ramifications. So goes Social Security, Medicare, environmental issues and so on. You can see it in our local communities where development is created without true consideration of long-term impacts, without a master plan or community discussion of what people really want.

I'm not just pointing the finger at everyone else. The finger is also pointed squarely in my own face. In my life I've been just as guilty of not considering how my actions have long term consequences. I like to think I've grown in my ability to discern: we only use organic products on our yard, we compost, we recycle, we drive cars that get relatively high mileage, we use CFL bulbs. We try to think before we buy, but we truly don't know the footprint we create. We also don't hold our government accountable for considering that seventh generation, because truth be told we're not thinking about them either.