Alas, Babylon

Here, on the edge of a ruined landscape, in the shade of the dead city, that we sold everything to build, so that we could in the end tear it down; here, in the evening of my kind, the clock of our era almost run to a stop; here, let me set a few words down, for those who might come after, if this tired planet will ever again bear fruit.

We went insane. We became so blase about our own killing of each other that we could watch, dry-eyed, while the images of the slain were paraded before us as entertainment. We could eat our Subway snadwiches, that were somehow magically supposed to make us thin while making us fat, talk on our cell phones and sleep with people we met online about whom we really knew absolutely nothing, kill each other over traffic mishaps, and let our children grow into ruined and helpless human beings so we could have fun until a later age.

We went insane; we spat out three generations in a row that couldn't see the point or the value in any of the institutions, values, and intellectual exercises it took to give them Game Cubes and Email, iPod and Grand Theft Auto. The forward momentum of our culture all but ceased. People who do not know the value of a thing, ultimately will lose the thing. It was long ago written, and it is true, "make yourself a sheep, and the wolf is ready."

So we let it slip out of our grasp; the barbarians were before the gate, and we had long ago given them the key. The infidels stole into the temple, and the temple fell. Metphors from a lost civilization at the end of an age. So, if you ever read this, future people, take heed; never let your children grow into insolent, uneducated, small-minded adults with no propensity for anything but their own instant gratification.

There, in that selfish little urge, lies the end of centuries of toil; of ill-picked leaders, of rampant crime; apathetic hordes who care nothing for law and order; of people who care nothing for education, so that the lamp of knowledge gutters and dies; so that other people from other lands must do your work for you, since you no longer know how. Beware; this is the warning from a civilization long gone to dust.