I have been writing some pretty depressing stuff lately and some readers have rightfully taken exception to it. So here goes, on the upside:
Facts are facts and of all the facts I know, being crazy lucky to be of my generation is the grandest of all. What a kick it has been to progress:
From listening to events from some distant state, to seeing them live from anywhere in the world.
From taking four days to cross the country by train, to hopping on a plane at breakfast and being there for lunch.
From sweating under a fan, to kicking back at home in an environment completely under my control.
From needing an operator’s assistance, time, and money to place a call across the country to reaching anyone in the world on a whim.
From finding the answer to my question somewhere in a 32-volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica to just asking Siri.
Just a few, and if you go back a bit further, say to my great-grandfather’s birth, well, he didn’t have phones, fans, planes, trains or encyclopedias, flush toilets, washing machines, cars, or any paved roads for his Kimball Carriages. And he was a pretty rich fellow as President of the American Carriage industry, and inventor of the assembly line, almost a half century before Henry Ford.
Yeah, I have been handed down a little family braggadociousness, even if the family couldn’t convert his carriages into automobiles.
Kimball Auto Carriage
DIDN’T SELL!!!
Sorry, I digressed a bit there. My point is me, my generation, we are just unimaginably lucky to be us. We took advantage of democracy and the inventiveness that exploded after its introduction of freedom and the ability to enjoy the rewards of our own labors.
We are pretty darn comfortable. Most Americans’ lives today would be the envy of any pre-America King, Queen, Czar, or dictator in history. In their time, hunger, plagues, rats, stench, and filth of every imaginable kind lay in wait out every door and quite often on both sides of the door.
Hell, Walmart was just unimaginable to any human living during 99.95% of the time we have existed on earth. As I use to tell my students: “If you were sitting in the lap of God and he asked what generation of Americans would you like to be born into? You would be a fool not to choose mine.”
So, it is fair to say things have gotten better in spite of us, and us can be pretty despicable. After all we have now learned the downside of democracy as we vote for and suck up the rewards earned by our forefathers and how to spend the future resources of our children. You would think as long as we have decided to use it all, we would at least have the decency to stop complaining and party.
Oh well, turns out I couldn’t write something uplifting after all.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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