Managed Retreat III.

So, what do you think of the post-war generation, Great-Auntie?

Oh, Sunita, my feelings are probably similar to yours. Why listen to the selfish bastards who messed up the planet. What WERE they thinking?

I shall never forgive. They all knew, why didn't they stop it all happening? In my head, I call them the evil Bastards. May they burn for eternity in hell ! And burn! Do not honour their graves ! Let their burial grounds be razed, scattered, and destroyed, as they have done to us. Grind their bones into dust and toss them into the nearest pool of hot magma! Let their history, their names, never be spoken. Let them forever be non-heroes. For we ourselves are the spawn of the Evil Ones, and that, that it was our very own forefathers who bastardized this planet, that is a hard, hard truth to bear. ...

And yet, I cannot carry this overwhelming resentment, this fire of revenge, this lust to avenge, forever. It consumes my soul. It blocks my mind, my thinking.

Amen, Sunita.

But it isn't that simple. ... If some of the Evil Ones could foretell the outcomes, then maybe they have something useful to say; maybe. But as for the rest, no, it is essential to reject all their humbug, their so-called wisdom, and throw their short-sighted ideas overboard. But not necessarily their knowledge. And we must be careful to sidestep their biases, their subtle propaganda. Otherwise, we shall fall into the same pit that they did.

I thought we already had!

As your Great-great-grandpa used to say, 'Light cannot exist without Darkness, and I shall be your Darkness, so that your Light more brightly shine: and anyway, Evil is more interesting.' Whether your Great-great-grandpa was joking or not, I'm not sure. He was an oddball guy.

Great-great-grandpa was certainly full of bull-shit!

He was often joking around.

Look, darling, most people want roughly the same thing: a decent life, a decent start for their children, a decent future. ... There're just different ideas about what decent means, and how to get there.

(shrugs)

Whatev.

Of course. For example, my Grandpa sometimes talked about what so-called Errors of Scope. That is, overlooking the big picture. Perhaps overlooking that there'll be another two-hundred years of climate chaos, before we shall even reach the alti-thermal phase. We haven't even reached the turning-point yet. Climate chaos will continue for several more generations at least.

Like, forever!

For decades, I thought that my Grandpa's 'slowly but surely' concept was just a school motto, encouraging students to doggedly work away at studying, just part of the whole propaganda illusion of so-called progress. And then, Sunita, just recently, it dawned on me what your Great-great-grandpa really meant. It was a warning. Climate chaos comes slowly, but surely, squeezing the human habitat niche ...

(Short pause)

So, taking all that into account, darling, will you move over to the refuge zone, where it's cooler?

(shrugs)

Whatev.