Tag: Speeches

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Can You Change The Future?

What the people really needed was just some basic common-sense information and advice, somebody to tell them the truth – that their way of life was coming to an end – and to offer them some sensible collective survival strategies.” 

– Richard Heinberg

Now, You Face A Bleak Future

“A Letter from the Future” is an imaginary letter written in the year 2101 to by a 100 year old Richard Heinberg – senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and author of 10 books on issues of energy, the economy and ecology – to people of the world living in our times, about the tough future expected according to tendencies scientists and economists foresee humanity experiencing in the coming century.

It portrays a picture of a humanity struggling to make its way when the life it created for itself throughout the 20th century faces its depletion:

  • depletion of energy resources,
  • devaluing of money and products above the level of necessity,
  • scarcity of food and water, and
  • political motions toward fascism and war.

After painting a bleak picture of a suffering humanity dealing with all of the above during the 21st century, Heinberg raises the question…

 

Can You Change The Future?

Possibly, as a result of reading this letter, you might do something that would change my world [the world of the person living in the year 2101]. … Then, I suppose this letter would change, as would your experience of reading it. And as a result of that, you’d take different actions. We would have set up some kind of cosmic feedback loop between past and future. It’s pretty interesting to think about.

Maybe I should mention that I’ve come to accept a view of history based on what I’ve read about chaos theory. According to the theory, in chaotic systems small changes in initial conditions can lead to big changes in outcomes. Well, human society and history are chaotic systems. Even though most of what people do is determined by material circumstances, they still have some wiggle room, and what they do with that can make a significant difference down the line.”

 

Read ‘A Letter From The Future’ By Richard Heinberg

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Image: No Identity by HaPe_Gera

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Let Us All Unite! – Charlie Chaplin’s Speech From The Great Dictator

I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor, that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish. Soldiers: don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written: “The kingdom of God is within man” Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let us use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future, and old aged security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill that promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!”