I Have Seen the
Future and It Is Too Late
by Edwin L.
Young, PhD
April 23, 2010
The comic strip peanuts ended with the demise of Charles Schulz in 2000. It began in the early fifties. I remember one the “Peanuts” famous lines from the fifties, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” In the graphic below, there was this other famous line from Lucy which cites a passage from Isaiah’s Sixth Chapter, “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without men, and the land is utterly desolate..”
I will presume to add my own “prophesy /critique.”
I have seen the future and it is too late!
I am not trying to be cute, just as Schulz’s cleverly formulated meta-message was not just cute but contained his somberly humorous critique of US culture. Our culture is in a hopeless double-bind. Our economics demand that we compete and grow or be economically devoured by countries like China. Our free enterprise system demands that we grow, defeat or acquire rival corporations, or else they go bankrupt or are acquired by some other more successfully ruthless competitor. The other aspect of this double-bind is that if our corporations (now multi-national corporations) continue their relentless pursuit of growth, “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without men, and the land is utterly desolate..” , in our, and the world’s future, it will be too late!
“Whatsoever things are good, true, and beautiful, think on these things.” (St. Paul)
But just for today, think on things ‘gloomy’ as Schulz was suggesting so long ago!
If you do not, may Lucy’s refrain resonate in your mental ears, “How long? All of your life Charlie Brown. . . all of your life”.
Peanuts is
a syndicated daily and Sunday comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M.
Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, ...
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