In Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," when Billy Pilgrim praises the peacefulness of Tralfamadore, the aliens inform him that Tralfamadorians are at war sometimes and at peace at others. They add that they know how the universe will end: one of their pilots will accidentally blow it up. It always happens the same way and that is how the moment is structured. They state that war cannot be prevented on Tralfamadore any more than it can on Earth.
I read that book when I was a teenager. At that time, I was already up to my armpits in nihilism, and this turned out to be a little like throwing lighter fluid on a fire. Now I had my private joke with Kurt and the millions of other disgruntled adolescents who kept their dog-eared copy in their school backpacks. The end of the world is coming, but it doesn't matter since there's nothing we can do about it.
I thought about this again today, after decades, and found that I did care if the world ended, and I do care about how it ends, because now I am somebody's father. I want there to be another sunrise. I want the world to keep spinning after I'm sleeping in the dirt. For my son. But now I find myself watching President Pinhead continue to steer the country into the wall of Apocalypse, and it gives me a cold shiver. This is a guy who has seen how the world could end dozens of times, a guy who has looked into the abyss, and this is the guy who keeps accelerating as the darkness approaches. And still the story continues. We hope that we can pick the ending, but most of us continue reading along with our mouths agape.
I don't despair because now I remember the final chapter too: "There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."
Thank you, Kurt. Hello. Goodbye.
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