Stolen Inheritance - A Tumblr Post

I just posted this to tumblr:-

Stolen Inheritance

I belong to the generation born in the Sixties that grew up in the Seventies and Eighties. Our dreams were of a future like Carl Sagan’s Cosmos; like Star Trek. Our nightmares were Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four and Mad Max.

Our ambition was to immanentize Star Trek or maybe Babylon 5. We did so much to bring about that future.

We’re old enough now to be parents - even grandparents. And look what we’re giving the kids. Fucking Ferguson, cops beating down on the Occupy movements, slut-shaming our daughters, pasty-faced old white men telling women what to do with their bodies like they were those girls’ Dads or something, Boko Haram, and CCTVs bloody everywhere.

This is not the future I wanted to give you. This is fucking Mad Max. This is my nightmare world. This is not The Future.

Kids, guess what? We’ve ballsed up The Future. The Future should be yours. It is not our Future; it is your Present, and your children’s and grandchildren’s History. Voter apathy and cynicism crept in, and people stopped believing in themselves and in making a better society, and all the cynical and petty little men crept in and stole power and turned the world into their idea of The Future - a schoolyard, with them as the bully boys throwing their weight around, and you kids as their punchbags.

You can now officially tell us - we’ve lost the right to describe The Future. You know who now has the keys?

You.

Please learn from us. Make it a world like Star Trek or Babylon 5. A greater Future to live in than what we could manage. Live dreams that are better than ours, and look after this place better than we could. Please.