Tom’s Big Picture

I recently helped my wife transition our family’s digital photos and movies from ad-hoc directories spread across several computers into a unified library on her Mac’s excellent iPhoto software. While I still find the Apple operating system a bit awkward (it’s prettier, more stable, easier-to-use and more secure than Windows for the average user, but it doesn’t offer any really breakthrough additional functionality and taxes me with my Windows-optimized computer instincts), the real treat of owning a Mac is Apple’s software. It’s well-designed and it works. Particularly interesting was the scrolling function when looking at the entire library. As you scroll down chronologically, the software superimposes the month and year over your screen. I was a bit taken aback as I started scrolling down- we have so many photos over only six short years of time as a couple. At last count, I think there are 12.8 gigabytes worth of photo and video (we take short video snapshots with our digital camera that I edit into an annual DVD as an alternative to the awkward omnipresence of a video camera, whose footage is never watched).

I think it works out to about 3000 total photos. They are stored digitally, will never degrade, and will look as good 500 years from now as they do today.

If I did my best, I might be able to find 50-100 photos total of any of my grandparents (3 of whom are passed away). The tiny bit of video is on 20-year-old degrading VHS tapes that badly need to be archived. In essence, I have a few pictures, a bit of video, fading memories. That’s it.

For every child born today, it will be far different. When my second child is a great-grandmother, maybe 50 years after I have passed away, she will have a perfect digital copy of video taken moments after her birth- and perfect archives of her father and mother. How they talked. What they looked like. Their mannerisms and the silly things said to them when they were a child.

But the implications are far more significant than just emotional connections to dead relatives that can be recalled upon command. Perhaps a bit of historical context on this subject:

In medieval England, one of the goals of the aristocracy was to preserve the unity of family wealth over time. Many of them left wills that essentially said “my oldest son inherits all of my wealth; he may do anything he wishes with the income generated from it, but may not deplete one penny of principal or sell one acre of land.” Over time, land and money became tied up in a few hands as the “dead hand” of the past restricted the living from doing what they wished with their estates. The law eventually recognized this problem and created a legal principle called the “rule against perpetuities”. The rule essentially states that for a contract or will to be valid it must be provable that it will terminate within 21 years after the death of someone alive at the time of its origination. So for example, an older British patriarch could only tie up property for the maximum of the lifetime of any one person alive at the time of his death plus twenty one years. Still a lot of time, but it freed up a lot of land and removed the oppressive regulations of long-dead ancestors.

The efforts of these aristocrats to control the future dealings of their heirs illustrate the natural desire of any father or mother to influence what comes after them. Many of them wrote long, detailed letters concerning life to their children, for example the very popular (in the 1800’s) writings of Lord Chesterton to his son or Robert E. Lee’s affectionate letters to his children, first published in the early 1900’s.

I believe our opportunity for such influence is many times that of our ancestors. Thanks to digital technology, our photos and videos will survive indefinitely, and our descendents can have the opportunity to feel like they really know us. Feeling like they know us as people, they are more apt to take our ideas seriously, even those passed down in written form.

Recently I listened to Vision Forum’s Entrepreneurial Bootcamp CD’s (as an aside, they were excellent, with more practical business content than the typical secular “think positive” business cow pattie seminar; I don’t think I ever understood the whole venture capital build-it-to-sell-it process until I heard one of the guys speak, as I’m more naturally interested in building cash cows to have and to hold than capturing market share as bait for a potential buyout). One of the more, shall we say, “intense” speakers shared that he had a 200-year plan for his family- actually written out! Now that may sound really strange, but he remarked that in his lifetime since he wrote the plan, 20% of 200 years will have passed.

To our hyper-individualistic culture this sounds insane- the typical parent is just looking to get the kid out of the house and self-supporting. But to most people in healthy cultures (including our own before not too long ago), long-range planning is a desirable goal. One of the reasons the Japanese outperform us in many areas is their extreme long-term perspective- Sony and Toyota are reported to have business plans looking up to 500 years into the future! Meanwhile, GM is studying how to save $1 on a piece of plastic to boost earnings next quarter.

So we shouldn’t be shocked or ridicule someone with a long-range plan, but rather consider how such a plan, enabled by the priceless technological gifts of our time, fits into OUR vision for OUR family. I also think we have to start thinking tribally, in terms of our extended future kinship network, not only our immediate nuclear family.

These thoughts are very much in-process, but I will briefly summarize some of the opportunities available:

1. A longer lifespan will enable more long-term-oriented thinking for our families, and more impact on grandchildren. One of the challenges affecting any successful parent is a statistical demographic reality called regression to the mean. Even if a husband and wife are both above-average in ability, the children of such a union will tend to regress back towards the population mean (or IQ=100 for European peoples); the parental IQ is the best indicator of the highly heritable trait of general intelligence (i.e. smarter parents have smarter kids), but like height or any other inherited trait, extreme values tend to get smoothed back down to the average. If you’re smarter than average for your population group, your children will tend to, on average, regress down to the mean (this is a statistically probabilistic statement- it is certainly possible to have all children be smarter, in fact, if you have enough children, it becomes likely that at least one will be smarter). Likewise, those below the average will have children who regress back up to it. Thankfully, IQ is not nearly as important as moral and spiritual development (though, as The Bell Curve demonstrates, they do correlate together in a rather Calvinistic way), but if we want to have an extended kinship network with a visible leader (as committees are the worst way to govern anything), especially when we’re talking about running a continuing family business, we want this person to be at least as talented as the previous generation. The Italians have a word for this concept, called virtu’, that combines the traits of high intelligence, high moral standards and an action-oriented mindset. We want a leader for our extended family or business who is smart (practically smart, not primarily a self-absorbed geeky intelligence), highly moral (as fairness is the only way to ensure the long-term unity and stability of the extended family unit) and a man of action. In other words, someone with the essential virtu’. The only solution to finding this leader is to cast a wide net by having lots of children and grandchildren. The long lifespans afforded by current medicine (which is worlds better than it was even twenty years ago at helping us maintain a higher quality of life) can enable us to not only have more a of multigenerational impact on our grandchildren, but also to see the track record of performance of our children and grandchildren over a longer period of time, which can give greater peace of mind when the time comes to pass the baton to a new leader of the extended family.

2. We are entering a new era of fathers taking responsibility for leadership of their families; could this be formalized? I’ve considered the idea of a “Family Constitution”, some sort of internal document delineating reasonable objective standards of behavior that define who we are, to minimize the “drift” of future generations. Of course it would be unenforceable, but so are Biblical standards of behavior in our times- but no one would say the Bible has no impact.

3. On issues that we care about (say a certain perspective on history, or a theological opinion not compatible with the spirit of our age), we could make simple videos explaining our position to our children and grandchildren. Imagine how difficult it would be for the Supreme Court to twist the opinions of the Founding Fathers if there had been C-SPAN at the Constitutional Convention! In the same way, a video can provide concrete evidence of your opinion, not watered down or compromised in any way. This can help your descendants resist any future liberalizing influences.

These are just a few fairly random thoughts at this point. But the possibilities are endless, for good and evil, with the technological revolution we are experiencing.