Could Steemseniors be a Council of Wise People?

Senior people have time to  think. They do not have to take any immediate decisions with a direct or future  impact. However, they have the experience of having made decisions in the past  that have led sometimes to successes, sometimes to failures. We senior people  still have much to offer, and this on several levels. This follows @claudiop63  who wrote : "Steemseniors Could Be instrumental for Steemit's growth."

[Image credit] 

More  junior people have dreams and big plans. 

We would like to share these plans and  help them to be realized. 

A chain is only strong if every single chain link is  well connected to the others. Any break at the level of any single link will  ruin the entire chain and split it in several smaller pieces or bunches of chain  links. What I mean here is that a society can only be built if the links between  each generation are properly secured. 

The future is built on the past like a  house is built stone after stone, each stone relying on the former one to bear  it. Each chain link can hence entirely rely on the strength of the previous one  like each stone relies on the strength of previous stone to support it. Does it  work similarly with generations of human beings? 

Don’t we have rather an  opposite tendency of demonizing the values of the past in order to promote the  values of the present (and the future)?

Now a little story to illustrate  my point.

I remember that during my youth (you can say that @grandpere  rambles…), at the time of big the student protests of the 70ies, we also had a  lot of ideals and dreams. We wanted to rebuild the society and the economy, we  were questioning the teachings and the ways of doing things used in the  past.

Following our protests, many changes have taken place both at the  level of the thoughts and at the one of the technologies. I would not say that  this is mainly due to our protests. It was rather a consequence of this time  where factors converged from all across the planet. This is the era of  socialism, communism, peace & Love, new technologies in communication and  transportation. In short, several elements get combined at a specific time in  human history.

I remember that at that time we did not like much any  comment or observation from the elderlies. We were finding them outdated, old  school, refusing to see the modern world and participate to the evolution of the  society. Finally, they were part of the game but, at a much slower pace than the  young guys. 

We were convinced to know the truth, that we could change the world  and make it a better place. Oopps… today’s speech is similar!

The  current generation of young people seems to ignore the drastic changes that have  been inferred by the discovery of oil, power plants, nuclear energy, etc, on our  lives. All these technologies have increased agricultural and industrial  production and free the man/women from repetitive and tedious tasks. Without these  innovations and technologies, the way of living would be totally different from  the current standards.

But at that time, we did not know anything about  the impact on the economy and the environment. We had confidence in the future.  Today, taking the example of energy, we are in a "green" mode following the  pressures from environmentalists and ecologists. But do we know anything about  the impact of wind and solar energy parks on future economies, climate and  pollution. 

Should we stop all developments on the grounds that we should know  everything before undertaking an action? 

This is of course not a solution. In  both cases, we must think about what will be left for our children. 

Perhaps is  it more productive and effective to continue building the fabric of the society  including its political and economical wings on the foundations of the past. In  short, weld the chain links rather than split them.

Steemit, a link in evolution?

Steemit offers an enormous potential to integrate all fields  of knowledge under one single platform. After getting rid of spam, abuse and  copy-pasting, Steemit can provide a framework that promotes a form of respect  for all different views, the development of a positive and constructive  thinking, and could help broadcasting various new concepts simultaneously  towards many cultures. Some pitfalls are yet to be overcome, and to achieve a  goal, it is sometimes advantageous to circumvent a wall rather than trying to go  through it!

A senior is an elder and/or a wise man/women.

We should  perhaps first define what we mean by older and who are these guys? Often we  define this concept by an age: 50+, 55+, 65+, 75+, etc. In some societies, they call them old, in some other, sages. We are often confused between being old and  being wise, but someone is not wise because he is old and an elder guy is not  necessarily wise.

Old?

In French, the word ‘ancient’ can have  several meanings. In English, several words are however available to define the  same concept: old, former, ancient, senior, elder, devancier (see [here])

Wise?

The  French term ‘sage’ has again on several meanings: someone that has demonstrated  reliability in its judgments, in his/her code of conduct, someone that is cautious,  thoughtful, with an acute good sense, an enlightened man/women, someone who knows  things, who has skills, whose way of life gets him/her away from a too quick  decision-taking, someone in charge for analyzing a political or economic issue  (see [here]  or [there].  In contrast, English has only two words for all these concepts: wise man/women or  wise.

Old people? There is a lot of them. Wise men/women? Maybe a little less.  How can we know that we are wise? Our readers will tell us. 

In the meantime, I  would like to run a new Steemit project and propose the creation for a "Council  of Elders" whose mission would be:

•  to search for projects allowing for the  development of knowledge and of the future;
•  to encourage and stimulate  discussion, or in other words, to avoid pot comments like "I voted for you" or  “Congratulations for your post”;
•  to seek for the truth, to debunk the false  paradigms and to shatter paradoxal, false or incomplete  statements.
  

Original text in french: @grandpere
English translation:  @lemouth
Thank you to @claudiop63 for initiating this project and the Steemit chat : #steemseniors

Now we need to  define its operating mode.