TRANSCRIPT
Dear future children of the world 2100, my name is Daniel Mackler and I am presently living in the year 2021. I am almost 50 years old and I would like to say hello to you. I’d like to share a few thoughts with you. I know it’s what, 79 years in the future that I’m talking to you and I’m long since dead and your parents aren’t even born yet and maybe your grandparents or great-grandparents aren’t even born yet. But I would like to share a few thoughts with you about my era.
Now, a lot of people nowadays say you can’t, well we can’t blame our parents for the awful things that are happening in this world. But actually, we can. And I know you’re living in an awful world in a lot of ways. I know you’re living in a world that’s much, much, much worse in so many different areas than the world that I live in now. So what I’d like to say to you is that my generation, your parents’ generation, my parents’ generation, my grandparents’ generation, we are actually responsible for the screwed up world that we gave you. And I’m going to talk about some of those specific ways because so many people nowadays deny this.
For starters, so many people, most people, practically everybody I know who has children nowadays had no business having children. They knew better at a lot of levels. I mean just the simplest way, they knew how screwed up the world was. They knew that there’s a population explosion going on, but they denied it because they wanted to personally have children. They were selfish. They didn’t really care about the future for their children. Oh, they said they’re doing it for the children and everything you see in the news nowadays in 2021 and my whole life, it’s all about the children. We do everything for the children, everything except leave a future world for the children.
And all these parents, well they said they wanted to be parents and they say they loved being parents and they’re so proud of being parents. And yet their behavior showed, well, that they were getting something very selfish out of the equation of being parents. And they were actually doing a lot more subtle taking than they were giving. If they were really focused that much more on giving, probably they wouldn’t have had children at all.
First of all, because emotionally what I see in my generation, my parents’ generation, grandparents’ generation is these people were very, very screwed up, very, very shut down, very selfish. And really what it was is they were traumatized. They were very harmed in their own childhoods because of their own selfish parents who were unable to give properly, who were very neglectful. And well, the people in my generation, my parents’ generation, they were still wedded to their parents. They were in denial. It was too painful to look at this, too painful to feel it. It was a lot easier to just do the same thing again and pretend it was okay. Do unto your children what your parents did unto you to keep all those feelings buried and blocked. Actually, to use their children, my peers, to use their children to keep their feelings blocked, to use their children, their children meaning your parents and your grandparents, as an addiction. And that allowed them to go forward and, well, keep all those horrible feelings at bay.
But all those horrible feelings really had an effect on the world. First of all, they traumatized their children. They traumatized your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents. That’s what they did. So that’s part of it. But the other part of it is they wreaked damage on the world. I mean just, I just look at the world now and I think, what is the world going to be like to the audience that I’m speaking with? It’s going to be an ecological disaster. I mean what’s going to be left in the ocean? Will there be whales? Do you know what a whale is? Have you seen a whale? Have you seen dolphins? How many fish are left in the sea? How healthy are those fish? What is left in the ocean? What is left on land? What is left of rain forests? What’s left of amphibians? What’s left of so many of the wild creatures of the world? It’s like my species nowadays, we don’t really care about that very much.
I even think of another thing. I live in this country called the United States of America, which has a massive, massive national debt. What is it? In the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars? Who’s going to pay for that? Who? Who’s responsible for that debt? We are. Well, I think about if we were, let’s say, a family and we had that much debt, we’d be a family in massive financial trouble. And yet as a country, this country that I live in is in massive financial trouble and yet we’re pretending that we’re not. We’re going forward like everything is great. Oh, everything is going great. We’re even borrowing more and more and more. In a lot of ways, we’re like a failing business. We’re a business that’s set up for doom and catastrophe. It cannot last because of selfish decisions, because of bad decisions.
And maybe the older people in my world and my generation, even my parents’ generation, late 70s into their 80s, they don’t care so much because they’re gonna die. And I think a lot of people think that way. Well, if as long as I get out of this life without having to deal with the consequences, I really don’t care. As long as I can keep my feelings down, keep my happy life going, keep my sense of satisfaction going, I really don’t care. And that’s what I see again and again and again with people is, well, mostly as long as they don’t personally have to deal with it, they don’t care. They’ll pass it on to their children. It’s like that game of tag that children play, tag, you’re it. Well, as long as they can tag the next generation and they don’t have to deal with it, they don’t care. And yet these are the same people who, from what I see very hypocritically, say we care about the children, but they don’t.
So for me, I’m part of this world, this ancient historical world of the year 2021 and I didn’t have children. That’s one thing I’m very glad for. Also, I try to help wake people up and, well, say maybe don’t have children. Maybe try to fix your internal traumas because the only thing that I see as hope for this human species of Homo sapiens is if people get more honest, really get more honest with what’s going on with them on the inside. Work out their traumas, work out their feelings, not pass all this garbage on to the future generations that are you.
But the irony is just being a human being in this world, it’s a messy thing in the year 2021 because, well, I use resources. I can’t help it. Even if I eat the healthiest food around, it comes from a farm somewhere, a farm that’s basically stealing from nature. And every year there’s less and less and less nature in the world. My species nowadays in this ancient era of 2021, we really don’t care about that that much. Again, our attitude seems to be pretty clearly we’ll take as much as we can and not worry about the future. We’ll let the future people deal with that someday. We have this denial-laden idea that technology is going to save us.
I wonder if in the year 2100 my audience that listens to this now is going to laugh when they hear some of the modern ideas, modern now in 2021, people saying, oh we’re going to go colonize another planet. People say that. Some people really believe it. Oh, technology is going to save us. It’s going to figure out how to save the world. No, no it’s not. I mean I think in a lot of ways our human technology is one of our biggest problems that we have now. There’s a lot of wonderful things about technology, I won’t deny that. But in the hands of traumatized people, so much of technology gets used for ill, gets used to exploit the world, exploit nature, exploit other people.
And so what will really bring human beings together as a species? Oh, I believe that you who will be watching this video someday, someday long in the future, will know that maybe catastrophe, real catastrophe, unlike anything the mass of humanity so far has really ever seen or known, that will…
Wake up! Some people, yes, it will bring horrible destruction. But some people, I believe, will just wake up and, oh, so you who I’m speaking to. Someday, long, long in the future, I believe you will be part of a group that will have woken up, will have worked out so many more of your traumas in community, in some community that just comes together.
I believe you will be a much, much heftier percentage of humanity than the percentage of humanity nowadays that has woken up. Now, it’s so rare. Now, the masses of humanity are still profoundly 99.999 in denial, believing it’s a good idea what we’re doing, believing it’s a good idea to have children, to have lots of children, to exploit their children.
I believe someday the percentage of people who are going to wake up, really wake up, wake up and realize about childhood trauma, realize how to heal, realize how to live a healthier existence in relationship to nature. I believe that percentage of humanity will grow, and it is to you I speak.
And in a way, you are my descendants. I didn’t have actual biological physiological children, but on an emotional level, on a spiritual level, you are my children. You are my grandchildren. You are my great-grandchildren.