SUMMARY: The Haudenosaunee have had an outsized influence on US history, and it is time for them to influence us again. They have used a consensus-based democracy for almost 1,000 years by following two principles that it would behoove us to start using: (1) EVERYONE in the country is committed to the principles of democracy and (2) we make our political and economic decisions based on sustainability, the Seven Generations Principle. To save our democracy from the GOP Dystopia and ourselves from the climate disaster, we need to take collective action to influence undecided voters by joining organizations like Indivisible and 5 Calls.
KEY WORDS: Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Confederation, Consensus, Decision-making, Democracy, The Seventh Generation Principle, Sustainability, Indivisible, 5 Calls
COMMENT: What other organizations can you suggest for a concerned citizen to join to help educate and motivate voters in 2024? Let us know in the comments.
Our current social studies unit is the Haudenosaunee, which is what they prefer to be called, but the Iroquois to you and me because colonialism. They were a nation of Native Americans living in upstate New York along the shores of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Sea Way. Think the Finger Lakes area and the The Adirondacks.
Understanding the Haudenosaunee
They were badass. They were a confederation of five and later six nations. Their government worked through consensus. Literally, everyone had to agree on whatever decision the government was making. If they didn’t, the issue got kicked back to clans to discuss it further and offer up other options.
The amazing thing is that it worked. It worked for up to a thousand years, maybe. No one knows for certain. It worked so well that our Founding Fathers consulted extensively with them and incorporated parts of their governing model into our own Constitution. There is much that we can learn from them today. There are two things in particular that are pertinent to our situation today: (1) everyone had to accept the Great Law of Peace and (2) decisions had to be made with the people living seven generations in the future in mind.
The Great Law of Peace: A Model for Governance
The Great Law of Peace is essentially the constitution of the confederation. The lore of the nation states that The Peacemaker — the progenitor and propagator of the law — insisted that every member had to be absolutely dedicated and devoted to maintaining the peace and consensus decision making.
We all know that when choices are available to us, we have the ones we favor and the ones we disfavor. We are emotional decision makers. Our brain reacts immediately with I like it or I dislike it for just about everything we encounter. Of course, as we’ve seen in our recent political game of 52-card pickup regarding border shenanigans and funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, our like it reaction can be overridden by our ass.
The bill the Senate produced is a great example of how our government is supposed to work. We each give a little of something that we want in order to get the other side to accept a little something that they don’t like, and viola, progress. Fair is fair after all. If I give you something, you feel obligated to give me something. That is the way human beings work.
Enter the I2I4 the animatronic human caricature reject from Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the deal is shit canned.
The lesson from the Haudenosaunee, who have the longest continuously functional democratic government in the history of the world, so maybe they know something we don’t, is that you have to be committed to democratic principles to make democratic government work.
Commitment to Democratic Principles
If a major party isn’t committed to those principles and puts them before all other considerations, then the government cannot work. The only reason our society works is because we all agree to follow the laws… at least enough to make it work. Who among us hasn’t slow rolled a stop sign, made a turn without a signal, or shot a teenager on our front stoop because their mere presence (and race) made us fear for our lives?
Society, all societies work, because we all follow the rules. If a substantial proportion of us don’t follow them, then society slides into anarchy and it is the person willing to commit murder and mayhem who rules the day.
It isn’t that Republicans want to live in some Mad Max dystopia, they want to live in pseudo-democratic, single-party, minority-rule fascist oligarchic dystopia in which we all live Cancer Alley, drinking Flint water, using Texas utilities, getting a Florida education, a Go-Fund-Me-based healthcare system, and giving everything but enough money to maintain a slow-starvation subsistence to the one percent and their toadies until we die quickly and quietly and join the rest of the refuse on the scrap heap to be turned into Soylent Green.
Our problem is we have about 20 to 25% of the entire population or about 30 to 40% of the electorate who are enthusiastic about living that Republican dystopian dream because they KNOW it will hurt the communities of color first and worst, which makes their early painful deaths and miserable lives worth living.
Our biggest problem is that there is about 10 to 30% of the electorate who are blissfully unaware of that any kind of political problem or crisis exists or that there is doom on the horizon. Not just doom for our democracy but for the climate that makes life for seven billion people possible.
We really do have to get back to the Haudenosaunee principle that EVERYONE has to buy into, accept, and follow the principles of democracy.
The Seventh Generation Principle: Sustainability
The other Haudenosaunee lesson is the principle of the Seventh Generation. All political decisions were made with an awareness of the effect it would have on the seventh generation or in about two hundred years. Would we still be subsidizing fossil fuels and granting huge corporations pollution exemptions if we made our decisions based on the effects they would have two hundred years from now?
Inherent in the Seventh Generation principle is the idea of sustainability and investment in the future. Do we really want to die during horrific weather events because the one percent gluttoned themselves out by turning all of our natural resources to carbon and released it into the world?
Apparently, we do if we follow our actions and not our words. How much time and effort is put into opening the curtains and turning off the overhead lights on Earth Day every year so we can let in the maximum amount of heat and turn down the air conditioning to counter act it so we can save Gaia for future generations? How much time and effort do we put into personal individual recycling while throwing about 2.5 billion plastic single-use coffee cups EVERY SINGLE FUCKING YEAR?
One of the takeaways from coffee waste is that no matter how much you or I recycle, reuse, reduce, it isn’t going to stop climate change. It is at the corporate level that the climate will be saved, which means it is a government decision, a political choice.
Taking Action: Influencing Change
You really want to preserve our democracy and keep the world safe for human inhabitation? Then, we’ve got to go back to the basics of democracy. We have to elect people who will follow the chief principle of democracy: compromise. And, prioritize making sustainability the bedrock of all political and economic decisions.
It sounds easy, but the billionaire fueled disinformation frenzy to create their one percent utopia ninety-nine percent dystopia a reality is the going to be real difficult to overcome because one-third of the electorate is phubbing the rest of us consuming their billioaire-funded disinformation and narcissistic influencers on social media.
Between now and the election, our job, the 30 to 40% of the electorate who is actually concerned about the state of our democracy and sustainability has to find ways to influence the undecided, unconcerned, uninterested voters.
Getting Involved: Joining Indivisible and 5 Calls
Follow the link to Indivisible to find a group near you, their campaigns, events in your neighborhood, and download their handy-dandy booklet!
Sign-up for 5 Calls because they will help you contact your member of Congress and keep you abreast of on going issues that are important to you! Now, that is a good deal.
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Image Attribution
This image was generated using Poe’s StableDiffusionXL bot using the prompt, Film noir-style movie poster, The Coming GOP Dystopia +Native American imagery
The Psy of Life 
We did a history class unit in high school (oh, so long ago) which included a practical exercise on consensus.
It was impossible.
I recall it was a list of items, posited that your group is stranded on the moon and must travel to a different location for rescue, and included air tanks. A couple of the class members wanted to leave the air tanks behind because the were both useless and heavy.
Conclusion: bad or lacking education makes consensus even more difficult.
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Howdy M!
I’ve done a number of those things with groups of people. They rarely end well. Part of it is our training. Part of our culture is that we look at the world as a big pizza pie. If you get a slice, it means that there are fewer slices for me, and when all the slices are gone, there’s no more pie. We take the same mentality to our governance. If I give up something I want, then I have less. And, when we value ideology and rhetoric over facts and knowledge, then we are doubly lost.
As they say, there is no fixing stupid. Ignorance, yes, but stupid, no.
Huzzah!
Jack
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See: Forgotten Founders: How the American Indian Helped Shape Democracy by Bruce E. Johansen.
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Howdy Mike!
Thank you for the reference and author. I’ll be hoping to find something by Johansen in my library. It’s the kind of material that I enjoy reading.
To save America and the world, we need to shift our worldview. Remembering where we got our inspiration and start from certainly is a good place to start.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Maybe I missed it ~ it’s a great write-up, I thank you for it, but there’s a lot there and I just don’t see where you put the seventh generation principle to print, that …
In all of our deliberations we must consider the consequences of our actions even unto the seventh generation, unto our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren
Maybe I can’t see past the end of my nose …
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Howdy Ten Bears!
I didn’t use the usual language found in the Haudenosaunee literature outlining generations by referencing grandchildren. I paraphrased it as, “The other Haudenosaunee lesson is the principle of the Seventh Generation. All political decisions were made with an awareness of the effect it would have on the seventh generation or in about two hundred years.” Then, I immediately applied it to the fossil fuels industry that realized in the 1960’s they were destroying the planet for all of us and chose to keep on to this day.
In the language of our time, we call the concept sustainability. But, there are other applications. In general, it means making slow careful changes.
In all of the textbooks and other references the Haudenosaunee in school curricula, they don’t treat it as a functional way of governing. The emphasis is usually on how difficult it is to make consensus-based decision making when a large number of people are involved. The fact that they did it for a thousand years — literally — and are still doing it gets scant attention. The fact that the only way such a system works is if everyone decides that they will work towards consensus and be willing to give up whatever pet peeve they have or live with a burr under their saddle or whatever and agree with to accept whatever consensus develops gets scant attention. Other than saying the seventh generation principle made them cautious in their decision making and explaining the grandchildren’s grandchildren’s, grandchildren’s children, nothing more gets done with it. It’s treated as an anachronistic novelty, isn’t it cute, kind of thing.
It bugged me, but to make the post work with the 1500 stipulation that I impose on myself and our short-term TL;DR culture imposes, I had to devote more words elsewhere to make my points. My intention wasn’t to offend, it was to communicate enough of the Haudenosaunee system and its sheer awesomeness to help us understand the changes we need need to make now in order to make our system at least somewhat functional again.
Huzzah!
Jack
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It’s a great write-up, I thank you …
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You’re welcome. It means a lot coming from you. Much appreciated.
Jack
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Thank you for the ping back, man. It is much appreciated.
Jack
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Given the large percentage of our population who reach age 65 with no retirement savings or pension other than Social Security, and many of them having worked supposedly “middle class” jobs, not “poverty” jobs, trying to think of Americans making decision aimed 200 years in the future becomes a bit difficult. Add to that a political system that can’t think beyond the next election, and a financial/investment system that can’t think beyond the next quarterly report, and it gets even harder. So, I ponder what it is that must change, and how. We seem to be living in a system of systems rife with perverse incentives. Culture change; change of consciousness; These words come to mind, but those are not things that happen suddenly. They grow underground, out of sight, until popping out like mushrooms. In the meantime, electing people to office who are committed to the consensus of democracy and mindful of the fate of generations to come.
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Howdy Bob!
One of the best things I ever did was take a deep dive into the European Witch Panic of the Late Middle Ages. He teaches us a lot about how societies begin to fall apart and how they stitch themselves back together again.
As I’ve said before, it took two hundred or so years for the panic to burn itself out. Really it was the rise of the Renaissance that did it. Climate change is going to force us to act more quickly. The question is will we given as you so aptly point out, we’ve built a system that demands short-term goals and reactions.
There is a reason we don’t have civics being taught in US classrooms anymore. There is a reason that the US public doesn’t understand how the government works or who does what. The only real hope I see is that the vast middle — Nixon’s Silent Majority, if you will — is actually waking up a la the sleeping giant of World War II post Pearl Harbor. So, maybe we can speed that change along because of the crisis.
Huzzah!
Jack
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To paraphrase an oft repeated observation;
You can’t solve a problem with the same narrative, explanation, framing, information that created it.
For instance, as regards the missing civics classes, the level of ignorance shown in all the “theories” of the stolen election is positively astounding, that people could come of voting age, and actually vote, and understand so little of the process and it’s safeguards is downright terrifying.
We have to tell a new and truer story. Just criticizing the old one isn’t enough.
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Howdy Bob!
That is very true, and it is the thing that scares me the most. With all the carping about Biden’s and Trump’s ages, we should realize the huge absence of any real viable leaders among us. We don’t have anyone who is articulating a real vision of the future — the scary future of climate change and shortages and disinformation — who will inspire and lead. If we’re going to revitalize our democracy, we have to have candidates that inspire and vitalize the electorate.
I look at the Democrats and see Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. Both are capable governors and would make respectable presidents, but neither is the “We’ll put a person on the moon by the end of the decade!” kind of inspiration or vision.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Yes, that’s what seriously bugs me about the people saying the Dems need to replace Biden with a different candidate, that they really don’t seem to have someone like that to offer. And, we don’t need just one. We need a whole bench to back that one up, and a platform to match.
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I started to answer you, and then just made it a Comment on This post. Thanks for the inspiration.
Jack
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You’re welcome – happy to inspire any time 🙂
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