Union of Concerned Elders (UoCE) Necromembers

The living need help from elders past

We all can but stand on the shoulders of our predecessors in our endeavor to learn what they thought they knew and to perhaps see a little further. The presence of elders past persists through their teachings, such as may survive, e.g. via their writings or in some cases only via meme fragments passed on second hand, e.g. from the Greco-Roman times, elements of Carneades (214–129/8 BCE, an African, founder of the Third Academy after Plato’s who came to be only via his elder, Chrysippus, a repeating pattern of descent) and Hypatia (died 415 CE in defiance of the emerging post-truth culture) remind us to listen to those who have endeavored before us to listen to Nature, the nature of things.

While UoCE members remain unknown, unpublished as a consensus voice, all have elders who are known, whose offerings may be considered now, who hail from ancient times (to us) to modern (us).

Members can share their mentors (no implication necromembers would have agreed to be members), and some have. Their names and brief bio can be offered for consideration, and so is, in chronological order:

1. Cassandra, timeless muse of the those who fail to tell others what they want to hear.
2. Heraclitus, 6th -5th century BCE, opposites intertwine, you “can’t step in the same river twice,” early systems thinker.
3. Laozi, lived/died Warring States period, China, attributed author(s) of Tao Te Ching, critic of his modernity’s norms.
4. Zhuangzi Zhou, 369 -286 BCE, putative author of first seven chapters of the still influential Zhuangzi.
5. Carneades, 214-129/8 BCE, probably a Greco-African founder of the Third Academy after Plato’s.
6. Hypatia, died 415 CE in defiance of the emerging post-truth culture.
7. Búnkuasé, 11th century, systemic designer of Tairona phase 3 civilization that still persists.
8. Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834, population growth within one lifetime so fast as to take note of.
9. Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, critic of his modernity’s norms and humancentric presumptions.
10. Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, observer errant who, almost alone, declared what she seeth.
11. H.G. Wells, 1866-1946, envisioner of things to come.
12. Bertrand Russell, 1872–1970, modern human, too clever by half to persist.
13. Aldo Leopold, 1887–1948, alone in a world of wounds.
14. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889–1951, philosopher, fideist, would rather know than believe, even if it kills him to get out of the fly bottle.
15. M. King Hubbert, 1903-1989, upslopes peak, followed by downslope; a race to the bottom has no viable outcome.
16. William Vogt, 1902-1968, a road to survival for humanity and the biosphere.
17. Gregory Bateson, 1904–1980, towards an ecology of mind.
18. Rachael Carson, 1907-1964, first scientist’s warning heard above the din.
19. Kenneth Ewart Boulding, 1910–1993, science-based economist.
20. Martin Gardner, 1914–2010, philosopher, fideist, mysterian, who alone united all in doubt.
21. Garrett Hardin, 1915-2003, early systems scientist.
22. John B. Calhoun, 1917–1995, one who listened to rats and mice, whose thoughts were on the human condition.
23. Jay Forrester, 1918–2016, early systems scientist.
24. James Lovelock, 1919-2022, the first Gaian of many more (about 35 million) needed.
25. Zhen, 20th century, the unknowable unknown, hers was a way of religion without belief.
26. Al Bartlett, 1923-2013, exponential exponent.
27. Howard T. Odum, 1924–2002, energetic systems ecology.
28. William R. Catton Jr., 1926–2015, overshoot elucidator and foreseer of coming bottleneck.
29. E.O. Wilson, 1929–2021, a half Earth for Nature may not be enough.
30. Carl Sagan, 1934–1996, a candle in the dark.
31. Herman Daly, 1938–2022, an end of growth economist.
32. Donella Meadows, 1941-2001, systems thinker extraordinaire, mother to a new form of civilization.