A Letter To The Future

http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/225/319


“A Letter To the Future,” is an essay I wrote, published in The Trumpeter, a venerable journal of ecosophy. It is probably the most passionate outpouring that will ever come from my soul, a vehement tirade against the status quo. The essence of the letter is an extended appeal to people in the future, apologizing for how badly my generation has behaved. How ashamed I am, and how hopeless I feel, except perhaps by transcending the barrier of time, reaching out to a healthy place, one not possible in today’s primitive culture of exploitation.

I was reminded of my essay by a video on YouTube, where a dark genius of a man (going by the name of WordedRite) is apologizing in a similar way. His arguments are better presented than mine, though he does not speak with my naked angst and the horrible eloquence it invoked in me:

http://www.youtube.com/user/WordedRite#p/a/u/0/LofDFGbv5_w


It was strange to see someone reflect my sad perceptions. It took over ten years for me to bump into such a person, probably because I am a recluse. Earth First, I know, is full of tormented folks who hate what we have done. The Warlock-ish fellow, WordedRite, holds back slightly in terms of emotion to reach a wider audience. I, on the other hand, rant wildly and yet also poetically, issuing my first major jeremiad, maybe my last.

If I initiated an eco-tribe, it would be based on a motto of horror and revulsion at the behavior of today’s humanity. It would embrace a fierce urge to beg the gods to intervene, if there are gods. It would center on a heartfelt need to apologize to those coming after us, those saddled with a legacy of mass extinction, horrid pollution and war-mongering.

Not only that, our stupidity inflicts an indelible mark of failure. We are, to our consummate shame, the eternal example of what not to do. We have abused our power like greedy despots. We let our lust for “resources” and construction ruin the beauty of planet Gaia. We let techno-titillation numb and degrade our minds. We besmirched our souls with the shit of materialism.

I APOLOGIZE to the future for this.

It’s obvious that people in my time are like instinctive animals whose rationality and conscience has not overcome the visceral urge to breed, take, and expand--all leashed to the available food. We’re predictably expansive. Ironically, most of us end up crushed in poverty, while the rest bloat in wealth. This is the karma we have earned. The result of the ignorant vanity that infects our heads.

Here’s a quote from “A Letter To the Future,” capturing only a fraction of my eternal grief:

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This letter is not addressed to anyone infused with the spirit of my era. I call out to those who have broken out of the vicious cycle, who escape epidemic ignorance, the kind that infects all levels of consciousness, resulting in egregious moral pathology and psychological dysfunction. Those I seek necessarily look upon my time as one ravaged beyond redemption by consummate greed, violence, oppression, and barbarism; they must see it as an age of unprecedented destruction and persecution, as a tortured time when humanity ruthlessly earned fitting condemnation as a cancer strangling all life on the planet Earth, indeed, sucking away the vitality of the great globe itself.
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Long ago I made a pact with Honesty. On that day, I sold my soul. The buyer was a terrible, dangerous force, and gave me in return a special gift: to sing with all my heart to those who cared to hear.


OWL