Letter 51 to the people of the 26th century
March 20, 2021
Dear 2525,
I have a special treat for you today. It’s a song written in 1969 about the future of humanity. We composed hundreds of songs about the future and the environment. It seems appropriate to tell you about this one since you live in the year 2525 and the title of the song is, “In the Year 2525”. You should get a kick out of it.
It was written by a pop-rock duo called Zager and Evans from Nebraska and was number one on the charts for six weeks. It was their first and last hit. They disbanded in 1971. The song’s message is clear. Humans will succumb to their own technology. In the 1960s a whole lot of people thought that was on the money - today, even more so.
So, here are the lyrics. I’ll attach a video so you can hear what it sounded like.
In the year 2525 If man is still alive If woman can survive They may find
In the year 3535 Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies Everything you think, do, and say Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545 Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes You won't find a thing to chew Nobody's gonna look at you
In the year 5555 Your arms are hanging limp at your sides Your legs got nothing to do Some machine is doing that for you
In the year 6565 Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too From the bottom of a long glass tube' Whoooa
In the year 7510 If God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then Maybe he'll look around himself and say Guess it's time for the Judgement day
In the year 8510 God is gonna shake his mighty head then He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been Or tear it down and start again, whoooa
In the year 9595 I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive He's taken everything this old earth can give And he ain't put back nothing
Now it's been 10,000 years Man has cried a billion tears For what he never knew Now man's reign is through But through eternal night The twinkling of starlight So very far away Maybe it's only yesterday
In the year 2525 If man is still alive If woman can survive They may thrive
In the year 3535 Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
The phrase most worthy of note is, of course:
In the year 9595 I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive He's taken everything this old earth can give And he ain't put back nothing
Like the consequences of climate change today, the predictions of the song are coming true much faster than anticipated. We won’t have to wait 10,000 years to face our demise (and yours I suppose). Somehow, most people can’t see that. How can they miss it? The hurricanes, debilitating heat, climate migrations, forest fires, melting ice, rising oceans, and the demise of diversity should be clues. But no, for most people climate change is still a problem for the future.
I guess we are very much like the people of Easter Island. They were an ancient society that lived on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. The island is so far from any other human society that we still aren’t sure how they got there to begin with. They lived and thrived for centuries before dying out primarily because they simply cut down all their trees. It seems preposterous but over the decades they didn’t seem to understand that there were fewer and fewer of them. I guess they just couldn’t see the forest through the trees, so to speak. All they left are these mysterious stone heads.
We can no longer laugh at them since we are doing exactly the same thing, cutting down all the trees. Unlike the Easter Island people who took centuries to get the job done, we are destroying our environment in one lifetime, mine. Since I was born in 1946, we have emitted 1.4 trillion tons of CO2 from fossil fuels into the atmosphere. I wonder why it’s getting warmer. Maybe, the solution to the Fermi Paradox is simply that intelligent life invariably destroys itself.
Well, I gotta go. We have been holed up for a year because of the Great Pandemic of 2020 and since we have been vaccinated, we will chance an excursion out among the humans. We are leaving for a dance competition in the Wisconsin Dells (a tourist town in Wisconsin). My granddaughter (the dancing, vegan, environmentalist) is competing.
Be good, do good
Bob
PS: Here is the video I promised from a website we call YouTube. I imagine that you’ll have to reformat it first.
aFanMade-music video