LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA...
Let’s get this clear: there may not be a God, and there may not be Heaven, but Hell most certainly exists… or will do, soon.
I know because I can see how hard and successfully we’ve been working at creating it. The gates are ready. The foundations too. Everything is in place to get the ball rolling. And I can’t see, for the life of me, how we can turn things around.
Hell, you see, is not a place. It is a time. Hell is the future. The immediate future, to be precise. I realised this yesterday, when my daughter asked me to help her with her homework. The task was to speculate about what life would be like in the next 50 years. So we, the family, started to throw ideas on the table, and we watched them spiral and grow into uncomfortable shapes and nightmare scenarios. Not the best accompaniment for pasta, I must add.
I am very sceptical of futurologists because history has shown time and time again that often the largest social events are triggered by unexpected and often random acts or circumstances. Granted that the basic conditions were always there, but consequences don’t always follow the conditions neatly. It takes a very unique mind, and also a lot of luck, to create a model of the future based on what we know of the present.*
History, on the other hand, does teach us that folly, intolerance and ambition will inevitably lead societies to take the wrong path ahead.
And, at the kitchen table, that was what we saw.
We hypothesized and theorised and speculated and tried to balance the good with the bad but in the end we could not get the acrid taste off our mouths. I had this horrible realisation that we, my generation, the 60’s generation, the love and peace generation, had let our children down… badly. I apologised and did the only thing a father could do in such circumstances and told my kids that it all was their mother’s fault and that I had nothing to do with it. But they could see through me. And, joking aside, I genuinely felt ashamed.
Later on that day, my wife and I went to see Mark Thomas talk about freedom of speech and the arms race. Apart from having a good laugh (at the right sort of targets) we came out of the show realising three things that are very important:
That one man can make a difference. Sometimes only a small difference, but put a lot of small differences together and things can be changed dramatically.
That there are more decent people around than we realise. And that they often are in camps, political parties, and even fields and trades where this could seem unthinkable. And that they genuinely want to do good.
That giving up is the worst crime of all.
Hope may be “a waking dream”, to quote Aristotle, or “nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness”, as Nobel said. It may be a form of self-deception, but if it is the one thing that keeps us going to revert the inheritance of death that we’re leaving behind… let me dream, that dreams may lead my actions.
Otherwise we might as well start everyday reciting, as a mantra, Dante’s words: Lasciate ogni speranza…
* I have to say here that I’m still in awe of Alvin Toffler and the remarkable anticipation he did of most of the social trends that are part of the current socio-economic fabric that clothes the western world. I wonder if he’s still around and whether he’s written anything recently… any help?
I know because I can see how hard and successfully we’ve been working at creating it. The gates are ready. The foundations too. Everything is in place to get the ball rolling. And I can’t see, for the life of me, how we can turn things around.
Hell, you see, is not a place. It is a time. Hell is the future. The immediate future, to be precise. I realised this yesterday, when my daughter asked me to help her with her homework. The task was to speculate about what life would be like in the next 50 years. So we, the family, started to throw ideas on the table, and we watched them spiral and grow into uncomfortable shapes and nightmare scenarios. Not the best accompaniment for pasta, I must add.
I am very sceptical of futurologists because history has shown time and time again that often the largest social events are triggered by unexpected and often random acts or circumstances. Granted that the basic conditions were always there, but consequences don’t always follow the conditions neatly. It takes a very unique mind, and also a lot of luck, to create a model of the future based on what we know of the present.*
History, on the other hand, does teach us that folly, intolerance and ambition will inevitably lead societies to take the wrong path ahead.
And, at the kitchen table, that was what we saw.
We hypothesized and theorised and speculated and tried to balance the good with the bad but in the end we could not get the acrid taste off our mouths. I had this horrible realisation that we, my generation, the 60’s generation, the love and peace generation, had let our children down… badly. I apologised and did the only thing a father could do in such circumstances and told my kids that it all was their mother’s fault and that I had nothing to do with it. But they could see through me. And, joking aside, I genuinely felt ashamed.
Later on that day, my wife and I went to see Mark Thomas talk about freedom of speech and the arms race. Apart from having a good laugh (at the right sort of targets) we came out of the show realising three things that are very important:
That one man can make a difference. Sometimes only a small difference, but put a lot of small differences together and things can be changed dramatically.
That there are more decent people around than we realise. And that they often are in camps, political parties, and even fields and trades where this could seem unthinkable. And that they genuinely want to do good.
That giving up is the worst crime of all.
Hope may be “a waking dream”, to quote Aristotle, or “nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness”, as Nobel said. It may be a form of self-deception, but if it is the one thing that keeps us going to revert the inheritance of death that we’re leaving behind… let me dream, that dreams may lead my actions.
Otherwise we might as well start everyday reciting, as a mantra, Dante’s words: Lasciate ogni speranza…
* I have to say here that I’m still in awe of Alvin Toffler and the remarkable anticipation he did of most of the social trends that are part of the current socio-economic fabric that clothes the western world. I wonder if he’s still around and whether he’s written anything recently… any help?
posted by magz at 4:00 PM
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