She's four years old, 15.4 kg (34 lbs), has dark brown hair, and dark olive green eyes. Her skin is mocha, the product generations of shuffled melatonin across generations of slapjack diaspora who spent generations falling from and rising to power over five centuries of globalism. Globalism is a word in history books - not that there are books - taken for granted by children of earth. The year is 2521.
Let's call her Salli.
Had Sally been conceived 504 years in the past, reaching this age in AD 1521, it's unlikely she'd have been aware of what we now call the Renaissance. The great artists, Raphael, da Vinci, and others would not have been recognized by the average European, let alone a child, or anyone in Asia, Africa, or the Americas. Even if she had the fortune to be born in a European city - Athens, Florence, Berlin, London, Paris, Barcelona, Copenhagen - she would statistically have been extremely poor. Over 12% of children born died in their first year.
Five hundred years later, in present day 2021, it's easy for us to recall (or google, or Wikipedia) the great philosophers and artists of 500 years ago. The Renaissance or "Rebirth" period of history centers on humans who re-discovered ancient wisdom, re-appreciated Greek and Roman philosophy, and set the stage for founding fathers of democratic constitutions. Those constitutions eventually led to generations of oppressed, indentured, enslaved genders and races to aspire, and achieve promises of equality. Whether that equality status has been "achieved" as of today might be perilous to debate before the woke. But from the position of Salli in 2521 AD, a lot of progress was made by women and the colonized nations (absurdly referred to as "minorities" so often in western-centric writings) between 1521 and 2021.
The question today is what about her?
To Salli, it's all been blended in by now. No one in 2521 is keeping track of whether they descended from Scot-Irish, or Mandarin, or Ibo, or Inca, or which caste of Hindu. It's open for debate whether anyone 500 years from now will even remember that humans of 2021 found the historical introspection of racial justice important.
When I was four years old, in 1966, the USA was undergoing a period of civil rights and what has to be called an elevation of women's professional grandeur. My mom, Jan, grew up on a subsistence farm a half mile north of the Arkansas border, in Taney County Missouri. She married my dad, who descended from Luella Beach Freeland's side of my family.
Would a Salli of 1521 AD have had that luxury? The history of Christianity, and the cathedrals built in Europe, suggest that it wouldn't have been tolerated. The confessional of the church no doubt gave the clergy a way to tap into privacy, to leverage the teeming poor, to maintain order - like WeChat for President Xi's CCP. If my mom took us to church at all, it was as likely a Vedantish swami as a preacher. Christian Scientist was a church she could pass us through, not because we believed or read much written by Mary Baker Eddy... but because Mary Baker Eddy was a woman, and a presage of feminism, who founded a church in Boston known for intellectual candor. We could check the "Christian" box, while attributing as much weight to Plato or Lao Tsu as we did Jesus.
What history will Salli be made aware of in 2521? What, in retrospect, will seem important?
"Be ye perfect, even as thy Father in heaven is perfect." - Matthew 5:48, King James edition of the Bible, struck me when I finally read the gospels (skipping anything before or after). Jesus is giving this as the most important advice. Whether it's a rope or a camel that went through the eye of a needle, Jesus tells a story of sacrifice - giving up riches to the poor, to go on a spiritual quest - that resembles Arjuna of the Bhagavad Gita's interface with Krishna, or the easy to follow path of Hesse's Siddhartha (mom's MA thesis in German was on Herman Hesse, btw).
It was in my teenage years when I was reading these 'great books' while at the same time being a horny and insecure and reckless Twainian teenage boy. Approaching the young adult "ideal self", while meditating and smoking pot, I tried to fathom how Jesus could boil it all down to trying to be perfect, and how to square that with "nobody's perfect" message of the modern day Christian church.
I figured what it meant is that "sin" - the root word - means missing the bullseye, missing the aim, missing the mark. If I aim to be perfect and fall short, I may be very good. If I try to be good, and fall short, I'll be ok, or average. If I only aspire to be average...
So what about Salli?
My philosophy today (and this blog is as much about philosophy as it is about recycling or fair trade) is pretty much the same as in 1980, when I turned 18, and set off on an adult journey. It is based on wanting perfection. We perfect ourselves by challenging our beliefs, changing our flaws, testing our assumptions, and learning while not forgetting.
In high school, when I aspired to be a prophet, through the lense of the 20th century, I decided the best goal is not to be famously remembered (though if "Freeland Ingenthron" became a name like Leonardo da Vinci, that would be awesome). But that a future human, yet unborn, who didn't know me, would someday approve of my choices.
Everything we do as the human race should be, and shall be, judged not by Saint Peter, but by Salli. Every dime in our soul's pocketbook shall be counted by future generations. Just as a portrait by Raphael would sell in the millions and millions of dollars, today, beautiful thoughts, ideal selves, and wise and poetic insights can change the course of history, and create permanent value.
To place a "Non Fungible Token" #NFT to our own contributions isn't going to be important in our lifetimes, and won't likely survive a coming wave of narcissistic-expunging artificial intelligence. Salli will have learned not to care about names, or we hope, have so many names (Sequoia, Jesus, Jane Goodall, Abe Lincoln, Mary Baker Eddy, Ana Nzinga...) to learn that it would be frivolously trivia-centric to apply human names to justices learned and achieved. There will be an infinite number of Jeopardy! categories in the universe, but 15 minutes of fame for Salli won't be her winnings.
Everyone alive on earth, today, is statistically in a better position than 1521 Salli, when it comes to average lifespan, wealth, access to information, and equality. Not that bad things aren't happening - but we see them and film them and they are more and more likely to be documented and dealt with, if by a Chinese police state program or by USA internet cookies. If we have a prayer to give to Salli, it's that our trend will continue, and the injustices of the present and near past will be washed away by a future melting pot of truthful aims.
As a career goes, I tried to find the things our generation does that would most likely bring sadness and shame to Salli 2521. The worst and most shameful activity I could find was extinction. The sadness of Jacques Cousteau - who at the end of his career mourned the joy of young scuba divers who were looking at coral he'd seen die and diminish around places like Indonesia tin mining islands. Cousteau's sadness marked me.
Salli is likely to judge our current point in history as the opposite of "rebirth" or Renaissance, but as a sixth great extinction. Today's poor and oppressed are consuming far more tin and palm oil than their grandparents could have hoped for. They are consuming more gasoline, have their hands and eyeballs on more electronic communication made from treacherously mine-tailing-spilling resource consumption that not only pollutes, but builds roads into exotic jungles, and pays laborers enough to pay poachers for bushmeat, ivory, and shark fin soup.
Salli isn't going to accept a scapegoating of "white male privilege". Salli is going to judge us all based on whether we gave her parents the tools to make sure she will be educated, and care, and make a difference to Sally of 3521 AD. We hope for a future when Salli can worry about conserving something pleasant, something beautiful, some very fungible wisdom, to share with her four year old children.
Five hundred years young, the unborn Superchildren will inherit all of our stains and artistry. I pray that we will innovate a way not to blow ourselves up, flood ourselves, or burn the planet down. I hope everyone on earth could get on board and agree that whatever our politics, and beliefs, that we are promoting a way to lift Salli up, rather than rob her world of resources that we split up, economically equally or not - among ourselves.
Salli moves the goalposts of Net Present Value in capitalism - if we attribute to her the values we bring today, which she will appreciate. She's the most important person on earth, to all of us who have a vision of the future, and who care about who we are and what we are doing.
To circle back to Recycling and Sustainability, I don't think Salli will judge us by the weight of our landfills or our individual privileges or recent ancestry. I think she'll care about whether we sustain the planet, and whether she has a hope on earth of existing and passing on something worthy to her own children. I don't think I succeeded in being perfect. But there's still time.
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