Project Vision 21

In a recent report in the specialized journal Science Advances, it indicates that seeds that remained in the soil of Judea 2000 years ago were successfully cultivated, growing and bearing fruit. Although this is not the first experiment of its kind, the result leads to the question: what are we sowing today that can be harvested within two millennia?

Let's be honest: most of what we do is so irrelevant, so superficial and also so trivial that even we forget that we have done it. Therefore, hardly anything we do today or say will become of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists of the future.

But we can ask ourselves, what made six seeds of the past could be grown in our time? The answer is simple: they had been kept in such a way that not even the passing of the centuries made them lose their ability to germinate.

Another recent report, in this case disseminated by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii (Italy) indicates that the aqueducts built by the Romans 2000 years ago so that the rain fallen in the center of that ancient city was discharged into the sea are preserved in such good state that now, two millennia later, they are used for the same purpose.

Recall, as is well known, that Pompeii and other nearby cities were destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. However, despite this catastrophe and tragedy, the aqueducts continue to function. Why? Because they were built to last, contrary to what happens with the vast majority of the things we have access to today.

In spite of the many negative things that can be said of the Romans, there is no doubt that they excelled in construction because they were building proof of the future, without the idea so common in our time of an obsolescence program to favor inhuman capitalism.

So, what can we build that is so well built that it will last for many years precisely because it is built to last beyond tragedies and catastrophes? And what can we preserve so well guarded and protected that, when the appropriate conditions arrive in the future, what we have saved and protected germinates and flourishes?

Maybe it is not about building something or safekeeping something, but about giving something and, because we give it for the future, give it now in advance so all those we will never meet (and probably will know nothing of us) can enjoy.

To give something for the future is what is called forgiving (for-giving), not in the superficial and devalued sense that word has today, but in the sense of creating a safe and secure environment today, so well built, that it will allow the humans of the future to become fully human. The Greeks had a word for that kind of forgiveness: agape.

Agape is also a devalued word, whose deep meaning, unknown to many, is not to be explained, but lived. As somebody beautifully said 2000 years ago, agape will remain.