Was there ever a generation before this one — my generation, the duck
& cover generation — that believed it might be the last?
Not the last of its village, or its nation, or its race — but the last human generation.
We grew up with that idea. It faded, but how could it not have shaped us?
Then, at the beginning of our lives, we feared it would come, mushroom-shaped, in explosions and fire.
Now
we seem to have come full circle, but with more options: intentional
plagues, slow erosion, suffocation, flood. Fundamentalism.
But all "man" made.
I’m
not thinking of believers in Armegeddon, nothing so common, so
proclaimed — but something deeper. Something we may not even know we
feel.
Is this at the root of our famous narcissism: some embedded conviction
that nothing really matters, anyway; there will be no one to inherit?
Of
course, we are not the last generation — but the last generation may
have already been born. We hold them in our arms, and wonder. We hold
them in our arms, and hope.
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