I think I got a break in historical time...

[karlrschneider]

I've been thinking that I've lived in the most ...interesting, or significant or maybe even important generation in human history. It isn't hubris (or isn't meant to be) but when I think back from when I was born (1942) there have been a huge number of events and technological inventions and discoveries that don't seem to have parallels in history - in 1942, airplanes were still relatively primitive compared to what we have now - jet engines were envisioned and prototyped but not really functional.

I saw the commercial development of television, the invention of the transistor, computers from the first "Eniac and Univac" through their own evolution to "mini computers" which I worked on and with back in the early 70s which had hard drives the size of a washing machine and supported a whole 10 megabytes on a disk the size of a dinner plate.
I wrote FORTRAN programs to do payroll and many other tasks with a true "core" (the little ferrite doughnuts) that had a whole 16K capacity.
And now, most video cards have far more than that. How amazing is that?

I can pick up my cell phone and call anyone whose number I know in most any country. Copy old VHS tapes to a DVD? No problem! Send or receive a fax (anybody recall that's an abbreviation for 'facsimile'?)

My very first vote for President was in 1963, for Barry Goldwater. Yes, I was raised a conservative christian, both of which I renounced many years ago (but I still have SOME conservative positions, most of which don't have a seat at the table of the neocons...you know what I mean)...

Saw Neil Armstrong land on the moon. (No doubt a staged event.../sarcasm), I actually met him one day at Love Field in Dallas,
I parked my plane next to a NASA aircraft and I walked over to it...the door was open and I hollered into it "anybody here?" No answer, so I walked into it (this was WAY long before all the 'security measures'...
and I sat down in the left seat (and now I can't even recall what kind of plane it was...I THINK it was a Lockheed Jetstar...it's been 30+ years. As I sat there looking at all the 'clocks' in the cockpit, 3 guys walked up to it, and asked me something like "what the hell are you doing here?"...I said "I just parked my plane right over there and wondered why you left your door open, so I came in to have a look around." Turned out one of them was Armstrong. We chatted for a few minutes...so cool. :D

And there are other things: the discovery of planets orbiting other stars, the GPS system, evidence of the Big Bang, satellite TV, first and only use of a nuke on another nation and so on.

So now I find myself wondering if all this technology and "progress" is good, or bad. If there are humans still inhabiting this "3rd rock from the Sun" in a couple hundred years, how will they remember us? I don't think it will be with much fondness. It's hard to imagine that future history could regard the Chimp in a favorable light.

[Maple]

1. Well remember

you're living inside the US...I almost wrote 'the occupied US' and tend to see it as a bad time right now.

The rest of the world is going through a generally good time right now, and are enjoying technology and progress.

[karlrschneider]

2. Well, I'm not "proud" to be an American. I don't think an accident

of birth entitles anyone to embrace pride. I've been to about 50 countries and wouldn't apologize for having been born in any of them.
Nor be "prideful" either...
:eyes:

[Maple]

3. I didn't mean to

either knock or praise the US...I just know from reading this site that Dems see it as a difficult time.

I was trying to say, don't be depressed about the world in general, or blame technology and progress...others are doing just fine...and as for Americans...'this too will pass'

Don't get too down about it.

[Lexingtonian]

4. yeah, my dad says much the same

He's about your age.

You kinda left out a little bit about DNA, contraceptives, medicine actually becoming powerful, longer life spans, and the cure for cancer- oops, I guess we don't have that last one, actually. Paternity testing...hard to say whether that one's such a great thing :D

Oh yeah, the Cold War actually ended, too.

We're an age of transition to the Modern condition. Every last bit of investment in the Colonial Age's social and economic arrangements/conventions and way of thinking has to be leveraged against the Modern, every last bit exploited, every last purpose and possibility of that way of life exhausted.

It took ~75 years to get rid of theocracy in this land, and the 1st Amendment is its tombstone. Then another ~75 to get rid of monarchy, which meant a full constitution and a bill of civil rights. Thereupon ~75 to get rid of slavery and the economic aristocracy it enabled- marked by the 13th Amendment. And then ~75 years to attain the vote for all competent adults as the first earnest of formal social equality, and the 15th Amendment is its mark.

Our times are defined by the 14th Amendment (well, Section 1) slowly becoming realized in its spirit as much as its words, and extended to include groups previously discriminated against:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The wheels grind slowly, but grind they do. And every American age is full of people whose asserted the virtues of the established and the criminality and impossibility of any attempt to improve on them. They achieve great fame and large financial wealth, great acclaim and are awarded great prizes and high offices; they write bestselling books and bad laws and bad verdicts and unfair critiques. History makes them footnotes and fools and forgotten- along with the utopians they harangued against.

History remembers the Susan B. Anthonys, the Abraham Lincolns, the people who won out in the end.

Modernity is at its heart about giving up excuses, about giving up the Big Far Off God of theism and His selfprofessed priests and all the Cosmic Order He Arranged (according to them) for a humbler, more humane arrangement. For humanism of a sort, and the God of the Still Small Voice within each human being. It brings us closer to civilization, but it takes this dreary and horrid and befouled transition stage to get there.

I call it progress, anyway.