Why does every generation believe that humanity is in its worst state ever? It seems to me that everyone thinks that The Golden Age was whatever period of time covered your youth. Movies were better (unless you were a black actor), music was better (unless you were a gay singer), politics were better (unless you were a woman running for office), schools were better (unless you had dyslexia), and kids had more respect (and knew they deserved that beating). And today's world is in the toilet which is proof that Jesus is coming and the end is near. Whatever.
Are things really worse? If you really think things are worse, then they are, and there is never a lack of evidence to prove your point. You see aids, terrorism, pollution, and watch Fox News and you have no doubt that civilization is decaying.
But I prefer to look at life through a different lens, and case by case, most things seem a lot better today when compared with conditions just a generation ago, let alone a millenium ago.
Here are a few examples that come to mind. They range from trivial to awesome. And I'm not even going to discuss comparisons from 1000 years ago when we worried about our villages getting plundered, our children getting kidnapped, and rats bringing the plague.
Would the people who complain that there's no leg room on the airplane rather pull their hand cart to Utah? Would you still live in Phoenix if there was no air conditioning? How wonderful is it that instead of an outhouse and the Sears catalog, we have indoor plumbing and really soft toilet paper?(my favorite reason I wasn't born a hundred years earlier) What about cell phones, ATM's, velcro, online banking, online trading and those really funny stock trading baby commercials?
But it's your choice. You can look at UPC symbols and GPS as an example of Big Brother looking over your shoulder or you can look look at them as just a faster way to get out of the store and never getting lost. You can complain about the cost of health care or you can thank God for the miracles of penicillin, epidurals, and flouride.
Cars are safer, water is safer, paint is safer, cribs are safer, food is safer, and you can eat in a restaurant without the stink of cigarettes. Hmmmm.....I wonder if our incompetent, intrusive government and their regulations had anything to with that?
YOU LIVE IN PARADISE!!!!!
Do you really yearn for the "good old days"? Do you really want to worry about polio? Do you really want to have to get up to change the channel? Do you you want to know that when your child moves 200 miles away, you'll likely never see them again? Do you want your daughter to have 10% of the opportunities that she had 100 years ago? Do you really think that humanity is so corrupt that there is no saving it?
The world...this paradise we live in...keeps getting better. You can give the credit to God, or you can give the credit to man, but every year, the world is better than it was the year before. I usually believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but if you disagree with me...you are WRONG.
With so many blessings out there, why is it so hard to feel blessed?
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5 comments:
Jim, I found your coments to very moving and on a higher plain than some of your other comments in your e-mails to me. Beverly Harrick would be very proud to of had a student such as your self.
Beverly Harrick would be proud.
Perfect post! Love it! Thanks for the reminder of how lucky we all are.
Beverly Herrick would have been proud of Jim but she would have thrown a pencil at Kelly for spelling her name wrong. What if we had to go back to bicycles without suspension.
Great post. My Google reader feeds me hundreds of cynical articles every day, so sometimes it's hard to remember that the world is full of great opportunities. I realize I'm virtually a bubble boy (being from St. George) but hopefully my family can have a good filtration system on our bubble to take advantage of all those good things in the world.
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