Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter of Advice to People Living in the Year 2088

There was a time when a com­pa­ny like Volk­swa­gen could com­mis­sion var­i­ous lumi­nar­ies to write let­ters to the future, then pub­lish them in Time mag­a­zine as part of an ad cam­paign. In fact, that time was­n’t so very long ago: it was the year 1988, to be pre­cise, when no less an opti­mistic (or opti­misti­cal­ly bleak?) nov­el­ist than Kurt Von­negut was still active. At some point between writ­ing Blue­beard and Hocus Pocus, he com­posed a mis­sive direct­ed toward human­i­ty a cen­tu­ry hence (in 2088), which you can read even in this rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly year of 2024 here.

Von­negut begins with quo­ta­tions from Shake­speare and St. John the Divine, explain­ing that “our cen­tu­ry has­n’t been as free with words of wis­dom as some oth­ers, I think, because we were the first to get reli­able infor­ma­tion about the human sit­u­a­tion.” In his time, we knew full well “how many of us there were, how much food we could raise or gath­er, how fast we were repro­duc­ing, what made us sick, what made us die, how much dam­age we were doing to the air and water and top­soil on which most life forms depend­ed, how vio­lent and heart­less nature can be, and on and on. Who could wax wise with so much bad news pour­ing in?”

Of spe­cial import to him was the rev­e­la­tion that “Nature was no con­ser­va­tion­ist. It need­ed no help from us in tak­ing the plan­et apart and putting it back togeth­er some dif­fer­ent way, not nec­es­sar­i­ly improv­ing it from the view­point of liv­ing things.” Earth may have giv­en rise to human­i­ty, but it has not the capac­i­ty to care whether we or any oth­er par­tic­u­lar life form sur­vives on it. And so we must take it upon our­selves to ensure our own well-being, which requires liv­ing in accor­dance with what Von­negut calls “Nature’s stern but rea­son­able sur­ren­der terms”:

1. Reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion.
2. Stop poi­son­ing the air, the water, and the top­soil.
3. Stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems.
4. Teach your kids, and your­selves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhab­it a small plan­et with­out help­ing to kill it.
5. Stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars.
6. Stop think­ing your grand­chil­dren will be OK no mat­ter how waste­ful or destruc­tive you may be, since they can go to a nice new plan­et on a space­ship. That is real­ly mean, and stu­pid.
7. And so on. Or else.

You can eas­i­ly imag­ine these words uttered by Von­negut him­self, but how about by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch? There’s no need to imag­ine: you can sim­ply watch the new video above, tak­en from a recent Let­ters Live event. Cum­ber­batch is one of the series’ star read­ers, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly inter­pret­ed let­ters by Nick Cave, Albert Camus, Alan Tur­ing, and oth­ers onstage. This advice to the “ladies and gen­tle­men of AD 2088” has proven to be one of his hits; you can hear anoth­er, ear­li­er read­ing here. Per­haps Von­negut’s words bear repeat­ing, but then, he always showed a sharp aware­ness that human­i­ty has few qual­i­ties as per­sis­tent as the inabil­i­ty to lis­ten.

Relat­ed con­tent:

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter Urg­ing High-School Stu­dents to Cre­ate Art & “Make Your Soul Grow”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch & Ian McK­ellen Read Epic Let­ters Writ­ten by Kurt Von­negut

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read­ing Let­ters by Kurt Von­negut, Alan Tur­ing, Sol LeWitt, and Oth­ers

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.