Why 500 years?

I have never written a blog before.  And for a long time, I didn't think that I would.  I had a journal for writing down personal observations, and did plenty of writing for my academic work.  But then, during the last class of a freshman seminar about environmental anthropology, I had an idea that I wished I had come up with much sooner. 

We were discussing the historical short-sightedness necessitated by contemporary capitalism, which has basically crippled any efforts at passing, let alone implementing international environmental legislation.  Personally, I always think "grassroots" or "bottom-up" solutions by small groups of thoughtful people with deep local knowledge are preferable anyway.  So I brought up the idea that really long-term planning was necessary.  In fact, we probably need projects that last longer than a single human life.  This led to the question, what would a 500-year project look like?  What kinds of institutions do we already have that could sustain such a project?

I chose 500 years as a somewhat arbitrary number, but it is also a useful one.  It has been roughly 500 years since Columbus' arrival in the new world.  That is where we could trace the origins of a globalized world system driven by capitalism.  Many of the major environmental and social problems we face today are a legacy of these last five centuries.  Now I don't believe people thought, "hmm, what can we do that would really mess the world up?"  Nor have I found anything in my academic research, which is concerned with the archaeology of globalization in some parts of the Pacific Islands, that suggests this was the case.  Rather, I think it was the distinct lack of planning that was the problem, and there is plenty of evidence for the ad hoc, improvised nature of colonialism.

So I wanted to explore the possibilities of what we could do if we did plan for the long term in the next 500 years.  I see this blog as a place to do this in a format that is publicly accessible, and where there might be some public discussion.  That said, I can't promise that every entry will be brilliant, focused, or even related to this topic.  Sometimes, I might write about random things that I think are thought provoking, funny, or absurd.  I have plenty of writing to do elsewhere, and that is my main focus.  But, once in a while if the inspiration hits me and I have a free moment, I will try to add a few lines to this.