Paying It Backwards
We declared war on our own descendants. They couldn’t fight back.
Our ancestors bequeathed us a world rich with promise and opportunity. Over a thousand generations, they built a planetary civilization rich with history, art, scientific understanding, medical advancements, and possibilities. I was part of the last generation to experience life before the internet. To think that we went from hunter gatherers at risk from local predatory animals all the way to splitting the atom, recombining DNA, and cataloguing distant galaxies is truly remarkable. None of it would have been possible without billions of people who came before us striving to make the world their children would inherit at least a little bit better.
Then, we decided to burn it all down. A new idea took root deep in our culture that had never been there before, but which is a natural outgrowth of relentless predatory capitalism that tirelessly rewards psychopathic behaviour. That idea is: If I can successfully impoverish the rest of humanity to enrich myself personally, it makes me smart.
Screw everyone else, everywhere else, and everywhen else, because only I matter. Me. I. Myself. What I want. My whim right this minute. My profits this very nanosecond. Those things matter more than the well being of my entire species, from now until the end of time.
