In 1988, Kurt Vonnegut Writes a Letter to People Living in 2088, Giving 7 Pieces of Advice

Image by Daniele Prati, via Flickr Com­mons

The mind of Kurt Von­negut, like the pro­tag­o­nist of his best-known nov­el Slaugh­ter­house-Five, must have got “unstuck in time” some­where along the line. How else could he have man­aged to write his dis­tinc­tive brand of satir­i­cal but sin­cere fic­tion, hyper-aware of past, present, and future all at once? It must have made him a promis­ing con­trib­u­tor indeed for Volk­swa­gen’s 1988 Time mag­a­zine ad cam­paign, when the com­pa­ny “approached a num­ber of notable thinkers and asked them to write a let­ter to the future — some words of advice to those liv­ing in 2088, to be pre­cise.”

The beloved writer’s let­ter to the “Ladies & Gen­tle­men of A.D. 2088” begins as fol­lows:

It has been sug­gest­ed that you might wel­come words of wis­dom from the past, and that sev­er­al of us in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry should send you some. Do you know this advice from Polo­nius in Shake­speare’s Ham­let: ‘This above all: to thine own self be true’? Or what about these instruc­tions from St. John the Divine: ‘Fear God, and give glo­ry to Him; for the hour of His judg­ment has come’? The best advice from my own era for you or for just about any­body any­time, I guess, is a prayer first used by alco­holics who hoped to nev­er take a drink again: ‘God grant me the seren­i­ty to accept the things I can­not change, courage to change the things I can, and wis­dom to know the dif­fer­ence.’

Our cen­tu­ry has­n’t been as free with words of wis­dom as some oth­ers, I think, because we were the first to get reli­able infor­ma­tion about the human sit­u­a­tion: how many of us there were, how much food we could raise or gath­er, how fast we were repro­duc­ing, what made us sick, what made us die, how much dam­age we were doing to the air and water and top­soil on which most life forms depend­ed, how vio­lent and heart­less nature can be, and on and on. Who could wax wise with so much bad news pour­ing in?

For me, the most par­a­lyz­ing news was that Nature was no con­ser­va­tion­ist. It need­ed no help from us in tak­ing the plan­et apart and putting it back togeth­er some dif­fer­ent way, not nec­es­sar­i­ly improv­ing it from the view­point of liv­ing things. It set fire to forests with light­ning bolts. It paved vast tracts of arable land with lava, which could no more sup­port life than big-city park­ing lots. It had in the past sent glac­i­ers down from the North Pole to grind up major por­tions of Asia, Europe, and North Amer­i­ca. Nor was there any rea­son to think that it would­n’t do that again some­day. At this very moment it is turn­ing African farms to deserts, and can be expect­ed to heave up tidal waves or show­er down white-hot boul­ders from out­er space at any time. It has not only exter­mi­nat­ed exquis­ite­ly evolved species in a twin­kling, but drained oceans and drowned con­ti­nents as well. If peo­ple think Nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an ene­my.

You can read the whole thing at Let­ters of Note, where Von­negut goes on to give his own inter­pre­ta­tion of human­i­ty’s per­spec­tive at the time, when “we were see­ing our­selves as a new sort of glac­i­er, warm-blood­ed and clever, unstop­pable, about to gob­ble up every­thing and then make love — and then dou­ble in size again.” He puts the ques­tion to his future-inhab­it­ing read­ers direct­ly: “Is it pos­si­ble that we aimed rock­ets with hydro­gen bomb war­heads at each oth­er, all set to go, in order to take our minds off the deep­er problem—how cru­el­ly Nature can be expect­ed to treat us, Nature being Nature, in the by-and-by?”

Final­ly, Von­negut issues sev­en com­mand­ments — as much direct­ed to read­ers of the late 20th cen­tu­ry as to read­ers of the late 21st, or indeed to those of the ear­ly 21st in which you read this now — intend­ed to help human­i­ty avert what he sees as the utter cat­a­stro­phe loom­ing ahead:

1. Reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion.
2. Stop poi­son­ing the air, the water, and the top­soil.
3. Stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems.
4. Teach your kids, and your­selves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhab­it a small plan­et with­out help­ing to kill it.
5. Stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars.
6. Stop think­ing your grand­chil­dren will be OK no mat­ter how waste­ful or destruc­tive you may be, since they can go to a nice new plan­et on a space­ship. That is real­ly mean, and stu­pid.
7. And so on. Or else.

Volk­swa­gen had asked him to look one hun­dred years into the future. As of this writ­ing, 2088 lies less than 75 years ahead, and how many of us would agree that we’ve heed­ed most or even any of his pre­scrip­tions? Then again, Von­negut grants that pes­simism may have got the bet­ter of him; per­haps the future will bring with it a utopia after all, one where “nobody will have to leave home to go to work or school, or even stop watch­ing tele­vi­sion. Every­body will sit around all day punch­ing the keys of com­put­er ter­mi­nals con­nect­ed to every­thing there is, and sip orange drink through straws like the astro­nauts,” a com­i­cal­ly dystopi­an utopia, and not an entire­ly un-pre­scient one — a Von­negut­ian vision indeed.

via Let­ters of Note/Va Viper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Kurt Von­negut Read Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle & Oth­er Nov­els

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.