What if.....

I am often captivated by the thought of how our society would be different under slightly different cultural norms or conditions. For example, in Lord of the Rings there is the Ent society of walking, talking trees - except that Treebeard explains to the hobbits that in Entish the words are very long and take a great deal of time to pronounce, and so therefore the Ents never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say. How would our society be different if it took only, say, twice as long to say everything that we currently say? Would we conserve our words more?

I met a young lady tonight who had spent a summer in the mountains of Peru among a people group largely untouched by Western civilization, and they had retained a long-standing cultural practice of children being raised by their grandparents, really mostly just their grandmothers. Basically, people married fairly young and had children, then almost immediately sent the children off to their grandparents and went about their lives until their own kids were old enough to be married and have kids. Consider the implications. Could people be more productive in the prime of their lives if their children are not in the way? Could children grow up with greater wisdom if they are raised by older and wiser members of society than their young parents? Who knows!

This is not entirely senseless philosophical theorizing. I believe that cultivating a "what if" mindset is part of not only an innovative society, but also a careful and deliberate society. We could, with more "what if" statements, come up with more creative solutions to problems. We could also recognize the longer-term implications of present decisions. For example, consider the case among the Samburu people of Kenya that a friend of mine was telling me about a few weeks ago - at one time the women of the village walked hours each day retrieving the family's water supply. Some missionaries came in and drilled a well, removing the need to walk so far. Wonderful! Except for one thing - without the hours being consumed in walking, the women of the village stayed home and made more babies with their husbands, creating a dangerous population spike.

Maybe we should all take more time out of our busy schedules for thinking....not just reflection, but also theorizing and dreaming.