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CHALLENGES TO CAMPERS OF CAMP QUEST '99
FROM EDWIN KAGIN, CAMP DIRECTOR
To the Campers of Camp Quest '99, Greetings.
As campers from past years know, and as new campers are now
to learn, it is traditional at Camp Quest for your beloved Camp Director to each
year provide you with certain "Challenges" and invite you to provide answers to
them on the final night of camp.
We are pleased to report that the space ship you assisted
with your advice at Camp Quest '97 is safely on its way to the planet Questerion.
All of your suggestions were adopted. As a result of your advice, we do now
actually have limited communications with the ship--something that had been
thought impossible.
Last year we communicated with a world attempting to decide
if the future of their world and their understanding of all that is will be
controlled by the principles of science or by the principles of faith and belief
in unseen powers. The brilliant and creative campers of Camp Quest ’98 presented
answers to them through analogy, symbolism and myth, that is through stories,
art, drama, music, poetry, dance, and other forms of creative symbolic
expression. We gave them answers that probably saved the future of their world.
This year, the campers of Camp Quest ’99 have the chance to save our present
and our future. We have learned through the time warp we discovered last year
that we can look back into the past of our own world.
As you perhaps know, this is the year 1999; it says so on the back of your
T-shirts. And next year is the year 2,000. Numbers work like that. What do you
think the world will be like in the year 3,000? We can’t see into the future,
but we can see into the past. And we have discovered that in the year 999,
people were waiting for the year 1,000 and they were also wondering just what
the year 2,000 would be like.
We have discovered their answers, and on the last night of camp, once again a
time warp will open and we can communicate with the people of the year 999. Each
cabin should try to tell these ancestors of ours if the predictions they made in
the year 999 for the future actually came to be so. Were their guesses about
what would happen in the time from the year 1,000 to the year 2,000 correct or
not?
You might also want to give them an idea of what you think the future of
these same things will be after the year 2,000.
So here are their predictions. Each cabin will deal with one of them.
CABIN # 1: Transportation. In 999, the folks say things will
be pretty much the same in the year 2,000 as they are in the year 1,000. Carts
will still be pulled by horses, and maybe even zebras, and people will ride
horses, mules, camels, and other animals, and maybe in the future people can
train other animals to ride, like bears, tigers, and large monkeys. Ships will
have better sails and better oars so they can go faster, and maybe these new
ships can even get to the edge of the flat earth. The myths they have heard
about people flying will not come true, unless they can train a lot of large
birds to pull some kind of sky sled.
CABIN # 2: Communications. The people of the year 999 think
that by the year 2,000 people can send better messages by training better
runners to carry them and by developing a better way to train birds to carry
written letters for great distances. They think bigger lighthouses and
reflectors will be invented that can carry messages from signal fires for longer
distances, and better drums and horns will transmit more information for many
more miles. Systems of runners and horseback riders will make it be able to get
messages from far away in several days less than is possible in 999, and faster
ships will carry more communications faster and farther than ever. Systems of
scribes will be developed who can copy many more books than ever. Some genius
may invent a writing instrument stronger and faster than sharpened goose
feathers. Crazy people who have insane ideas of voices going over great
distances by themselves will be proved wrong.
CABIN # 3: Making and Growing Things. Farming may develop
better plows and better horses to pull them. Individuals and families may join
together in groups to make similar things and to trade them with families and
groups that make other things. Sewing will still be done by hand and by women as
it always has been done, but better needles and thread and cloth still may be
invented. By the year 2,000, trade may expand to villages as far as fifty miles
away, and different kinds of pottery and metal items can be exchanged for new
kinds of skins and cloth. People in 999 believe there is nothing really new to
be created, but there is a strong belief that all of the things made by hand in
the year 1,000 can be made better by the year 2,000.
CABIN # 4 Science. Most things of science are believed to be
more like witchcraft than anything else. A wizard, a witch, and a person
interested in science are all about the same. It is generally accepted that any
teaching is wrong and evil if it tries to say anything different than what is
written in the Bible. Some bad people have actually tried to cut up dead human
bodies to learn how they work, and others claim the Bible is not true in the way
God tells how he created everything. Most good people would like to see all
science and scientists destroyed, and many hope and believe that by the year
2,000 there will be no scientists, but only good people who are willing to live
by the truths of the word of god. This would be the best form of progress and
people would be much happier if everyone lived by faith alone.
CABIN # 5 Education: In 999, it is generally accepted that
there is not much left to be learned. All lands have been discovered and just
about everything there is to know is now known. All knowledge anyone needs is
available in the Bible, and this can be explained by priests to the people. Most
men have no need to learn to read, and women and slaves have no such need to
learn to read at all, assuming that they are even capable of learning to do so.
People need to learn that the sun and stars move around the Earth, and that the
king gets his right to rule from god. Men learn from god, and women learn from
men. Faith and belief is far more important than things learned from books. Most
learning is from stories told by the old ones of the villages.
CABIN # 6 Warfare and Exploration. In the year 999, they
think there are very few places left to discover or conquer. There are some
crazy folks who say there are new worlds to find across the sea, but sane
intelligent people know this is not true, because if a ship sailed across the
ocean they would fall off the edge of the world, and the ships would probable be
sunk by sea monsters. Weapons may become more powerful with stronger bows and
new inventions like war machines that can throw spears and fireballs many feet
farther.
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