gratitude for where and when we are

RWL 422

TLW and I were out for our Sunday morning walk this past weekend and saw this beautiful sunrise, with cotton candy clouds. I was struck by the backlighting of the flag. This shot is in front of the UNH Fieldhouse (where we have the indoor track, pool, basketball court, etc. - the building is camera right).

Today the town is quiet and quite empty as the kids have mostly all scattered to their homes to enjoy the holiday. As one might expect, it’s a good day to think about gratitude.

I’m breaking from links today to just talk a bit about how grateful I am for where and when we are.

When I look at my life, I have to appreciate all of the incredibly good luck and blessings I have enjoyed. It’s easy to forget or just give lip service to perhaps the single most important bit of good luck - that I was born in the United States. My family on both sides all arrived in the United States in the 20th century. Some at the beginning, some toward the end. It is, without a doubt, the best time in the history of humanity to be alive, excepting perhaps some future point, like tomorrow, when it will be even better. Human beings, on average, enjoy more wealth, and as a result a better standard of living, than in any time in history. When you look around the world, there are indeed people suffering and living at the edge of starvation. But that was the norm not that long ago. The median human was afraid of starvation. You could tell a person was wealthy if they carried a little paunch. The median human today is well fed. In the US, the median human is overweight, that’s how wealthy we have become.

I teach about healthcare and I find the evolution of healthcare absolutely fascinating. The first use of insulin to treat diabetes was 1922, just barely over a hundred years ago. If you had a child born with type I diabetes, they would have just gradually faded into a coma and died prior to that innovation. The first use of the antibiotic penicillin was not until 1941. There is a good chance you would not be sitting here reading this if you did not have an antibiotic available to you at some point in your life.

It isn’t just that we have so much food, our culture and behaviors haven’t been able to keep up, and it isn’t just that our medicine is better. We’re more free. Women can own property. Women can vote. Women can be virtually anything they want to be. Yes, there is still sexism, but the fact that we have a concept called “sexism” shows that we acknowledge women should have the same rights as men. In a time not that all far back, no one would have understood what you were talking about if you used that term. Again, that was true for pretty much all of human history. Let’s add on the freedoms granted to minorities of all sorts - race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc.

All of this is, on average, more true in the United States (and the West broadly) than anywhere else, any time else. I credit the US more so because we are united under one federal system. We are the third largest nation in the world, following China and India, neither of which come close to matching the US on median measures of well-being and opportunity. Our system provides freedom and access to opportunity to more people as a whole than any other system. My family didn’t come here because they were wealthy and just thought it would be cool to get on a boat, train, or plane, depending on when they arrived, and go to a new place where they didn’t know the language or culture. They came because where they were sucked. They were born into intergenerational poverty. They were part of the population that was hungry and often at risk. They faced systemic oppression because systemic oppression is the norm throughout human history. Systemic oppression is the default status of human existence. The right question is not why there is systemic oppression in a society, but why there isn’t more.

I’m blessed to have been born here, and blessed to be able to live here. I’ve been blessed with a lot of other luck in my life as well. As I like to quote Machiavelli, fate controls half of all outcomes, maybe a little more. That still leaves room for hard work, but half or a little more is a lot, so I am lucky. I am lucky not only by place and time of birth, but for life’s luck: for having met and married The Lovely Wife (TLW), for having amazing daughters who are finding their way in the world, and for having had good health and good fortune. And of course for having the good luck of having you to talk to about all this. I appreciate you.

On this most American of holidays, I am willing good for you and your families. I hope you feel gratitude for being alive in this most wonderful of times and places.