Antecessor Communique

Antecessor Communiqué

This is a letter to my yet to be born great great grandchildren. I can only hope this letter to my future progeny will survive the uncertain temporal journey because I know the Grim Reaper, riding his faithful steed Time, will surely gallop my way to do his duty and make my personal delivery of this message impossible long before my great great descendents become of age. I want to make this temporal connection in order to relay certain facts about the journey from me to you, and perhaps in so doing, shine some light upon how you got to where you are in your future world. Most of the facts to be shared with my yet to be born great great grandchildren are not facts you will find talking heads blathering about in the media as they regurgitate what savants and opinion makers say is important. I’m talking about really important things to share, like my Father resisting my calls for him to spend his carefully saved money in his last days in order to enjoy his final moments in the sun as much as money could make it possible. Why would my Father not spend his money? He would not spend his money because of his experiences gained during the Great Depression. My Father had to put newspaper inside his shoes to buttress the holes in the soles and wear his shop apron backwards because there was not enough money to by new shoes when they wore out or work pants when they developed holes in the rear. People bought potatoes in 100lb bags and ate potatoes at every meal. Indeed, the old Depression era saying, to wit, I complained I had no shoes to wear until I saw a man with no feet, was not a clever sound bite. The saying reflected the reality of daily life during the Great Depression. If one armed themselves with the knowledge of my Father’s experiences during the Great Depression, then it was very understandable why he would refuse to spend any money that was not absolutely necessary to sustain life. To say my Father did not understand the modern welfare mentality is an understatement of historical proportions and his mindset about life, shaped by his experiences, was little changed by current modern events. Even though I was reared in very humble circumstances, I did not experience the Depression as my Father did, and as a result, I do not share my Father’s inability to open the purse for things unrelated to survival. Time marches on. Mind you now, I am in no way a spendthrift. I have availed my family and myself some of those things that make life more comfortable, but I only do it if it can be done without debt. This old fashioned frugal inclination has made me a part of a declining minority in today’s (2009) society. This, and other old fashioned principles that still afflict me and others of my age, like, self-reliance, patriotic duty, nuclear families, and divine imperatives are rapidly being replaced in our society by beliefs of entitlement, hedonism, collective families and secular imperatives. If one looks at these ongoing changes in individual and social behavior with a comprehensive perspective in mind you will quickly realize that the world’s peoples are become more and more “urbanized” and this leads, by necessity, to people becoming less independent and more and more social as urbanization continues to increase. This “urbanization” of the world’s peoples is the root cause for the changes listed above just like the Great Depression was the root cause for my Father’s behavior concerning money. This process of wide-scale social integration is further being aided and abetted by the continuing advances in technology that has provided cell phones and Internet access that has in turn enabled affordable worldwide personal communications for the masses. You should never underestimate the power of communications as an agent of change in human relations. I can only imagine how personal communications will advance in your future world and the social changes that such “advancements” will portend. Equally important during the increase in urbanization is the shift from individual nuclear families towards a collective “one world family”. This change in ethnic attitude can be traced to the progressive movement that started in earnest over one hundred years ago and was initially an effort to “Humanize” the Industrial Revolution and end war. The progressive movement has now morphed from its beginnings of promoting social justice into more of a social control system of enforcing social equality and wealth redistribution. The evolved progressive philosophy is now social fait accompli, in that, within all educational systems, the progressive notion is now exclusively taught and is rapidly becoming the universally accepted gospel of social enlightenment and behavior. This fundamental social change is at odds with the US Constitution that codified personal responsibility and individual freedom and is causing much strife within the legal and political communities. Indeed, the reality of an evolving “collective” society, that we are now experiencing, de-emphasizes personal freedom and individual liberty, and instead, emphasizes collective responsibility and behavior along with enforceable individual restraint. Just like my Father’s behavior was shaped by the Great Depression, my behavior is now being shaped by the great social change taking place and will go a long way in explaining how you got into the circumstances that you now find yourself in. In all honesty, I don’t know if the path we are on represents advancement for humankind, or something else. I suspect it represents “something else” because it all sounds like the eternal quest for a Utopian Society that has never been obtainable, through many have tried. Indeed, history teaches us that most quests for a Utopian Society have been the vehicle for tyrannical rule rather the collective enhancement of individual Human dignity. Well, regardless of the situation you find yourself in, I hope you will look kindly upon me and my fellow compatriots because we were just ordinary people trying to cope with issues that were much larger than our individual lives. I know that sounds like a copout, and it probably is, but no one really wants to trade a comfortable life nowadays for abstract ideas regardless how noble they may be.

Your Loving Great Great Grandpa