¶ … Virtual Time Capsule of 2012 Letter of Introduction

Dear Citizens of 3012: Greetings from the Good People of 2012! Congratulations -- You Made It!

A thousand years is a long time in the scope of humanity and we hope this message finds someone to read it in the future. If you are reading this, you have discovered the virtual time capsule that was created in 2012 to help capture some of the more salient and poignant aspects of life today in ways that may help you better understand us and perhaps forgive us for the damage we wrought on the planet you inherited from us. This is not to say we were naive (many of us are smart and some of us are clever here in 2012), but we had other priorities and we always assumed you would be able to take care of anything we did, no matter how terrible (good luck with that!). If you are reading this, it also means the growing number of doomsayers today were wrong about Mayan predictions about end of days on December 21, 2012.

Our day-to-day lives are filled with varying degrees of success in satisfying our basic human needs and trying to provide for the welfare of our family and our countries. Some of us are for more fortunate than others in this area of life in the early...

By discovering this virtual time capsule, you will have continued a long tradition that humans have used to encapsulate the present for the future. As one anthropologist points out, "By addressing the ontological, epistemological and sociological problems related to this concept of the future, the category 'time capsules' now absorbs other kinds of intended and unintended 'messages' from any period by reinterpreting their original significance in modern terms" (Wallman, 1992, p. 53). In the early 21st century, we are also smart enough to know that what we are preserving today will seem primitive and downright crude by your standards, but it is our hope and expectations that you will receive what we send in the spirit in which it is made: Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards All Humankind. Godspeed and good luck in the future!
An Example of Morality and Decision-Making in Current Culture

Unfortunately, it is fairly straightforward to make moral decisions when there are no trade-offs involved, but life in the early 21st century is a complicated affair that involves a seemingly endless series of cost-benefit analyses to determine what it the best course of action in countries where an increasingly diverse set of interests make such decisions all the more challenging. The decision-making processes used by policymakers in the early 21st century are characterized by such processes, but this does not always make their choices the best moral decision or produce the optimal outcomes.

Definition of Happiness

It is not hard to be happy, but is hard to stay that way in the early 21st century. People know what makes them…