A Letter from Babylon the Great

July 8, 2055th

Dear Reader,

My name is Gus and I’m launching this letter on the morning of my hundredth birthday. I’m tossing the sealed bottle into the ocean from what used to be known as the United States.

A decade before I was born, my country invented the bomb of all bombs to end the war of all wars. Our technological expertise and the worldview that enabled it, were second to none. Our education system was unparallelled and our work ethic was the secret envy of every nation — especially our critics.

Governments from around the world emulated our public education system. Wealthy families from around the world sent their brightest and best to be educated in our universities. Even those who despised us sent spies to learn our secrets.

We were proud of our accomplishments and with good reason. Our medical advances cured millions, and our agricultural technologies very nearly brought an end to world hunger.

Those who hated us, labeled us as “Babylon the Great” for our lack of morals but what did a bunch of backwards fanatics know? Life was good and we made the most of our days on this planet. So, what if we indulged in Earthly pleasures? We were as close to gods as anyone in history had ever become.

Our downward spiral began because we eventually succumbed to our own PR. At some tipping point in our culture, we began to think of ourselves as the gods of our own existence. Personal peace and affluence became our only pursuits.

We even began to skew our understanding of science to fit our need to be God. It was not immorality that undermined our worldview, but rather, it was our insistence that morality was relativistic. After all, if we were gods, then right and wrong were merely social constructs that evolved as we evolved.

At some point, we began to deny nature and claim we could be whatever we wanted to be — male, female, cat, dog, whatever our finite minds fancied. Our once-envied education system abandoned its core purpose and reconfigured itself as an organization for social engineering.

Scientific understanding of our Earthly habitat began to slip. We overestimated our significance in a closed planetary system and refused to accept that our bodies are merely finite elements of a much larger biological entity.

We lost track of the fact that only our souls can relate to the very author of life, and forgot the two basic truths: the Author of life exists and He rewards those who seek Him.

If you, my dear reader, recognize and communicate those two simple truths, you may well ignite a spiritual and philosophical revolution that negates a hundred years of modern dark ages. But be cautious because that message has always encountered violent resistance.

A meeting of great minds who think alike