Page 155 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

144 Chapter Five

Americans endeavor to take into account “seven generations” of both ances-
tors and descendents. In the words of Chief Oren Lyons:

We are looking ahead, as is one of the first mandates given to us chiefs, to make
sure and to make every decision that we make relate to the welfare and well-be-
ing of the seventh generation to come, and that is the basis by which we make
decisions in council. We consider: will this be to the benefit of the seventh gen-
eration? That is a guideline. 11

Recall also the proscriptions against usury in Greek, Hebrew, and me-
dieval moral/legal codes. To completely ban interest payments is, in effect,
to set a zero rate of interest, in which case there is no discounting of the
future at all. Present and future, in that circumstance, are valued equally—
ecologically speaking a condition far superior to our present mode of val-
uation. The tragedy of human history, from an ecological point of view, is
that nonpecuniary societies succumbed time and again to the present-
mindedness of pecuniary cultures.
In this light one must question whether activities with long-term, often ir-
reversible consequences—global warming, ozone depletion, the extinction of
species, the exhaustion of resources, the buildup of nuclear stockpiles with
half-lives of thousands of years, and so on—should continue to be based prin-
cipally on monetary criteria. The price system, even when operating
“smoothly,” is an abysmally poor guide for making decisions concerning
long-term survival.
There are other cultural consequences, too, stemming from the “bias” of
money as a medium of communication. Present-mindedness means that edu-
cators and governments funding educational systems favor “mechanized
knowledge” (Innis’ term) over history, the classics, and other of the humani-
ties. Moreover, the bias of present-mindedness inherent to the price system
may well be a factor in the demise of the extended family and the propensity
of people in pecuniary cultures to move every few years in accordance with
job opportunities. Trivializing the future could go a long way toward ex-
plaining remarkable increases since World War II in personal and household
debt. Habitual and continuous tobacco and drug use, as opposed to ceremo-
nial usage, is certainly consistent with “present-mindedness.”
Harold Innis, of course, made “a plea for time.” He wrote: “The modern
obsession with present-mindedness . . . suggests that the balance between
time and space has been seriously disturbed with disastrous consequences
to Western civilization.” Innis’ “plea for time” is consistent with a call in
12
our day for renewed environmentalism, and our response, in part at least,
must entail a reduction in the predominance of money as a mode of com-
municating.