The year is 2113.
Soft, bright sunlight falls from the sky, along with what oak leaves have been taken by the chilled wind from nearby trees.
You can almost taste the enthusiasm around campus, for tonight LSU will unveil its latest honor to a war hero and former LSU athlete. Until then, you must attend to your daily activities.
A quick bicycle ride brings you to Himes Hall, where you dutifully take notes for 80 minutes on Western Civilization since the 1900s. 3 hours later, and you have explored the subjects of Human Anatomy and Architecture of Ancient Cultures.
With a bologna and cheese sandwich in one hand and your bicycle’s handlebar in the other, you pedal over to the campus’s Youth League complex. Today, you volunteer to lead a group of 6- to 8-year-old boys to the veterinary school, where they will play with animals for three hours. Once the children are safely back inside the complex, you head over to your true home: the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
This is the building that brings forth your blood, sweat and tears. The bouncing of your basketball and squeaking of your sneakers on the court floor thrusts you into mind-numbing concentration. This is your daily temple.
And once outside of it, you join the crowd of people gathering around its North side.
“Members of the LSU community,” Coach Rosenthal greets, “after this long, tiresome war, we have finally extinguished the last strong resistance movement in the state …”
After much elaboration on Pilot Peterson’s noble kamikaze attack in the swamps of New Orleans, and on how much he will be missed by the basketball community, a sheet in the middle of the throng is pulled away to reveal a 901 pound statue of the man. With this unveiling, every student and teacher attending raises a small flag of red, white and black, proud of the swastika that symbolizes their goal for a better humanity.

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Had the Nazis made certain strategic alterations, and had Hitler sired a line of children just as charismatic and strong-willed as he, this could have been the future of LSU — and the world.
Yet, is this picture so different from the future U.S. citizens would like to have? Minus the last paragraph, you were shown to be the American ideal: an intelligent, caring and driven individual.
It cannot be under-stressed how different the Nazi regime was from us; I am sure most Americans would agree the murdering of millions of non-Aryans by bullets and gas is vile. Still, if one looks at the most basic essence of what Hitler strove for, it was not all that different from what Americans, and people of other cultures, want.
In general, people want people to be happy and healthy. Collectives want people to help each other. Families want people to be strong, intellectual and creative.
This core is what we must explore, both inside our country and out. Too many Americans are opposed to immigrants of different heritages and customs integrating with communities here, yet we claim to be the “land of the free.”
Additionally, it is easy to make enemies in international affairsbecause leaders and their civilians do not reach for peace by looking at the base roots of issues, but rather focusing on the imminent practical ideas and actions of the other political body.
How one thinks the universe works, or where a human’s DNA comes from should be afterthoughts to the understanding that you are like me. We can disagree on every note of politics, spirituality, family, etc., but we are both are still people trying to survive in comfort. An individual’s utopia lies in understanding humanity as a whole.
Alix Landriault is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from Natchitoches, La.