Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up-a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.) Power seeks + is the right to 'landscape' the virtual past. The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction-in short, belief-grows ever 'truer.' The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. вЂњ Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic presidentвЂ™s pen or a vainglorious generalвЂ™s sword.ДЄ life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living.вЂќ It is the hardest of worlds to make real.

If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe that leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. Is this the doom written within our nature? For the human species, selfishness is extinction. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. Why? Because of this:-one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the вЂњnaturalвЂќ (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail.

What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.Д«elief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mindвЂ™s mirror, the world. To wit: history admits no rules only outcomes. вЂњScholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations.

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