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Truth, Errors, and Lies: Politics and Economics in a Volatile World resources

Extracted Text (may have errors)

A Letter To My Granddaughter’s Granddaughter Warsaw, 2010 My Dear Girl, You were born in the fi , at the end of the 21st century; I was n de siècle born in the middle of the 20th. I graduated from high school in 1967, and you in 2107. It’s hardly strange that the questions on the fi nal exam were different. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, and look how quickly it fl owed! Time separates us, and it connects us. The future is the past. The past is the future. In the years that are your past, but that still remain my future, a good many of the things that could have happened did happen. The reason it turned out this way, and not otherwise, is explained by my coincidence theory, the theory of development that is no longer some- thing new in your time, but rather something obvious. However, many of the things—good and bad—that could have happened, didn’t. This is the difference between us. We have a completely different relation to before and after. Things could have happened, but didn’t. This means that one of the critical elements, from the blend of circumstances that determine what happens, was missing. Sometimes this was just a matter of luck, but deliberate human action was decisive more often. In any case, words were always important. They have meaning, a great deal of it.

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