Dear Mr. Vonnegut From the Year 2024
The following is a response to Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter to the Future. Below is a video of the letter as read by Benedict Cumberbatch.
Dear Mr. Vonnegut,
First, please accept my apologies, as you are likely expecting a response from the good people living in the year 2088, to whom your letter is addressed. I, a representative of the year 2024, callously intercepted your missive and feel compelled to respond from this juncture so early in its journey. I assure you, I have not tampered with or otherwise hindered your letter’s transmission to its future destination. Perhaps you will humor me as I attempt to offer a few words of wisdom folly.
Second, let me thank you for your offerings of famous applicable quotations and offer you a few in response. Note that our quotes are shorter today than they were in your time. The media platforms that dominate our daily life compress communication into no more than a few hundred characters or a few seconds of video. We possess not the attention span for anything longer. Careful consideration of nuanced argument and supporting material is simply a waste of our time. You see, there are too many adorable cat videos and song and dance routines to consume before lunch, lest we fall afoul of the social graces of our peers.
So let me offer you this succinct gem: “Drill, baby, drill!” Have you heard that one before? It has been repeated most recently by an infamous liar who is in competition as one of the most famous persons to ever have lived. This man, in your time, was a real estate swindler dwelling in a golden Manhattan tower bearing his name. In case you are not familiar with the quote, it means something akin to “We do not care about diversity of life on Earth or about silly predictions of science that threaten our opulent way of life. We care about the flavor of our veal entrees devoured aboard private jets traversing the oceans, now filled with microplastics and suffocated sea life.” Did you know we have our very own island of trash? I hear it’s floating somewhere near Greenland these days.
Here’s another modern mantra for you: “Occupy Mars.” This from the richest person in the world who runs several behemoth organizations that pollute the environment in large part by skirting government regulations. This man’s biographer, a respected professor who has written eloquently about several great men in history, is alarmed about his subject’s access to the levers of government and economic power. And rightfully so — the great industrialist’s mission is to send those grandchildren you spoke of to live on a desolate red world where they will enjoy living underground to protect them from cosmic rays that pierce a dead sky. I’m sure life will be just splendid for them there, millions of miles from their blue home. The gravity on Mars is only 40% of Earth’s — think how they will laugh with glee at the ability to jump twice as high!
Your letter speaks of reliable information. In our time, no information is reliable. The men whose quotes I offered above run their own social media platforms called Truth and X, where lies and misinformation are spread at the speed of light. No one has time for fact checking or evidence or uncertainty. Everything is very certain now and we feel much better about it, I can tell you that!
Were you aware of the Georgia Guidestones in your time? They were erected by an anonymous group eight years before your famous letter was published. You would have liked them, I think. Like your letter, they bore enumerated advisories for humanity. The first of these was “Maintain humanity under five hundred million in perpetual balance with nature.” The eighth was “Balance personal rights with social duties.” These Guidestones were destroyed by a different (I assume) anonymous group in the year 2022. Their destruction was much easier and far less expensive than their erection, I assure you. The explosion must have been as entertaining as some of the cat videos I cited previously.
In our time, the glaciers that once ground up major portions of the landmass are no longer a threat to life, at least in the same way. Instead, they melt away beneath an atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide that we spew from jet engines and power plants. Sea levels rise as we continue to erect beach front high rises. Though I admit the desertification of Africa is racing ahead of schedule. Nature, to us, is something to be tamed, not treasured.
Now that I’ve filled you with doom and gloom, let me give you some good news: ice-nine has not covered the earth in an intractable layer of destruction, although we humans have accomplished that with our own bodies through the relentless chain reaction of sexual reproduction. But I suppose you know all about that — you gave us three children through your own sexual activity and they too have procreated. Thanks for that, by the way!
I don’t know how much longer orange trees will grow beneath the sun, but for now we plant them in long neat rows and drape them with cloth to keep the pesky insects away. We pluck the fruit and smash it into juice, where it stands on supermarket shelves in plastic containers that will remain intact for millennia. Indeed, our children sip the sweet fluid through plastic straws just as you envisioned the people of 2088 doing. And we already sit at home typing away at computers, no need for another 63 trips around the sun for that to come to fruition.
I suppose we should be grateful for what we’ve built. The veal tastes great and the orange juice in our samosas washes it down very pleasantly. Sure, the world will never see another sperm whale when we’re done with them, but what did they ever do for us besides inspire the great American novel? Now that Melville’s masterpiece is complete, they are just so much ambergris waiting to enhance our perfume. And we need that perfume, for we cannot stand to smell our own stench.
I often think of the tenth and final piece of advice inscribed on the aforementioned Guidestones that stood for 42 years on a hill beneath Georgian skies: “Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.” I imagine the message still remains somewhere in the pile of rubble, soon to be paved over as a big-city parking lot.
So it goes and all that.
Warm regards,
A Representative of the Year 2024
