以下文字为美国电视节目《60分钟》主持人丹·拉瑟（Dan Rather），为杨澜访谈录六周年征文所写的回函，在此与各位分享。

TO OUR GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN’S CHILDREN…

Dan Rather

Interestingly, as we write to you living in the year 2107, we do so in a time of great concern about the future you know firsthand. Do you live on a planet transformed by global climate change? Have the industrialized and developing nations of the world found solutions to the interlocking problems of energy and pollution? Have demographic pressures and the fierce competition for scarce resources continued to sire armed conflict, or have you found some way to transcend humanity’s bloody history?

We hunger for the answers to these questions, for the outcomes only you can know. Do you praise the choices we have made—or do you, as we fear, curse our folly and shortsightedness, our inability or refusal to plan for the time you now inhabit?

When we look back on 100 years, we see the best of times and the worst of times. We see leaps in scientific progress that have cured disease, eased toil, and unraveled the secrets of our universe; we also see an environment poisoned by industrial waste and the development of fearsome weapons that can end all life. We see agricultural bounty and we bear witness to famine. We see great strides in human rights, in a century torn by war and genocide.

We seem caught in a race between our better selves and our basest instincts; between our ever-expanding knowledge and atrophying wisdom. The same might be said of any age in human history but here in the early years of the 21^st century the pace has accelerated, and the stakes seem higher than ever.

As a journalist, it has been my privilege to see much of the past century’s historic events firsthand—more than 50 years’ worth. You might take this into account in reading what I have set down here, as journalists rarely concern themselves with the reporting of good news. Still, we are not without hope, far from it—the evidence is in your hands, because reaching out to the future is nothing if not an optimistic gesture. History reassures us with the knowledge that this planet has known far darker days and persisted nonetheless.

You will note that I write little of contemporary events—an awareness of history also tells us that most of these will be of little importance or consequence to you, even a mere 100 years later. The best I can offer are generalities and then only from the perspective of my own corner of the world, the United States of America: We live in a time of political division, when many sense the country is on the wrong course; we struggle with a changing geopolitical landscape and the threat of stateless terrorism; we are increasingly under the spell of media that reaches into every corner of our lives, yet there is a longing in the land for a connection to more meaningful and enduring things such as family and community.

To you, who represent our great-grandchildren’s children, I close with the hope of all parents: That we will have left you a world that is better than the one we know.

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