Dear Future Generations,
I hope this message finds you all well. And how are you preparing to join us ? You must be excited ! How beautiful and diverse our world is. But you know, humans are reckless, and we are messing up with humanity. In 1941, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to put an end to the war! And what brought about the war in the first place ? Our inability to manage diversity. We are currently operating on tolerance , which seems to be an ineffective risk management tool in human interaction. You see, the dropping of the bombs claimed many innocent lives and caused serious injuries to the Earth systems. What scientists have not yet proven is the effect of such on the global scale !
Did you know that when I was a future generation, humans enslaved humans ? How horrible and terrible a strain it was on humanity. History did not start with Rome, but Assyrians, Thracians, Gauls were reduced to slavery by Romans . And four hundred years ago, people of my kind, if you remember I said humanity is diverse. Yes ! People of my kind are majorly black , with black and brown skin, dark hair , strong corpulence, yeah ! The forefathers of my great great grandfathers were reduced to slavery by a syndicate of other people of other kinds. History recorded it that the lot fell on us because of our strong corpulence and endurance! People of my kind were so taken from Africa, our place of origin, to the Americas to work on plantations for some people called masters ! You know the master -slave- relationship was so horrible! It was such a difficult condition ! It was such a difficult experience ! It was the most despicable institution humans have ever invented ! And my people endured it. Although, slavery is abolished now! But it took another shape and form: economic, political, intellectual and cultural. Humans are ingenuous ! Be warned ! Please, choose which part of humanity you want to belong to. There are some regions in our world that are hellish! Some people in those parts of the world experience multidimensional deprivation: food, potable water, access to basic medications, access to elementary and quality education, fulfilment of human dignity, and hope for basic opportunities ! It is such a messy condition! And I am currently experiencing such ! There are many of us in this situation! Do you think it has to do with our genes? Though some scientists from other kinds of humans believe it has. Well, I don't think so ! There is something missing that I have to figure out some day, then I will get back to you !
Yeah, I was warning you about being careful in choosing which part of the world you belong to ! Of course, you don't have power over that ! It has to do with your destiny! Yes , destiny is such a powerful and mysterious thing! It determines your parents, your childhood , whether you grow as an orphan and have a difficult beginning or as a condoned child living with your parents in an idyllic world ! Though living with your parents doesn't not necessarily guarantee an idyllic life anyway ! Some children have parents yet they fend for themselves at the expense of their lives everyday ! Some have to go deep below the ground to extract minerals in Congo ! Some have to trade their dignity every night ! Some have to beg unkind givers in the streets of Lagos ! It is difficult! On the other hand, Idyllic world belongs to those kids whose parents are rich ! Rich people tend to be happy and their children have everything they need and don't need !
Either idyllic or not , the notion of family is no longer relevant today. There are children without parents ! Parents without children ! Wives without husbands ! Husbands without wives ! Families without home ! What a puzzling world! You see my hometown is undergoing some metamorphosis too. Children can now take their parents to the court ! There is no more bond between husbands and wives ! Individualism has taken the lead, we don’t seem to value our human bond. Materialism is more important than spirituality, our societies are falling apart. Money and cultural imperialism is threatening our identity. We are no longer African. How sad !
If I have the opportunity to reincarnate, I would love to be African again ! That state of being natural and remaining so natural. I love nature. What about you? What kind of habitat do you want to spend your future life in ? Things might not be the same forever , might they? I hope your world will be richer. Not the individual and material riches we hear from Forbes. Forbes seems to celebrate individual wealth. And individual riches can't make the world a better place. Today very few people are rich, you know. According to some statistics , that calculation taking into account various funny metrics, 1 % percent of the people in our world are rich and the rest 99% struggle with various types of poverty. We live in a colonized world. I am sure you will sympathize with the people of Palestine. Or the people of Africa for whom poverty is a permanent condition. How can humans design such a system? Such an international order where one's quality of life depends on where one is born? Do you think our ancestors failed in sowing the seeds of intragenerational and intergenerational solidarity? Are we not failing too? Shifting all the burden to future generations? How overwhelming the future would be !
The riches I mean here is compassion and humanity which can serve as the social safety net for all. You know, when I was a kid in our village, I used to feel safe whenever I met a fellow human on a lone journey. Then we used to only fear lions and other beasts. But today, it is the opposite. How sad ! I hope your interaction with robots and machines would be benign without sacrificing family bonds.
Today we make children in a hollow and material world. We interact more with machines than we do with humans. Everyone with his gadgets and humanity is on its on. Again, do you want to be a human being or a digital being? I guess science will figure it out. For me it is good to be human.
Hmmm....let me tell you something terrible I experienced. In the year 2019, a pandemic broke out ! Its cause remained a mystery. We don't know whether it was due to a lab escape or a zoonotic spillover. You know humans are terrible ! We do all sorts of things that threaten our survival. Especially the scientists ! They conduct all sorts of experiments either for good or bad purposes . So I don't know if the cause of the pandemic was a result of good experimentation or not ! All I know is that many people died ! It was a traumatizing experience ! The thing allegedly started from China, you know Chinese people are creative and hardworking. You might have the opportunity to know them if human civilization continues . Well , I still don't know if they created the virus that caused the pandemic. It was called COVID-19! Such a terrible thing that claimed millions of lives ! But people in Africa survived it against all odds and predictions ! Was it destiny? The year 2019 was a difficult one, we were forced to stay at home and avoid contact with other people. Many people in my region starved !
Schools, markets, mosques and churches were closed ! Only hospitals and cemeteries opened ! People died !
Today, we have put the pandemic behind us. But the world remain the same ! Rich people versus poor people, the powerful versus the weak. Russia invaded Ukraine. The invasion had implications on my people! Although it happened far away from us , but we felt its heat. Gas, flour , fertilizer and other things became scarce and expensive. Businesses made a lot of money out of the poor. Such a terrible time ! In Ukraine, we heard about people being killed and some displaced . Cities being bombed and soldiers dying every minute! Our world is beautiful and terrible ! I hope you will pass that stage in your time ! Wars ! They serve no one's interest! Well, the victims' interests ! But I don't know what the US and Russia want, they like wars ! Cuba, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, North Kivu are all terrible war zones. In a nutshell, we are currently at war ! Our environment is getting stressed ! Heat, flood, pollution, acid raid, drought. But scientists seem to be doing something about it. They are building a system that can solve most of this problems. They are developing artificial intelligence! That double edged blade! It might be good or bad for humanity. Pray that it is good, for otherwise you might not exist! Scientists, you know they are terrible , they predict that bad artificial intelligence might mean the end of humanity. If things go wrong, humans will go extinct like dinosaurs. And digital beings will take over! Do you want to be human or digital? I think it's good to be human:) pray that scientists get things right ! I hope to hear from soon ! If I did not hear from you , I assume we are extinct!
Warm regards,
Alimi SALIFOU
