What Is Coming II

See What Is Coming.

Robert Anderson

This Anderson sure shows us a divided society and world, doesn't he? All that we had to do was to be:

white

Americans

in good health!

 

Well, that's easy, isn't it?

 

It is partly that "place and time matter" again. When Wallis says that he is mad at:

 

"'...those classes it's fair to call niggers, redskins, Chinks, kikes, wops, you know what I mean.'" (VII, p. 70)

 

- we are immediately assured that:

 

"Havig forced himself to remember that that basic attitude was common, even respectable in the Sachem's birth-century. Why, Abraham Lincoln had spoken of the inborn inferiority of the Negro...." (ibid.)

 

I am pleased to be one of those "'...pure-blooded whites...'" (ibid.) that Wallis includes among those classes that he is mad at.

 

But the main thrust of the dialogues quoted in the previous post was the dark future ahead of us. Robert Anderson says that those who do not survive will have had what happiness was granted them. That is part of how I make sense of life. People that I care about have had years of happiness that are now safely in the past. The future has always been uncertain in any case.

 

Jack Havig

Should we consider ourselves fortunate that we are getting old? Of course, we do not converse with anyone who has a time traveler's knowledge of the future. In the present, we must keep acting for the best. It would be dreadful to wind up wishing that we did not have younger relatives.

 

The Futurian

We would not like to know what is coming? I think that I would like to know in order to make the best preparation although, on the other hand:

 

"'...freedom lies in the unknown.'"

-There Will Be Time, XIV, p. 151.