January 4, 2022
Yep! I am unquestionably, one of the luckiest guys in the world. Through most of human history, life has been nasty, brutish and short. Until the 1800s, average life expectancy was only about 35 yrs. Now it is about 76 yrs — roughly doubling in about 200 years. Doctors did not begin to wash their hands before surgery until the mid-1800s. I am currently 85 years old — a few years more than current life expectancy. Lucky me! The greatest threat to my life is not typhus or yellow fever but the diseases of old age and maybe Covid.
I often try to imagine the living conditions of my ancestor’s. What was it like to start a farm where it was necessary to clear the virgin woods by hand so that enough sun could come through the canopy to grow crops? How was it possible to scrounge enough food to feed a hungry family from hunting and gathering while developing the land? What diseases and accidents plagued them? I’m so lucky that I never suffered from those kinds of privations. Sometime about 100 years ago, my grandparents (Winfield and Alice Sterling) built and lived in a sod hut out in the grasslands of western Kansas. They must have suffered from a shortage of clean water, enough food to eat and incredibly harsh winters. They gave up their land claim in only a few years.
Lucky to be born in a civilized country where I never experienced the lack of healthy food, clean water or weather extremes. A place where we were free from excessive tyranny, enjoyed the rule of law, private property and more freedom than almost any place on earth. A place where folks from all over the world wished to come to share in our bountiful existence. I could have been born in North Korea, China, Cuba or some other nation where citizens are slaves to the state.
It was not that long ago, when living where I live now, we would have been terrorized by bands of savage Comanches. Only 100 years before I was born (1836), Comanche and other indians attacked Fort Parker just upriver from where we live — killing and capturing several family members. Also, since the Battle of San Jacinto (also in 1936), we Texans are less likely to suffer from the threat of a Mexican invasion by any Santa Ana type Caudillo.
Come from good, stable family.
Kids all married with no divorces and self-supporting.
Grandkids healthy and bright
But it is not all just luck. I carefully planned my birth so that I would be too young to fight in the Korean War and too old for the Vietnam War — both of which killed lots of young Marines like me. Thus, I was spared the absolute horrors of mass human slaughters that took place during the relatively frequent wars we have fought in the last 100 years. The realization that under the thin veneer of human civilization lies people capable of barbarity and cruelty to other humans that is hard to comprehend.
Table of Contents: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6813612681836200616/3382423676443906063?hl=en
