My luck, I’d go through all the trouble of assembling a message in a bottle, making provision to have the bottle dropped off somewhere out there, miles off the coast of Kauai. What do you think would happen?
About a week after throwing the bottle with the well thought out message into the Pacific, someone within minutes of the nautical launch, will find the damn bottle, which will make no sense at all to that once-in-a-lifetime recipient. My plan will go right down the tubes, while my intention would stay solid.
Not all that long ago, I first read about Carl Sagan’s brilliant plan to create Golden Records, launched into space, traveling billions of miles from here and still going, since their launch in the late 70’s. I loved the idea of creating an audio/video encyclopedia of life on earth, in the hope of sharing it with extraterrestrials from another galaxy.
Those records were a combination of pride and optimism. The desire to share our history and accomplishments with some beings millions and millions from here is a tribute to what we believe we have accomplished in our time on this planet. The idea of other life being out there is a humbling feeling, or at least it ought to be.
Roughly fifty years after that beautifully naive time in our planetary history, I think we have become preoccupied with the dismembering of our civilization. The idea of trumpeting our existence feels more like an embarrassment, a source of shame.
I think a lot about our future on this abused planet of ours, all at our own hand. So far, I have been putting together a pretty decent record of where we are at and where I am within it all, far less a matter of accuracy, more one of sincerity.
My motivation for writing my book, plus so many stories over the years and now doing my weekly news podcast, began with the idea of wanting to provide my grandson with the gift of my life, who I am, who I have been and how I feel about the world going on around me and within me.
Thousands of years from now, some strange looking dudes are going to capture one of those Voyager crafts and retrieve the Golden Record placed in it. My guess is it will pique their interest, resulting in the launch of a probe from light years away.
The idea of the message in bottle, had to do with sharing a personal story and then throwing it out into the universe, hoping some day it would be retrieved in a far away place, resulting in a miraculous connection.
I think Sagan’s motivation was an invitation and today I think of a cautionary tale in its place. Stories for my grandson are about my own life and where I think we are all headed. When I think about the message in a bottle, retrieved some time in the distant future, I think about our eventual destination, which ain’t pretty.
Just a few minutes ago, as a joke for my sole benefit, I Googled “The Future of Mankind”, an updated version of rubbing the lamp with the genie inside. Free to ask the dumbest questions imaginable, waiting for a perfectly imperfect answer. Well, the joke is on me, because of what I fell over.
Some time in the early 1950’s, a remarkable man by the name of Bertrand Russell published an article in the Atlantic by that very same title. He was a controversial figure during much of his lifetime, encompassing both World Wars and several decades beyond. This is not the place, nor is there space for his biography. Amongst other things, he was a bona fide philosopher, something I consider a part time vocation of mine, but I would never say that out loud to anyone.
He imagined three possibilities for our future and in my mind, he nailed it perfectly. Keep in mind, this was decades before the climate catastrophe, which I find far more lethal than our warring ways, which is what he experienced, shattering his confidence about our future.
The first outcome is our extinction and much of the natural world to go along with it. The second is our reverting to an out of control barbarism. The third is by far the most optimistic and incredibly unlikely. It involves a miraculous, global coming together, with a benevolent ruling authority, overseeing the well being of all.
The idea of a message in a bottle was simply that, an idea. However, it was the impetus to get me thinking about what I’d want to share with visitors from another galaxy and what they might find thousands of years from now.
Our endless propensity for violence, which Russell witnessed, is what moved him to write about his vision for us. Living today, I’m guessing he’d still come up with those three possibilities, even more pessimistic about the third. His concern was about us destroying each other, not our only home, which we are now doing with a blind vengeance.
If I arrived on this truly magnificent planet from some incalculably distant location, I’d wonder what happened to those extraordinary beings, who left behind beautiful art and powerful stories of their time here. How could these human beings, who had so much, with such promise, bankrupt their future? Thousands of year from now, it will make no more sense than it does at this moment.
No, I am not going to print this out, put it in a bottle and let the Pacific take it into the future. Instead, I am going to keep telling my grandson I love him and hope when he’s old enough, he can spend some time with my stories and assorted musings, including this one.