Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
When people complain about how China or Mexico is eating our lunch because they have such smart policies and we are so dumb, or how Russia is laughing at us, I wonder just how many Americans are packing up their lives and emigrating to those wonderful lands of opportunity. And how many people from those countries are moving (or trying to move) here. If the U.S. is the dump that some people make it out to be, why are so many people willing to leave behind everything they know to move here?
I read somewhere it was a significant killer of young people also; abscesses, etc. and infections entering into the bloodstream. I dislike the dentist as much as the next person but one viewing of Cast Away gets me in for a cleaning every six months and keeps me flossing.
One time, I was complaining about laundry. Then, I realized that I had to put my clothes in one box, wait, then put them in another box, And maybe fold the clothes.
It was one of those idiotic questions: If you could have lived in another era, when would it be? Gore Vidal gave what I thought was the most interesting answer: I would not care to live in any era prior to the perfection of anesthesia.
There’s so much sweetness in this post and the comments that hyperglycemia is imminent. A few seconds of thought would tell you that being alive today isn’t the greatest thing for everyone. There are people still living who were better off at some earlier time. There are people no longer living for whom living today — with its noise, vulgarity, crowding, etc. — would be a torment. (And it has been eons since more than a tiny fraction of the populace was prey.)
At my public blog I often rail about the inappropriate use of “we” and “us”, and the assumption (implicit or otherwise) that there is a social-welfare function which can be maximized — as if A’s happiness at punching B somehow cancels or outweighs B’s (supposedly) lesser unhappiness at being punched. See, for example, “‘We the People’ and Big Government” and “Enough of ‘Social Welfare’“. This post implicitly adopts the social-welfare view by lumping everyone together.
Other than that Bryan makes some good points.
Après nous, le déluge!
44% of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty in 1981; by 2010, under 10% .
.”….And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
Incertainties now crown themselves assured..”
Just put one on mine too.
Like most people my age, I had some fillings the size of Rhode Island in some of my molars. One of the fillings had done whatever and cracked the second right lower molar. The dentist popped that filling out, grinded a little on the tooth, made a cast, and put a temporary crown on it. Two weeks later I went back and he put the real crown on it. Insurance covered half so it was a few hundred out of my pocket. A few months later I said gee whiz that was easy and made another appointment and did the other three. I don’t have to worry about any more cracks. What’s money compared to that peace of mind?
Not that long ago they would have just pulled them. Yeah, Dentistry is a great reason to be alive today. I would never complain about the costs, compared to the benefit.
ChefSly, I like your comment about the Laundry, too. It is almost TOO easy to get clothing clean now. Maybe we need a hose, like the hot and cold water hoses, to deliver the detergent to the washer. Heh heh.
Darn, missed it completely. I always point out to young wannabe pirates: When you need both hands and put your sword in your mouth, be sure the sharp side is out.
How can that be when the inequity between the rich and the poor is the worst, the worst! it has ever been in all of history ever?
The inequity doesn’t matter much. Why, you may, quite reasonably, ask? Because in the U. S., one can have a roof over his head, colour tv, air-conditioning, a full stomach, internet access, and still be considered poor.
Yes. Human ingenuity makes the world better every day. I would have liked to visit the first quarter of the 20th century, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
You have to insert and turn a KEY??? Bummer! I just don’t know what I would do if I had to take the key out of my pocket to start my Camry ;>)
So right you are. I learned decades ago that there are no bad days, just bad minutes. Some days even have bad half hours or so but I never let it ruin a whole day.
We raised 4 kids on a single income in a city. We couldn’t wait to get out of the city so when I retired the second time we relocated to an acre outside a town of 15,000 in friendly KY. We paid cash for everything. How? We eschewed debt, except for houses which we paid off early. We followed good advice by spending less than we earned, giving some away and investing the rest. We had good luck, partly due to following a healthy lifestyle. Two of our kids got full ride academic scholarships to OU, the other college graduate earned half of her fees and costs by being the best babysitter in OKC.
So now we get to have a more laid back lifestyle in a bucolic setting and are loving it. I don’t sit around, I like to build things on our acre, starting with the house, plus I recently qualified as a substitute bus driver for the local school system; it gets me out of the house.
We can’t do everything we’d like to do, will never travel abroad, for instance, so what?
Bottom line, you get to choose, sit around and gripe because your situation isn’t perfect or get busy and do something about it.
I told each of my soon to be launched kids, “You aren’t RICH. Except compared to 99.9% of everyone who ever lived.”
P. J. O’Rourke famously said that he has two words for any person longing to live in an earlier, better time: modern dentistry.
Temperamentally, I think I’d be better suited for the Middle Ages. But like I said earlier, the dentistry is so much better these days!
The two propositions can both be true; It very well may be that right now is the best time to be alive, but that life still sucks. The best singer in the third grade is still singing “On Top of Spaghetti”.
Or if you want to be more positive. Right now is the best time to be alive but it could still be better.
Hard times make for hard men. Soft living makes for sissies.
The sort of person who finds splinters in their toilet paper has to practice more stoicism than I do. One may imagine that a cowboy transported to today wouldn’t immediately take selfies of his man-bun.
As the Spartans say: “If”.
And the ability to run almost every other animal on the planet into the ground over a long distance.
Of course it is preferable to live now rather than 100 years ago.
Human nature, however, seems to base happiness more on the perceived direction of change rather than the absolute state of affairs, historically considered. And a lot of people at the moment have the sense that things are not getting better; they are either staying the same or getting worse.
People have good reasons for this perception. The federal government just passed the $20 trillion mark on the national debt and the pension systems of many states are nearly or are already bankrupt, to mention just a couple of the financial tsunamis bearing down on us. And there is no political will in the nation to do anything about it. It’s obvious to me, at least, that we have passed the point of no return financially and will ride the debt train until it goes off a cliff. We are not the only ones. The entire world is on a debt driven binge that can only end in catastrophe.
However it turns out, all that debt must be dealt with somehow, and I can’t see any result other than a substantially reduced standard of living for the average American.
I’m happy I can go to a real dentist when my grandfather couldn’t, but somehow that doesn’t fill me with joy when I know we’ve blown it and will face a very different world in the near future.
Give it another few years.
I wish I had realized how nice we had it, as by the 23rd of September, Planet Niburu is wiping us all out!
But thanks to yr essay, I’ll say better to appreciate it for a little while, and go out with a smile!
Try going a day without your I-phone and an automobile …. then for good measure have your power grid knocked out so you have no electricity.
The mobile phone(affordable) is only about 25 years old, mass produced automobiles about 100 years, and electricity about 125 depending where you lived(cities 125 or later … rural areas much later). Before that, by todays standards, you were living a natural disaster everyday.
I said essentially the same thing on FB a little while back. I had a few leftist friends push back. I explained as @bryangstephens had. One person simply wouldn’t have it. “Try telling that to woman all across America who are denied their fundamental right to abortion.” Her diatribe continued in a similar fashion. I didn’t bother responding. I don’t try to explain to Jacobins. They’re Jacobins. They don’t need no stinking logic or reason when their pitchfork is in their hot hands. (Ironic, no?) Anyhow, I unfriended. I’m tired of people who can’t let their political fervor go.
CATARACT SURGERY!!! Just had cataract removal/ lense replacement this summer. Just amazing. I have worn bifocals for 30 years. I don’t need them anymore. Occasionally I need reading glasses for very small print. The procedure took 40 minutes. I went home with the repaired eye packed with gauze and a clear shield taped over it. By 3:00 that afternoon the gauze came out and I could see. Wow! But there are so many examples just as all of the comments have been describing. I just can’t not mention one other thing just for @valiuth. President Trump…HOORAY. I finally, after eight years, feel I have a President that, at least most of the time, speaks for me. For eight years I had a guy that made me feel unwanted in my own country. Not any more. Isn’t it glorious!
American women are more free to abort their babies than women in most countries. I wonder if she meant “their fundamental right to abort their offspring at taxpayer expense.”