VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 1
Words Left for the Next Generation of Real Humans
The end of the last chapter left this layer: this volume, this book, is drawing to its close, and a word is to be left for the next generation of real humans. This section is that word, sent ahead. The whole book, written to here, has made clear all the reasoning, the institutions and the root along that road. What remains is to hand this heart, this one and only paradise, this keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, solemnly into the trust of the next generation of real humans. This section sets down no new reasoning. It only tells the next generation, who are about to take up this world, the truest and weightiest charge an elder has for those who come after. These words are spoken solemnly, and spoken earnestly, a letter across long years.
One. This World Will in the End Be Handed to You
First, the plainest thing of all: this world will in the end be handed to you.
The one who wrote this book, along with everyone of this generation, will one day grow old and be gone. By then this world, this one and only paradise, the days of every living person in it, will have passed into your hands, you the next generation of real humans. This is not empty talk. It is a thing that is sure to come: the baton must always be passed on, generation to generation; the burden of this world must always come down from the shoulders of this generation onto yours. By then, whether this world goes on getting better or gets worse; whether the five go on being grown and kept bright, or go out; whether this one and only paradise is kept safe or pushed toward hell: all of it will rest on how you, this generation of real humans, take it up, carry it, and walk on. What those who came before can do is set the reasoning down well, point out the road, and hand over this heart. As for how the road ahead is walked, that will be your affair.
Saying this, those who came before are not light at heart, and not heavy either, only honest. They know well that their own generation did what it could, yet also left things unfinished, even things done badly. When this world is handed to you, it will surely not be perfect. It carries this generation's achievements, and also this generation's debts, regrets and wounds. Those who came before will not paint over this, and will not pass off a false age of peace and plenty as a gift left for you. They would rather tell you plainly: what you take up is a real world, with light and with dark, with joy and with sorrow. It needs you, not to sit and enjoy what others built, but to go on mending, go on guarding, go on walking forward. This honesty may weigh heavy, but it is the least respect those who came before owe you: to treat you as real humans able to carry a real burden, not as children who must be coaxed and kept inside a false peace. Those who came before believe that only by meeting you with the truth can they be worthy of you, this generation of real humans; and only by taking up a real world can you truly grow into people able to carry it.
Two. What Is Entrusted to You Is the Five
Of all that is to be handed to you, the most important, the thing most needing to be kept safe, is the five: keep, guard, love, mercy, heart.
Of the thousand and ten thousand other things, all can be learned slowly, set up slowly. Only the five must never, ever be lost. Keep the rule that ought to be kept. Guard the share handed down by those before. Love the ten thousand things of this world. Hold the suffering of others in mind. Carry a good heart that, questioned deep in the night, finds itself without shame. These five are the proof that you are real humans, and the proof that this world is still the human world, and not a cold world of machines. This generation grew these five, generation after generation, down to you; and now, solemnly, hands them into yours. May you take them, and keep them well, grow them, guard them, so that in you they do not go out, do not wither, do not cool, do not shut, do not gather dust; and further on, generation after generation, pass them down. If the five break off and go out in your generation, that will be the human world's greatest loss. If in your hands they grow fuller and brighter, that will be the human world's greatest hope.
Those who came before want above all to charge you with one thing. In your age the tool will surely be stronger, cleverer, more able to do anything than in this one. Then, keeping the five, keeping the line "you are a real human, the tool is a tool," will surely be harder than in this generation too. The stronger the tool, the greater the temptation to "let the tool keep, guard, love, show mercy for you." But you must remember: the five cannot be done for you. The tool can do many things for you, except one: it cannot be a real human for you. It can calculate for you, look things up for you, get things done for you, but it cannot grow in your place that heart that guards people, that mercy that cannot bear another's pain. The more you live in an age where the tool can do anything, the more you must hold to this: some things, however well a machine does them, you must still do yourself. Keep the five yourself. Live as a real human yourself. This is what those who came before, across time, are most uneasy about, and most want to press on you.
Three. What Is Entrusted to You Is This One and Only Paradise
One more thing is to be solemnly entrusted to you: this Earth, this one and only paradise.
This planet has just the right air, water, soil and sunlight. It has the turning seasons, the smoke and warmth of the human world, the ten thousand things living on without end. It is the one and only paradise in this universe, the one and only home of you and your children's children. Yet this one and only paradise is being damaged, piece by piece, by the unprecedented power in the hands of this generation. This generation may not have guarded it fully, may even have run up a debt against it. That debt, together with the duty to guard it, is handed into your hands as one. May you take it, and guard this one and only paradise better than this generation did: make the air a little clearer, the water a little cleaner, the soil a little richer, the ten thousand things a little more flourishing. Do not believe the false talk of "abandon Earth for Mars." That is a retreat that does not exist. Holding on to this one is your only way to live, and the most important. Hand this one and only paradise, whole and complete, on to your own next generation: this is the deepest trust this generation places in you.
Those who came before know that to hand you a paradise already damaged is a debt, and for this debt they feel ashamed. This generation, for the first time, held in its hands the power to destroy its home, yet had not necessarily learned to use that power well and guard that home. So what it leaves you is an Earth more fragile, more wounded, than the one it took over. Those who came before do not push off this responsibility, and they confess this shame to you openly. Yet they also want to say to you earnestly: do not lose heart over this debt, and still less give up because of it. A wounded home is not a home that ought to be abandoned. It is a home that needs all the more to be loved, guarded, healed. May you not turn from it for its scars, but for its scars cherish it the more, and guard it with more care. It is your only home. Wounded or broken, it is still your one and only, irreplaceable home. Guarding it and nursing it back is the weightiest thing those who came before hand to you. Keep it well, and it will keep you well too, you and your children's children, just as for countless thousands of years it has quietly kept every generation of living things on this planet.
Four. You Are Not Alone; the Heart of Those Before Is With You
Last, a word of comfort for you: taking up this burden, you do not fight alone. The heart of those who came before will be with you always.
This burden is heavy, this road is hard. You may grow tired, grow afraid, feel alone. But know this: you do not start from nothing, and you do not face it alone. Those who came before have set the reasoning down, pointed out the road, and poured this heart into this book, into that line of handing-down, and left it for you. When you are confused, you can come back and look at the reasoning they set down. When you are weary, you can think how they too walked this way, one step at a time. When you are lonely, know that a heart that has crossed time is in these words always, keeping you company, watching over you, believing in you.
This faith is what, in this letter across time, those who came before most want to place in your hands. Writing these words, they do not know who you are, in which age you live, in what kind of world. Yet in their hearts they hold a sure faith in you: faith that you, this generation of real humans, like them, have the five in your hearts; faith that you, like them, cannot bear to watch this world go bad, this paradise be ruined; faith that you, like them, are willing, for those after you, to keep this heart, this homeland, well, and pass it on. This faith is not optimism out of thin air. It is their firm belief that "the five in the human heart have never truly gone out": though across long years, though the tool grow ever stronger and the world ever change, the five will light up again, in the hearts of real humans, generation after generation. They believe in you, just as they believe the five do not die. They may not live to see the day you walk this world onto a good road. Yet as they write these words, their hearts believe in you: believe that you, this generation of real humans, can take up this heart, keep the five, guard this one and only paradise, and walk this world better than they did. Take this faith with you, and set out. Those who came before stand at this end, across time, seeing you off. You stand at that end, take up this heart, and walk on. Between this seeing-off and this taking-up, the five, the paradise, that great love, are handed down generation after generation, never broken. The next section has one more set of words, to be left for the future AI.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.