People speak of wanting to leave their children a world that's better off. I'd settle for the same--not that I lack aspirations, but "the same" can be made better. Certainly there might be more impetus for that if we didn't assume that new strides and new problems cancel out. I'd give up lots of our new technology if we had more of our old ways back--and as I programmed this entire website in HTML code and edited my own photos and art, this isn't coming from a technophobe.

As others have offered their visions for a better world, I'd like to do so by suggesting it's something we all deserve, as I can't imagine anyone being offended by my vision, and certainly not by suggesting we deserve the lifestyle of a generation ago.

I can understand if many of you might think helping others meet basic needs and be free of violence might be more worthwhile aspirations. Well, I think those are good ideas also--and the fact that they're likely to occur to you shows that many of us are already focused in that direction. But I choose not to wait until our biggest problems are eradicated before attending to beauty--and besides, remember, WE DESERVE IT!

I'd like to see fear eradicated not just among the most unfortunate of humanity, but among the comfortable. Remember walking during an evening and not having an automatic porch light suddenly blare at you as an innocent neighbour? Or people locking and unlocking their cars without setting off horns? (Thankfully, that's improving, showing that positive change is possible.) Or yards not surrounded by wrought iron? Or when people who just had to remove leaves from their lawn did so with quiet, nonpolluting rakes? Or when you knew people alone in public weren't apt to start beeping and chatting when nobody approached? Or when trucks didn't have a blaring beep when going in reverse, on the theory that people could be just as careful around them as when they were going forward?

I don't want to stir people to write Congress in hopes of preventing amnesty for people who come here from difficult circumstances; I want to inspire a world where the folly of crowding liberty and prosperity by displacing people into--and in--a select few countries is seen as an unthinkable reduction in the quality of life for people everywhere.

I bet you want your kids to live as adventurously as you did, without your being warned by news addicts to protect them against everything that has an infinitesimal chance of occurring. Come on now, doesn't some little part of you wish you could cram your preschooler by the rear window above the back seat so he can ride like you or your brothers or sisters might have? Maybe you wouldn't have to pay so much for dependence on foreign oil if you were allowed to carry your family in a smaller car.

Even when good laws come about--such as to protect the environment--don't such laws sometimes make you feel like you're being deprived of an opportunity that people who came before you had, as if life is being increasingly regulated and its mystery diminished?

I don't know how we can otherwise fulfil all the legitimate needs for security and protection that people seek new laws and practices for. I DO know that resigning oneself to lost pleasures--or denying that they could matter to others--can't create real peace for anyone. Please feel free to forward this.