(Page 25 of 26) - Constructing the Long Term: The Positive Case in Climate Policy and other Long Crises authored by Princen, Thomas.

Princen: Long term, ISA2007

2/27/2007

So if one picks PD or, say, Garret Hardin’s formulation of “the commons” (actually open

access) and its inevitable tragedy, as the primary metaphor for environmental policymaking then,
yes, we can predict short term thinking. But if we modify the metaphor, or choose a different one,
to make it closer to actual human behavior, then the situation looks different. Short-term thinking
no longer looks “natural” or normal or the default behavior. And, as Robert Bellah reminds us,
“metaphors may be appropriate or inappropriate, but they are inescapable.” Getting them right is,
among other things, an issue of good institutional design because, although “we create
institutions, they also create us: they educate us and form us—especially through the socially
enacted metaphors they give us, metaphors that provide normative interpretations or situations
and actions.”

One way to modify the image is to add a dimension to the prevailing metaphors: iteration

for PD, communication and self-organization for the commons (open access). The advantage of
this approach is that it requires no heroic assumptions—the very same narrowly self-interested
actors now act as if others and the future matter. But choosing a different metaphor may be more
fruitful, especially if it is more attuned to the question at hand, namely, living within global
ecological constraint over the long term. For this, then, and in light of the history of the discount
rate, I propose the metaphor of “saving the seed.”

The presumption that humans are inherently short term in their thinking derives from two

intellectual traditions. As discussed, the economistic addresses time issues via interest and
discount rates, offering the bank as the metaphor: what return would you expect if you gave up
use of your money for a period of time (interest rate); and by how much would you diminish a pot
of money if you could receive it now rather than in the future (discount rate). Maybe the financial
metaphor for humans’ valuing of the future is apt in commercial transactions and other
commercial exchanges. But the issue at hand is not, in the first instance, commercial: it is
exchanging, organizing, and living, all within immutable ecological constraints. So for the
normative purpose of nudging decision making away from the short term and toward the long
term, I suggest a metaphor from agriculture, rather than finance—saving the seed. Other settings
may work as well—parenting, care of the elderly, community building, establishing a personal
legacy, writing a constitution. But I choose seed saving because the seed is the quintessential
activity that ties human need (eating) to the land, or, most broadly, to the biophysical (producing
and reproducing). What is more, it is an activity that has stood the test of time—some 15,000
years anyway. So what is the metaphor of saving the seed?

To sit in a hut in the middle of winter, stomach aching from hunger, and look at, but not

touch, the seed for next season’s crop, is perhaps the supreme act of restraint. It’s not denial, not
sacrifice (in the negative sense of the word). It’s doing without now so as to ensure a harvest, and
hence survival, later. That it has happened a million times across cultures and across millennia
attests to its potency, its ubiquitousness, its centrality in organized, settled societies. Of course,
there were those who could not resist the temptation, but they were selected out, at least culturally
if not biologically. Protecting the seed has been essential to survival and reproduction of the
family and the community, likely entire societies.

The enactment of “saving the seed” begins with the annual planning—deciding which

crops, where will they be planted, how much land will be cleared, how much left fallow. After
planting, seeds are harvested from select plants and stored in secure containers.

The practice is universal, from the most primitive to the most technologically

sophisticated societies. It is a practice that spans seasons, years and lifetimes. And it is continuous
and cyclic—one is always planning for, growing, saving and planting seed. One might infer an
implicit time frame of a season, but because the process is continuous and cyclic, the implicit
time frame is actually the indefinite future. So this metaphor is inherently planful, unlike the
banking metaphor which only requires a numerical calculation. It implicitly takes for granted that
humans can sketch out a course of action in time and space that helps ensure their survival. Such

“Introduction: We Live Through Institutions,” in Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and

Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), quote on p. 12.