Jane Goodall and what we leave behind

Jane Goodall Famous Last Words The interview, which was filmed in March but not made public until after his death at the age of 91 earlier this month. most of your attention For the sequence of numbers, the leading chimpanzee expert would put it on “one of the chimpanzees” when given the choice. [Elon] “Use Musk’s spaceships and send them to the planet where he is sure to explore them all.”

“You can imagine who I’m going to put on that spaceship. Along with Musk [US President Donald] “Trump and some of Trump’s true supporters,” he said.

“And then I would put [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is there, I would put it too [China’s] President Xi. I would definitely put [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his far-right government are there. “Put them all on that spaceship and send them away.”

But that doesn’t seem to be the real message he wants to leave behind.

“My greatest hope is to raise this new generation of caring citizens, roots and shoots. But do we have time? I don’t know. It’s a very bleak time, really,” he said at one point, adding in a direct-to-camera address after the interview:

Even today, even though the planet is dark, there is still hope. Don’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you will remain indifferent and do nothing.

And if you want to save what is still beautiful in this world – if you want to save the planet for future generations, for your grandchildren, for their grandchildren – then think about the actions you take every day. Because when multiplied by a million, a billion, even small actions will lead to big change.

Thus, Goodall becomes one of those figures who are both lucky and unlucky enough to know how quickly the end comes and to leave a message behind. Harry Leslie Smith, a one-time RAF pilot turned speaker and activist, used the last years of his life – he did not come to prominence until he was Goodall’s age – to defend the UK’s social welfare state and the National Health Service, which transformed what was possible in his own lifetime against the onslaught of the Conservative government. AA Gill He used his last piece – following the “cancer-related embarrassment, very English” statement three weeks ago – to the same effect: “The NHS is our best”.

David Bowie’s last album Black StarThis work, created while he was secretly dying of liver cancer, made references to the following in its title alone: an obscure Elvis Presley death songHP Lovecraftian horrorAnd blackout related to Bowie’s own iconography. Or we had to speculate – that did not give an interview He died before the album’s release and within two days of its release in January 2016.

Our own Mungo MacCallum has concluded his five decades of writing about Australian politics with typical wit and anger, apologizing for his decision to “cut and run”. “It’s been a challenging career at times,” he wrote, “but I hope it’s a productive and always fun one. I appreciate your participation. So, a seasonal Hallmark message:

Christmas is coming and Australia is flat

Please tell us ScoMo where the hell we are.

And when we’re sure you know you don’t have a clue

Then join our Christmas choir as we sing: FUCK YOU!

Thank you and good night.

He was gone a week later.

Joan Didion still had nearly a decade left when she set out. Blue Nightshis first-hand report from the land of sorrow and, by extension, his own mortality: “I found my mind turning more and more to the end of promises, the shortening of days, the inevitability of fading, the dying of brightness.”

There is understandably a lot of news coverage of what it means to be young at this time, looking ahead to seemingly unstoppable environmental degradation, growing inequality and ever-shrinking possibilities. But in the same world there was less material on what it means to approach one’s end.

Speaker ran in 2022 a long survey It’s about how they see the world now, from a variety of people in their late 60s to mid-80s. An 84-year-old Holocaust survivor concluded his blunt response this way:

I am now 84 years old and have a four-month-old grandson. She is so beautiful. She’s amazing. A quarter of it consists of me. As long as there are humans, there is hope. It’s not good to be sarcastic or harsh. It does not benefit anyone in any way. This is the declaration of a very old man who is happy about the birth of his first grandchild.

Along with the pessimism and anxiety, many report taking some solace, or at least staving off panic, in the sense that these were not uniquely dire times—many speak of the late ’60s, with its spate of assassinations, young deaths of cultural figures, and the gripping horror of war in Indochina, just as Goodall cites the Second World War and the fight against fascism as examples for our time:

“That doesn’t mean you won’t have moments of depression, but then you come out of it and say, ‘Okay, I’m not going to let them win,'” he said.

“I would like to believe that freedom, justice and equality will prevail, but I do not believe that this is automatic. I think we must achieve this through our choices and actions. [and] By living responsibly,” notes a 68-year-old from St Louis.

It sounds very nice like the description Attributed to George Orwell, printed by his publisher while he was in hospital fading fast. He took the criticisms into account 1984 He was rewarded for his blatant attack from the left. The statement made clear that it was not a specific government he was targeting, but the threat of totalitarianism in general: “The lesson from this dangerous nightmare situation is simple: Don’t let it happen. It’s up to you.”