Inherited debt

1650: 

Unsettled debts affect the generations which follow. Young people wake up to the mess left them by their elders. They have no trouble putting two and two together to see what has happened and why. They’re familiar with self interest, they understand how forests are being destroyed, they see how animals are being factory-farmed. They realise why poor nations are being made to starve. And they know we older ones are to blame for perpetuating all this destruction and cruelty and waste.

I imagine the young get quite angry when they think about what they’ve inherited. But to be completely constructive about the mess we older ones are leaving them with, we need to see what is driving all this irresponsibility. We need to look at human nature itself, to see why it hasn’t made the advances that technology and science has made. And to what extent our nature hasn’t really changed much over the centuries.

Unless we want the next generation to do exactly what we’ve done we must clear our debts. Unless we want today’s kids to spoil their own health, ethics and environment, as we’re doing, we can’t afford to sit around passively, twiddling out thumbs. If we do, nothing will change and our children will continue the trend, violating as we’ve done, stealing as we still do, until there is nothing left to take or spoil. The first and most constructive step we can take is to become vegan and encourage the young to follow suit - it will have a dramatic effect on their health and the legacy of non-violence they leave to their own progeny.