Dear Future,
We tried. We really did - some of us, anyway. Look what we had to work with; a balkanized world, governed by those whose only interest was in serving themselves; an energy grid powered by non-renewable fossil fuels (do you still have these?); a global information network full of invalid claims or semi-redacted misinformation; an uneven distribution of natural resources; and faith-based institutions competing for the minds of the children through philosophical rhetoric, political campaigns, and religious propaganda.
Yet some of us were able to see the world for what it was: A single, closed environment with potential for greatness, infected with a viral life-form which was Humanity itself. We were our own worst enemy. But as one of our writers once wrote:
Charlton Ogburn, Jr. wrote:
"We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization"
Some have attributed the aforementioned quote to Gaius Petronius Arbiter, when if fact it comes from a magazine article Mr. Ogburn wrote for Harper's Magazine in 1957 about his time with Merrill's Marauders - but you know that already. Still, this simple quote describes our current situation precisely. Those of us who knew what was going on tried to organize resistance, but we were constantly bombarded with distractions and calls to factionalism until each of us became socially isolated by every little interest that defined us, and then we were taught that it was our
differences that were more important than any commonality, whether real or conceptualized.
Self-esteem was promoted over achievement. Our most potentially brilliant minds were held back with the slow learners so that success would not bring shame to failure.
Emotion was promoted over intellect. It mattered not whether a person could solve the world's problems; it mattered only that each person's emotions were given ample theatre to vent and be applauded.
Entitlement was valued more than effort, and fairness was valued more than justice. This meant that it did not matter whether or not a person had striven to earn his or her accolades, credentials, and possessions; it mattered only that those who did nothing were believed to have been treated "unfairly" simply because they had none of the things that that person who had earned what he or she had.
We have no orbital colonies and no space travel; we have rampant war, disease, and starvation; we have clashes over unprovable and irrelevant
beliefs; and after 12,000 years of cultural evolution (since the most recent Ice Age), this is all that humanity has accomplished.
In short, Dear Future, we who had insight into the affairs of our present time - your past - were too few, too powerless, and too widely scattered geographically to make a difference. We were mere dust-motes caught up in the avalanche of events leading us all downhill to the situation you find yourself in now. Please understand that some of us tried to make a difference, we really did; but we failed, and we're sorry.
We wish you well,
The Past