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Right Now Is the Best Time to Be Alive, Ever!
I was reading someone going on about how horrible the world is, and all the challenges we face. And you know what? I don’t buy it. Our ancestors spent most of their time as prey animals, so attached to vision as the primary sense, that the dark was a special kind of dangerous. When God was handing out goodies, we showed up late, got almost no fur, no claws, sorry teeth and digestive tracks, and had to make do with thumbs, and very expensive brains. Now look at us.
We live, here, in America, as the 1 percent of the 1 percent of the 1 percent of having it good compared to everyone who came before us. We have things today that kings did not have. Clean drinking water? Heck, we have so much of that we can bother to have our own personal Hanging Gardens. We can live after our teeth fall out. Heck, we get to live very sick and injured. Try that with hunter-gatherers.We have had members walk on another world. We can harness energy is so many ways that reduce our need for physical toil. Being fat is a problem! 100 years ago, no one would have thought that possible (maybe not 50 years ago). I am sitting her typing with ice in my drink on a day that is almost 90*. The air around me is 72*. Out species no longer
We have had members walk on another world. We can harness energy is so many ways that reduce our need for physical toil. Being fat is a problem! A century ago, no one would have thought that possible (maybe not 50 years ago). I am sitting here typing with ice in my drink on a day that is almost 90 degrees. The air around me is 72 degrees.
Our species no longer has to fear the dark, because we can make it day. We are the top of the food chain now. All around the world, large animals know to leave us alone (if in numbers). An alien may not have bet on the sorry primates wandering around 2 million years ago.
There is no time in history better to have been alive than right now.
Published in General
I could quibble, but you are are right.
Quibbling makes for more alive posts! I expect this one, however, to come and go fast. We reward controversy around here. Just means I have to post more stuff that is non controversial.
I’m partial to the 19th century, but I romanticize it. I like big dresses :)
I lived through the last half of the twentieth century, and have written extensively about the 18th, 19th, and first half of the twentieth century. I have read extensively about earlier times. If I had been born in the 19th or 18th century I would have died before reaching 20 (Medical technology). Nothing romantic of dying of septicemia. If I had missed the last quarter of the 20th century I would not have had the access to the world I had then and now. I’ll take today. Tomorrow, too, if I can.
Seawriter
Cigars, bourbon, college football…life is good.
Maybe the cycle of fashion will eventually find its way back to hoop skirts!
Lol.
Its why it was a quibble.
My dad likes to send those emails to me bragging about how great were the “good old days” – complete with pictures of idyllic scenes, full-service gas stations, people sitting on park benches, etc.
Yeah dad, well, you grew up white middle-class. It wasn’t so “good” being black in the 50’s. Or a woman. Or in prison for some misdemeanor. Or…
There may be problems right now, but there have always been problems. Right now is the very best time to be alive in history!
I can’t wait for next year!
And the freakin’ Internet! I showed my dad how to watch my “DirecTV Now” on his freaking PHONE!
Watching an 80-year-old redneck watching NASCAR on his phone put a smile on my face that lasted all day. Beat THAT, 1950’s!
We have Talk Like A Pirate day!
Then why all the gripping about lost American Greatness? Where was the proportionality in that? I would like to take the time now to also point out that today would still have been the greatest day to be alive even if She Who is Without Responsibility Even While Assuming It All would have won the election.
But, yes modernity is a glorious thing, no one before air conditioning was civilized. It is what makes us better than animals.
I’m with you, @bryangstephens! It’s a great time to be alive! It’s the golden age of everything!
And anyone who doesn’t think so is a “nattering nabob of negativitism.”
Pirate: What d’ye think is a pirate’s favorite letter of the alphabet?
Landlubber: I got this: R!
Pirate: Aye, there are many who think that. But it turns out that a pirate’s first love is the C.
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness, it is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair…
I feel a Captain’s Wife’s Lament coming on …
Thanks for all the comments and likes!
I just about to write the same thing.
But on the other hand… First world problems!
Bryan, I didn’t “like” this. I LOVE it.
Thank you.
Going to print it up and hand it out.
Sometimes we get caught up in the negativity of the nightly news and forget about our blessings. Thank you for reminding us.
Shoot me now, I loathe that day.
It’s almost over, you’ll be ok.
What? You mean that was today? Aw man, I missed it again! Well, maybe next year. With turgid gravy! Arrgghhh!
We are blessed beyond measure. My dear old dad lived far beyond his sell date thanks to evil pharmaceutical companies. My husband is shopping for a knee replacement; in another generation he might have had to … God help us … give up golf.
My daughter and I both had C-sections; we enjoy arguing over who had it worse. (dear old dad was 14 and 1/2 pounds; we all can agree his mother had it worse with no C-section)
I turn the key in my car everyday and it starts! That wasn’t always the case for me in the 70s and 80s.
Every single answer to just about every single question is in my purse on my smart phone. No more endless arguing over who won Best Picture in 1972 (although I have a good friend who misses late night phone calls I made to settle a bet)
I wake up to hot coffee everyday. And everyday is a good day.
Agree!
I had to get a root canal a few years ago and it was nowhere near as bad as my Mom made it out to be. I have to think that there were advancements made in the procedure from the 60s and 70s. The most painful part of the experience was writing out the check at the end.
Absolutely right, and a fact that too many of us too often forget as we wrap our minds up in obsessing about relatively minor problems. When people point out some small challenge or inconvenience I face, I am fond of reminding them that I am one of the luckiest people ever to have lived, and one of the luckiest people alive today. Being born when, where, and to whom I was was a winning lottery ticket. Everything else is trivialities. (And I believe most of the people reading this are in the same boat. I am not a Rockefeller, just a guy born to an intact middle class family in Wisconsin in the second half of the 20th century.)
Dental Care is huge. The number one way old people used to die, is by slow starvation because they lost their teeth.
Bingo.
You’re wrong Bryan. You’re going to the Main Feed.