Of Fusion and Mankind

My dear Honoré, at first I did not mean writing to you about fusion, but as I was reflecting over the next twenty years, somehow the word imposed itself on my mind. First of all us, fusion is about us, the me of 2024, and the same, that is you in twenty odd years in our future, when I get to you, which would be timely. Many things may happen in the next twenty years, that may change my way, our way, of understanding the world.

You know already about this, in your really old age. Yet, let’s imagine, what for you is our past, and for me an unknown. Evidently, nuclear fusion may become a practical reality, obliterating all other sources as relic of prehistory. If this happens, when it does, it will reshuffle the cards in ways we cannot imagine. The psychological effects will transcend the economic ones, as one is suddenly confronted with plenty, at almost no cost. Will it mean the end of wars? Who knows, part from you.

But I am also thinking about the way we, mankind will evolve over the next twenty years. It’s a fair stretch of time. Think: 2004! Twenty years ago. Many illusions have evaporated, while others have replaced them, as this is the way of our world. Maps have changed, and will, even more, in the next twenty years. You have by now worked out your rules to analyse historical, and maybe less historical events, haven’t you?

Looking at us from afar

I expect you have us in some clear perspective, the way Dumas saw the seventeenth century from the swamp of the nineteenth, with clear eyes, and a deep suspicion of his own time. But I forget that we are speaking of only (!) twenty years, the distance between us. If I am right about fusion, the difference will be enormous, the kind of change that the discovery of fire itself could be compared with. So, are you now judging us, our errors, hesitations, delusions? Are we going to improve or decline? Are we going to correct our wrong ways, our delusory thinking? Or will all continue as before, as no doubt the Devil hopes will happen. 

I could ask more questions in that department, but the essential is: are you praying for us, here, twenty years back, is spirituality making a come back in our countries? Or have we sunk into deeper materialism? Has there been other discoveries, in space travel, in chemistry, in physics, the latter being once again the queen of all sciences with fusion? Have we got rid of the old fallacies, or are they remnants of the nonsense dear to our early twenty-first century? In twenty years, that is 2044, is history looking any different, or is it the same old? I fear, from here, that it might be. 

Fusion of minds

This leaves me with the most important question to you. Do we understand each other, at last? For me this is more like talking to an estranged elder brother. You know all about me, unless you have lost your memories, I in turn can only guess what you have been up to beyond the next couple of years. I don’t trust myself to look beyond that.

Or am I being timid, do I underestimate my own potential? Only you know. The future is opaque, there are too many variables, as we care for our children and their children, our gracious grandchildren. Then, the planets, their trajectories, and the smaller ones, those meteorites that the great powers appear to ignore, is that so? Or are we at the mercy those?

If we can do fusion, surely we can also vaporise those rocks? Let me know how you think, please, give me a sign, that I am not just speaking nonsense, that my cognitive capacity, as they say, haven’t already seriously declined. I would love to hear more clearly from you.