WHAT DID POSTERITY EVER DO FOR ME?
August 2, 1994
WHAT DO I CARE? I have engendered no hostages to fortune, no prisoners of time unclocked. I bestow no burden of deoxyribonucleic acid, as heavy as its name is long, to tote for generations yet unborn into the far and indecipherable future. Why should I not lead a gay and carefree life, heedless of consequence, regardless of cost? It's nothing to me. When I die, the world dies with me. Though, for some odd reason I do care. I worry about those little eggs and sperms ununited, those embryo citizens of a dismal future without the stars. What can I do to make it better for them? I don't know. It seems that everything we try to do to make things better ends up making things worse, and that the preferable course if we do not know what's going on is to do nothing. But, that's not an option. So we do the best we can, and maybe it's improving in some ways and worsening in others; but we have no vantage from which to view the big picture, and perhaps there is none. So, posterity, here's to you. I'll do my best, however clumsy it may be, to leave you a world that's inhabitable if nothing else, and in return I ask you to honor my shade and forgive my mistakes. Shake, it's a deal.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626),
Essays,
Of Marriage and Single Life (1625).
3/17/99
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