Dear friend, whoever you are:
I write this message to you on the possible eve of the destruction of all things. If you’ve found it, then perhaps all life has not ended, even if the world as we knew it has done so. As I write this, I have been alive for 13,385 days, but the virus is spreading and who knows how much time we all have left. Honestly, it may not even be the virus that gets us - the world is just constantly burning now, whether literally or metaphorically speaking. Every single thing these days feels fraught with peril as if we’re milliseconds away from the next crisis that rips us apart and coaxes us deeper into the pyre. Thankfully though, the world is still spinning and our closest star burns above us some 91 million miles away. Maybe there’s still time.
It’s easy to ponder how we got here, but history would tell us that here is where we’ve always been. Even in the earliest days of our species’ time on a planet called Earth, some 70,000 years ago, we were a warring culture hell-bent on vanquishing both the weakest of our tribes and the strongest opponents we encountered. Our earliest ancestors killed off the previous iterations of humanity to ensure our dominance. We’ve always torn ourselves apart in the name of survival.
But these days it’s different - our division doesn’t feel like a biological imperative. We are not surviving on the strength of our fittest as much as we are progressing despite the ideologies of our most tragically certain. And I fear we are taking for granted the most incredible parts of our time here. If the virus gets us all, it won’t be for lack of science and intellect; it will be because we spent the last decade staring at little boxes of metal and glass, desperate for the validation and engagement of our fellow humans. It will be because we spent 70,000 years evolving our understanding of the world only to forget how to interact with each other. Our phones are pocketable cities of silicon and radio signals, covered with the bacteria of our everyday lives. We’ve been told not to touch our faces for fear of spreading the disease, but what about touching these devices, which contain the probability of spreading something far worse?
“We are progressing despite the ideologies of our most tragically certain.”
We’ve retreated into such a pervasively digital reality where each new piece of content flies at us at such breakneck speeds, that all of it - the photos, the memories, everything we use to document our existence - is disposable and utterly impermanent, constantly queued to be refreshed with new posts every few seconds. Science fiction has presented the notion that a world-ending event would look geologically and ecologically cataclysmic. These days, most of us experience the world coming to an end in real-time on Twitter, where three percent of the population congregates to attack and complain about each other, and where there would inevitably be a huge disagreement about whether the world was ending, even as some users posted unimpeachable proof that it was all crumbling down.
Our prehistoric ancestors used their developing brains to map the terrain, gain an understanding of the flora and fauna around them, and concentrate the strength of their numbers to gain the high ground in a battle against nature and its apex predators. Research shows that our early brains were larger and more powerful than they are today, simply because we approached all of reality with curiosity and interest, rather than expertise and routine. The less we’ve used our brains, the more they have atrophied. We spent seventy millennia compiling the greatest collection of knowledge the universe has ever known, and a few hundred years evolving our technology to put that knowledge at our fingertips, yet we spend our days reposting hot takes and mindless memes that barely distract us from the existential crisis that all humans experience - be it virus, plague, famine, bloodshed or biology, the clock will stop one day for us all.
Faced with the current prospect of armageddon, worried that the impending collapse of society was accurately foreshadowed by so many dystopic films of my youth, I have been taking stock of what it all means, what I’d fight to protect, and what I would try to rebuild. The first of our species were born into a world of fire and ice, a planet once inhabited by lizard monsters who traveled across craggy continents that formed after rivers of lava cooled into solid ground. The dusty, rust-colored striations of sand and grit on which our vastly complex ecosystems are built have been here so long that they’ve been stripped dry by billions of years of wind and sun, and yet the planet survives. If the science of history has proven anything, it’s that we have endured far worse than this moment, and have come out much stronger for it. It would be a shame to let this present threat end us all.
Instead, I believe now is a time for love and compassion, first for ourselves and then immediately for others. It’s also time to physically record as many details as possible, to keep the record straight for anyone that comes after. If we have any hope of keeping a record of - and for - the species, it’s going to come from the details we write down, and our ability to preserve things outside of some nebulous data cloud. Museums of natural history are full of remarkable remnants that our ancestors left behind, and none of those artifacts are attributed to social media. We have to remember to leave things behind so that future generations know how we lived.
Now is also a time to remember that regional borders and ethnic distinctions are arbitrary human constructs and not laws of nature. Ditto to language, money, social media, government, politics, the depressive slog of a 40-hour workweek, and the merits of “Parasite” winning the Oscar (which is to say “Parasite” was a film, selected to represent the best motion picture by an organization that was formed to do something so ridiculous as to create the illusion that a best picture could actually exist or be chosen annually). These are all realities because we’ve collectively decided to make them so. Spending our days complaining about them, or further dividing ourselves out of frustration and resentment of the status quo has been a fool’s errand, especially considering we’re the fools who built these disciplines and called them “civilization” in the first place.
We have the power to change the things that we don’t like by adopting mindful awareness that nothing in our way was put there by the laws of nature. It is up to us to effect change, and that’s never been more urgent or more daunting than in this moment of impending doom. In the latter part of 2019, scientists gathered in Iceland (part of a continent on Earth we’ve called Europe) to commemorate the first passing of one of the region’s glaciers. To honor the loss of such a significant part of the natural world, they dedicated a plaque with an ominous but shudderingly powerful statement, intended for future generations of the species: “We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”
If this should be my last message, dear friend, I hope you know it is not one of complete sadness or hopeless outlook. I have learned that the insurmountable qualities of our daily lives - even that pesky existential crisis I mentioned earlier - are all things we can either choose to resist or embrace with honesty, openness, and gratitude.
None of us who currently sit around the campfire, worried about tomorrow, are ready to see humanity’s light go out. Still, though, it may happen. There is no guarantee - no law of nature - that says our species will survive. It does so on the strength of our hope and the courage that we have what it takes to get to tomorrow. I am immensely hopeful that this letter finds you on a warm, sunny day when Earth’s wildflowers are in bloom, children are laughing and playing, adults are enjoying the company of their loved ones, music fills the air, work is contained to a voicemail indicator back at the office, dogs and cats are cohabitating in harmony, the beer is cold, the food is yummy, and the future - as unpredictable as it is - still carries promise.
I write this message to you on the possible eve of the destruction of all things. Today, I am 13,385 days old, and as much as I believe I have a lot of things figured out, I’m but a speck of dust on the calendar of cosmic existence. I could be totally wrong about our capacity to take control of this moment and do something grand and magnificent with it, yet I remain optimistic that humanity can solve our problems and build a much better day ahead. I remain optimistic that you, dear friend, whoever you are, have found this letter on a good day. I do believe that we know what is happening and have the power to do what needs to be done.
Only you know if we did it.