I began this letter in November of 2020. More than I year later I picked it back up again to finish.

11/30/20 and 1/8/22

Help us save the world.

You've always said that it's up to my generation to revolt, to fix everything and save the world.

In large part I agree. I think we are and will continue to be the foot soldiers of this movement for some time. We will influence policy by keeping it rooted in present experience, modern fears and dreams. We will forge ahead through the muck of mutual disrespect and clouded selfishness and I believe we'll eventually come out of this turbulent period with a vantage of a bright future.

I do, however, believe that your perspectives should be elaborated beyond your go-to maxims. Your perspectives have tremendous value and deserve elaboration and to be pushed. And I don't mean just your views on topics, I also mean the manner in which you approach solutions. I also believe that the value your perspectives hold should live beyond their manifestation in me and your other descendants.

You're in the prime of your life intellectually and fiscally. You have more knowledge and assets, more mature perspectives on time and solution seeking, more wisdom and power than you've ever had. You have less hormones to drive stupid decisions and have successfully supported your once-dependent offspring to self-sufficiency.

In Interstellar the idea is put forward that parents are the ghosts of their children's future. Cooper, McConaughey's character, comes to decide that the world demands he not be his kids ghost - the world demands he exist as himself. The father pursues his destiny to be an astronaut and undertakes the mission that no one else can, and in doing so he leaves his children and his world behind. The world is maintained by his son following his work caretaking, farming. His daughter dreams of full science based solutions. The world is only saved when the father and daughter work together, by the family sticking together, to sort through existential and metaphysical woes. And there wouldn’t have been a population to save if it wasn’t for the farmers like the son.

The solution is only found because family stuck together. The communication through time and space from father to daughter would not be discovered, had she given up on saving her own family and not confronted her brother.

Perhaps you use this rhetoric to put the onus on us, to make us feel the pressure of our position in time - an attempt to force us to consider the reality of our potential and responsibility as capable men.

You reminded me in an email recently that I told you once that “I didn’t want to hear that shit”. I don’t remember specifically what I was responding to, and I don’t remember the tone I used. I assume I was referring to an anecdote you were relating for an umpteenth time, and I assume my tone was light. You seem like you remember better.

You repeat the same anecdotes often. I assume you either know you do this and do so to drive home important points (they’re undoubtably important), or that you don’t quite realize how often you repeat to me or how vividly I remember your maxims.

I personally get quickly exhausted by anything repetitious. Always have. A lot of people enjoy repetition, as if that is all that constitutes nostalgia. The subject reminds of an excerpt from the Neal Stephenson book you might enjoy most.

"Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near them begins to utter declarative sentences, because they read into it an assertion that they, the nerd, do not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances."

I don’t like driving because I’ve been that way before. I don’t like when people try to show me how to do things because if I’ve seen them done, I can do them. Sometimes the anecdotes you tell, which you’ve told me many times before, are really nice to hear. Usually it’s when you’re telling them to someone new. When you’re telling them to me, they’re so familiar and I see them coming so by the time you get started I’m ready to skip to the end.