Comments on: DNA Driven World http://blog.longnow.org/2007/12/20/dna-driven-world/ The Official Weblog of The Long Now Foundation and Friends Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:43:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Steve Salmony http://blog.longnow.org/2007/12/20/dna-driven-world/comment-page-1/#comment-3210 Steve Salmony Sun, 30 Dec 2007 23:12:02 +0000 http://blog.longnow.org/2007/12/20/dna-driven-world/#comment-3210 Please understand that I am concerned my generation of elders could be "selling a bill of goods" to our young people today; but we have no intention of fulfilling our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, these unfortunate circumstances result from my generation's unbridled over-consumption of Earth's finite capacity to sustain life as well as from our reckless and unrestrained dissipation of limited natural resources bound up in the huge scale and growth rate of economic globalization. My not-so-great generation appears to be mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unchecked increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous consolidation of political/military power. Despite all our high-minded rhetoric to the contrary, you need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for ourselves, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary objects of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall coming generations, the leadership in my generation advises all of us to live long, and live large, in a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, conspicuous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of McMansions and private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth. Please, now, recognize the single-minded pursuit of dollars, political power and privileges to profligately consume, and to magnificently ignore the practical requirements of biophysical reality, as our raison d'etre, come what may for the children. When my not-so-great generation completes its unsavory 'mission' on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the things we have done and failed to do.....all things we proclaim loudly now as evidence of our many virtues. Yes, of course, there is an ecological debt....... but, please, let us get real for a moment and understand what my generation does not want its children to know: your elders are determined to let the ecological debt and threats of human and environmental health, for which we are clearly responsible, fall into your lap, come what may. Sincerely, Steve Steven Earl Salmony AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population Please understand that I am concerned my generation of elders could be “selling a bill of goods” to our young people today; but we have no intention of fulfilling our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, these unfortunate circumstances result from my generation’s unbridled over-consumption of Earth’s finite capacity to sustain life as well as from our reckless and unrestrained dissipation of limited natural resources bound up in the huge scale and growth rate of economic globalization.

My not-so-great generation appears to be mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unchecked increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous consolidation of political/military power. Despite all our high-minded rhetoric to the contrary, you need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for ourselves, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary objects of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall coming generations, the leadership in my generation advises all of us to live long, and live large, in a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, conspicuous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of McMansions and private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth. Please, now, recognize the single-minded pursuit of dollars, political power and privileges to profligately consume, and to magnificently ignore the practical requirements of biophysical reality, as our raison d’etre, come what may for the children.

When my not-so-great generation completes its unsavory ‘mission’ on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the things we have done and failed to do…..all things we proclaim loudly now as evidence of our many virtues.

Yes, of course, there is an ecological debt……. but, please, let us get real for a moment and understand what my generation does not want its children to know: your elders are determined to let the ecological debt and threats of human and environmental health, for which we are clearly responsible, fall into your lap, come what may.

Sincerely,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population

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