/ˈsɛv.ənθ dʒɛn.əˈreɪ.ʃən/Haudenosaunee Principle of Stewardship.
Definition
The principle that decisions made today should be judged by their impact on descendants seven generations
into the future (~140 years). This is the temporal counterweight to the "accelerationist" mindset of Silicon
Valley. While tech moves fast, stewardship moves slow. The Steward's Mandate is to ensure that the cognitive
habits we form with AI today do not cripple the minds of our great-grandchildren.
The Long Now
We are building the "ancestral mind" for the future. The patterns we train into AI models today—bias,
aggression, extracting logic—will echo. We are not just coding for the next release; we are coding the
cognitive infrastructure of the next century.
Field Notes & Ephemera
Field Note: Ask yourself: "Will this prompt pattern make my descendants smarter or more
dependent?"