For years I had wondered how young people in general, especially those born after 1985, would take over adult functions when they grew into adults.

In my mind, I couldn’t get the children to fit the adult responsibilities.

My father told a story of a man working in a baby carriage factory in Germany in 1938, as the Germans were arming for what would become World War II.  His wife was pregnant, and he thought, “I’ll get a baby carriage for free.”  Each lunchtime, he would take a part from another station of the assembly line, and carry it home under his coat.   The man working next to him knew of his plan, and after a few weeks of this, asked him how the baby carriage was coming.  “You know,” he said, “I went to all the stations and got all the parts and took them home.  I’ve been putting them together, but I keep coming up with a machine gun.”

I, too, kept coming up with a machine gun: Nature was making many, many children around the world, not to take over our functions, but to destroy.  They were made to destroy things, other people, and themselves.

But this is not a mistake on Nature’s part, bitter as it is for us to understand.  On every hand, we see humanity turning toward destruction  We are blindly destroying the air, water, soil, trees, plants and animals of our planet, out of fear, or greed, or an overwhelming craving for comfort.  We even destroy people who try and wake us from our pleasant dreams.

Those deprived by the wealthy also destroy, but out of simple need and hunger, and see their destruction no more than the wealthy do.

If humanity is not to be totally destroyed, we must bear the suffering that comes with facing our—-dare I say it—-duty.

Having been lucky enough to be born in human form (and if we can understand ideas like this, not in human form for the first time), we are in debt to Great Nature.  We must put ourselves under influences that will transform us into responsible beings who see the consequences not only of our actions, but of our secret thoughts and feelings.

Lou Gottlieb                   4/28/2002