Responsibility of Grandparents and Elders:
We grandparents may be the only means by which our grandchildren will come upon this ancient wisdom about how to be happy in old age. So retirement can be a time of ho’ponopono, making things right, talking things out, resolving conflict, miscommunication, and reconcile misunderstandings, repairing relationships, reestablishing trust, mutual-respect, and harmony - whatever it takes to recover the happiness we want to be able to enjoy at life’s end, and owe to our children as well.
And even if we are not inclined to do this for ourselves, then perhaps we should do it for our children and grandchildren – even and especially those who aren’t born yet – for much of what the future holds depends on our actions now. We have too long left the education of our young to institutions, when what they need most they can get best from us and other living human beings who will pass on what they’ve learned. As we’ve said, for all the hundreds of teachers that a young person has in a lifetime, they have only a very few parents and grandparents.
“In a society where the accumulation of knowledge is one of the reasons why Elders are revered, it was a good idea for a person who passed forty to start paying attention to things….so people, as they got older, actually became more and more responsible for being a repository of knowledge of the group.”(OI, Mohawk, 173)
“Grandmothers are funny because they think in very connected ways. If you’ve reached grandmotherly age you have discovered you can’t find a central thought no matter how hard you try. And you say, Oh my God, I’m losing my mind. And you are, and isn’t that wonderful because you’re plugging into mindfulness, the great big ones, the huge systems that are always interacting and interconnecting.” (OI, Allen, 143) “So the grandmother system is the one that says okay, you’ve got to feed the kids, all the kids… You’ve got to keep everything in balance…you’re a grandma and that’s what you do… We go off in search of the miraculous and yet we are it.” (OI, Allen, 143) Just as “the grandmother moon, the one that regulates the birth of everything on the earth,” (OI, Nelson, xix)
“Someone has to ask those questions…(OI, Armstrong, 71) “How is it going to impact my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, what’s the land going to look like in their time?” (OI, Armstrong ,71)
Need to “maintain the connection between the elders and the youth.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 114) Necessary “to keep the language alive in the speakers themselves.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 113) Ideal “to partner a fluent elder with a tribal language learner.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 113) “grassroots Indigenous language keepers…”
“They’re all [still] dancing!” But “they don’t know why they’re dancing.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 114-115)
“Someone has to ask those questions…(OI, Armstrong, 71) And others, like “How is it going to impact my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, what’s the land going to look like in their time?” (OI, Armstrong ,71) “Did humanity take a wrong turn? Does humanity learn from its mistakes? Are we facing an evolutionary dead-end? Or is this disorder subsumed under a larger order?” (OI, Nelson, 7) So as we said earlier, our own education ought to be from the get go - or baring that, as soon as we realize what we’ve been missing - about what we owe our grandchildren, and how to enhance the quality of the future we deliver them into. As Indigenous people would have us remember, “Part of our spiritual preparation…is as ancestors. It’s the challenge that all of us face who are alive on earth today. How do we prepare to be ancestors of future people?”(OI, Parhuli, 316) The answer is, we do it “by planting the seed in each generation to go to the source of life itself, and to learn to protect those natural-relationships that allow us to be self-determined.” (OI, Parhuli, 314)
Education for Democracy of All Creatures We must ask at last, “What is in the best interest of future generations of the peoples of the world and of other species of the world.” (OI, Mohawk, 58) “Our education system is the natural environment, it becomes the educational tools for our children, and it is our school.”(OI, Sam, 40) “Horses and cows can tell what’s good for them. So can we if we listen to our bodies and our instincts.” (OI, Mohawk, 175) Likewise, “Planting and agriculture is hard work…but it’s great training for character. It’s great training for becoming adult and becoming responsible, the best training, really. But getting back to agriculture is hard to these days. There will come a time, however, when only those that know how to plant will be eating.”(OI, Lyons, 24) As Plato wrote long ago, the real challenge for democracy, and now for all of humanity, is to keep power out of the hands of those who are in love with it. Which begins with learning to tell the difference in good and bad reasoning, in who is telling the truth, and who is lying, in short, the difference in the good guys and the bad guys. This is what the search for truth really amounts to and why philosophy was born with democracy – because the challenge is to improve our BS meter! As the ancient prophesies predicted, with any luck, “the League of Peace” (OI, Forest, 231) that is, “the Iroquois form of government” “…will return to all the Americas.” (OI, Forest, 231) “to bring back…a higher consciousness…He will shake all of the old patriarchal paradigms by bringing the people true ways of how to govern themselves and take back their freedom.” (OI, Forest, 231)
“this new consciousness will help us rethink terms like…progress…rethink what capitalism can mean…redefine it… We have to redefine how wealth is produced and distributed.”(OI, Rivera, 254-255) …” -“This may well lead us to new ways of ‘seeing,’ ‘reading,’ ‘feeling,’ ‘thinking,’ ‘creating,’ and ‘living’.” (OI, Alarcon, 275)
“Hopefully it’s an idea whose time has come.” (OI, Mohawk, 58)
So “let’s put our minds together to see what kind of life we’ll give our children.” (OI, Mohawk, 131)
We grandparents may be the only means by which our grandchildren will come upon this ancient wisdom about how to be happy in old age. So retirement can be a time of ho’ponopono, making things right, talking things out, resolving conflict, miscommunication, and reconcile misunderstandings, repairing relationships, reestablishing trust, mutual-respect, and harmony - whatever it takes to recover the happiness we want to be able to enjoy at life’s end, and owe to our children as well.
And even if we are not inclined to do this for ourselves, then perhaps we should do it for our children and grandchildren – even and especially those who aren’t born yet – for much of what the future holds depends on our actions now. We have too long left the education of our young to institutions, when what they need most they can get best from us and other living human beings who will pass on what they’ve learned. As we’ve said, for all the hundreds of teachers that a young person has in a lifetime, they have only a very few parents and grandparents.
“In a society where the accumulation of knowledge is one of the reasons why Elders are revered, it was a good idea for a person who passed forty to start paying attention to things….so people, as they got older, actually became more and more responsible for being a repository of knowledge of the group.”(OI, Mohawk, 173)
“Grandmothers are funny because they think in very connected ways. If you’ve reached grandmotherly age you have discovered you can’t find a central thought no matter how hard you try. And you say, Oh my God, I’m losing my mind. And you are, and isn’t that wonderful because you’re plugging into mindfulness, the great big ones, the huge systems that are always interacting and interconnecting.” (OI, Allen, 143) “So the grandmother system is the one that says okay, you’ve got to feed the kids, all the kids… You’ve got to keep everything in balance…you’re a grandma and that’s what you do… We go off in search of the miraculous and yet we are it.” (OI, Allen, 143) Just as “the grandmother moon, the one that regulates the birth of everything on the earth,” (OI, Nelson, xix)
“Someone has to ask those questions…(OI, Armstrong, 71) “How is it going to impact my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, what’s the land going to look like in their time?” (OI, Armstrong ,71)
Need to “maintain the connection between the elders and the youth.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 114) Necessary “to keep the language alive in the speakers themselves.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 113) Ideal “to partner a fluent elder with a tribal language learner.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 113) “grassroots Indigenous language keepers…”
“They’re all [still] dancing!” But “they don’t know why they’re dancing.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 114-115)
“Someone has to ask those questions…(OI, Armstrong, 71) And others, like “How is it going to impact my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, what’s the land going to look like in their time?” (OI, Armstrong ,71) “Did humanity take a wrong turn? Does humanity learn from its mistakes? Are we facing an evolutionary dead-end? Or is this disorder subsumed under a larger order?” (OI, Nelson, 7) So as we said earlier, our own education ought to be from the get go - or baring that, as soon as we realize what we’ve been missing - about what we owe our grandchildren, and how to enhance the quality of the future we deliver them into. As Indigenous people would have us remember, “Part of our spiritual preparation…is as ancestors. It’s the challenge that all of us face who are alive on earth today. How do we prepare to be ancestors of future people?”(OI, Parhuli, 316) The answer is, we do it “by planting the seed in each generation to go to the source of life itself, and to learn to protect those natural-relationships that allow us to be self-determined.” (OI, Parhuli, 314)
Education for Democracy of All Creatures We must ask at last, “What is in the best interest of future generations of the peoples of the world and of other species of the world.” (OI, Mohawk, 58) “Our education system is the natural environment, it becomes the educational tools for our children, and it is our school.”(OI, Sam, 40) “Horses and cows can tell what’s good for them. So can we if we listen to our bodies and our instincts.” (OI, Mohawk, 175) Likewise, “Planting and agriculture is hard work…but it’s great training for character. It’s great training for becoming adult and becoming responsible, the best training, really. But getting back to agriculture is hard to these days. There will come a time, however, when only those that know how to plant will be eating.”(OI, Lyons, 24) As Plato wrote long ago, the real challenge for democracy, and now for all of humanity, is to keep power out of the hands of those who are in love with it. Which begins with learning to tell the difference in good and bad reasoning, in who is telling the truth, and who is lying, in short, the difference in the good guys and the bad guys. This is what the search for truth really amounts to and why philosophy was born with democracy – because the challenge is to improve our BS meter! As the ancient prophesies predicted, with any luck, “the League of Peace” (OI, Forest, 231) that is, “the Iroquois form of government” “…will return to all the Americas.” (OI, Forest, 231) “to bring back…a higher consciousness…He will shake all of the old patriarchal paradigms by bringing the people true ways of how to govern themselves and take back their freedom.” (OI, Forest, 231)
“this new consciousness will help us rethink terms like…progress…rethink what capitalism can mean…redefine it… We have to redefine how wealth is produced and distributed.”(OI, Rivera, 254-255) …” -“This may well lead us to new ways of ‘seeing,’ ‘reading,’ ‘feeling,’ ‘thinking,’ ‘creating,’ and ‘living’.” (OI, Alarcon, 275)
“Hopefully it’s an idea whose time has come.” (OI, Mohawk, 58)
So “let’s put our minds together to see what kind of life we’ll give our children.” (OI, Mohawk, 131)