For My Descendants Living During The Year 2050

Moses had no computer. Yet the books of Moses have been written faultlessly, all the events within them seem to be in perfect chronological order, and Moses’ style of writing is to the point, succinct, and in places wonderfully poetic.

Like Moses, I have no computer either. [It wasn’t too long after this that Herman and Stiny got a computer.] On my electric typewriter is a small correction spool. With it I can correct typos but have to do so before I type the next line. I can not insert additional thoughts or givens as you can do so easily on a computer. I must use all my wits to compose sentences, remember the correct spelling of words, remember the flow of events which I will describe, type with two fingers instead of all ten – and do all these intricate things simultaneously, without the opportunity to correct myself on the spot, unless I should rip this page out of the typewriter and start all over again.

It’s a bit like J. S. Bach, who could jot down staff after staff of the most-involved music without ever having to correct himself. It has been said that Bach was a giant, a genius. I leave any comparison, any analogy to the pleasure of most developed thought patterns of my dear descendants, many of whom I will never see. I am sure that my descendants will be capable of analyzing despite the universal take-over of such analyses by ever-brighter computers.

Retirement

As a matter of fact, this autobiography might not have been written had it not been for the fact that a computer pushed me out of my last job as Coordinator of Friendship Groups Canada. Certainly, there were other reasons, but my rather old-fashioned ways of administration were not nearly sufficiently modern and compact for Board Members, who could not live without computers anymore. Since it was already determined that a 60-year-old man could not be retrained to handle the awesome computers of which they spoke in hushed, admiring tones, the already momentous increase of Friendship Groups for persons with mental handicaps would take even larger leaps under the leadership of a computerized Coordinator.

Of course, there were other factors. For instance, my rather free-wheeling style of getting things done, smacked of a non-academically formed brain. My position was important enough to be taken over by an academic who could think logically, put things on a computer in more complex fashion, and be able to answer all the Board’s questions in lofty evasions and businesslike counterarguments.

I sincerely hope that the work ethics of my descendants who are reading this biography will not be of such a zealous nature that they will allow the holders of these ethics to read a manuscript written by an unemployed forebear without feelings of shame. The very fact that I took the initiative to write points at my own passion for work, whether inborn or bred. I’ve been unemployed since June 1991 and I began this momentous work on my 60th birthday, January 1992. Do not think that I sat idle during the in-between months. I put a ceiling in the basement, changed the Friendship office into an apartment, put the garden in A-1 condition, studied organ a bit more, baby-sat toddlers once a week for an one-and-a-half hour during Coffee Break (in which church women gather to study the Bible, inviting unbelieving women to attend), took over several chores which my wife usually attended to, like vacuum-cleaning and dusting, buying groceries, cleaning up after myself, and a host of other little jobs.

But the apartment hasn’t been rented out yet. We live in Jordan Station, which is a small village close to St. Catharines, a village surrounded by fruit-farms and greenhouses. It’s not too attractive a place for the students of Brock University or people who work in St. Catharines to board, so I use my ex-office (where I first upholstered furniture for three years and later sat at my desk for ten long years as Development Director of the Salem Christian Mental Health Association (5 years) and Coordinator of Friendship Groups Canada) as writing room.

It is a good place to work. I can smoke here. There was a time you could smoke anywhere freely, even in hospital rooms. But this is the time of designated smoking areas, and my office is one of those. I began to smoke cigarettes (which are tubes of thin paper holding tobacco, usually with a filter to keep the tobacco tar from entering your lungs as much as possible) when I was 13 years old. I have never been able to quit. Smoking is an addiction, and I hope that my grand children and great-grand children will be totally free from it. Since 1945 (I was born in 1932) I have smoked 400,000 cigarettes, or the equivalent of 400 kilogram of tobacco, at a total cost of at least 23,000 dollars. Especially during the last ten years my smoking habit has been one of the biggest bones of contention between my wife, children and myself.

It may well be possible that this manuscript will stay in the family for decades. How things will change. During my life span technology has made greater strides than in the previous 200 years together. Even during the last 20 years (1970-1990) it has been difficult to keep track of new inventions, new machines, new ways of living. Maybe, during your life the world’s history will have reached a leveling plateau, but I hardly think that that will happen.

Anyway, we are living in a very exciting phase of history. 1991 was the year of the complete downfall of communism. The economic ramifications for the rest of the world are unforeseeable. For the time being the threat of a Third World War is over. For many years to come there will be many local squabbles inside and between smaller nations. At the moment this is already happening in nations which suddenly became independent from the Soviet State, as Georgia, Czechoslovakia etc.