Around the world life is being transformed at a break-neck pace, and almost universally for the better. On the other hand the majority of people are worried and concerned about the present, pessimistic about the future and nostalgic about the past. I'm not really sure why this is, but I think it must have something to do with taking what we have now for granted, as if we always had it. Therefore I am going to write today about what I consider to be the miracle of our times.
Now, I am not one for the use of the word, "Miracle." I'm a materialist, a naturalist, I think things happen according to fixed laws. However, I think if most people from 100 years ago could experience what life is like now I think they would consider it a miracle.
One hundred years ago, in 1911, life was extraordinarily different for the majority of Americans. At the time there was no minimum age so many, if not most children worked. About one third of children went to elementary school and only one in ten graduated from high school. If you met an American from 100 years ago the chances are that they would be unable to read this post. Life expectancy was around fifty years. A study found that one in five children in inner cities in the USA were malnourished.
What was life like for most people back then? Well, it was mostly a life of drudgery. With electricity just beginning to become available to homes during this century the vast number of labor saving devices that we take for granted were not available. I want you to imagine living without a refrigerator or access to washing machines, or a vacuum cleaner. For women, without safe contraception and with extremely limited opportunities to find work outside of the household, this meant usually sticking with a husband regardless of his qualities, multiple children (average per household around three, with a one third chance that one of your babies would die as an infant) and a life that consisted almost entirely of chores. Hand washing for a family of five, often heating the water with firewood, would take hours of hard physical labor. Cleaning the house would consist of you on your hands and knees with a scrubbing brush and some soap. Grocery shopping would be a daily activity because food wouldn't keep, requiring walking in both directions carrying your bags.
To get an idea of what it would be like back then I suggest thinking of what it would be like for you to recreate for a week the life of the average American from 1911. First of all you cannot read anything, watch tv, check the internet, make a phone call. Secondly, you cannot refrigerate anything, or eat anything that is imported. Third, all chores for the house must be done by hand, and for real verisimilitude anything that requires water should be done out of a bucket. Oh, and by the way, no zippers, or bras. all information that you receive would be simply by word of mouth, what someone told you (as you have no way of checking any information). For entertainment you can eat out once in the week, or go to see a movie, or see a play.
Now, I suggest that there is not one single one of us who will have any intention whatsoever of going through with a plan to see what such a life would be (and still an improvement because of health, low crime, social programs, increased education, mental health, etc..) for a week. Why is this? Why am I so sure that this life has no appeal to any of us? It's because such a life was so obviously markedly worse than the lives we live now. The experience of the average American has so dramatically improved over a hundred years that the average modern American doesn't want to experience how life was for even a day.
Now, why is this a miracle? It is a miracle not just in the ease of our lives. It is a miracle in the transformation of the experience of people (particularly women) from almost entirely uneducated, ignorant, laborers into thinkers, feelers, and dreamers. There are about three times as many people now with undergraduate degrees in the USA as used to graduate from high school. The average person in the USA can now travel to other places for vacations on an annual basis, something that would be the most amazing experience of someone's entire life 100 years ago.
This freedom to learn and experience, to think about our lives and how to improve them has transformed our lives in other ways. Health care so that you don't have to worry that your loved ones might sicken and die at any point, mental health care so that those with depression, labor laws so that you and your children don't have to kill themselves slowly for money, laws and attitudes to stop men beating their wives and children, and on and on and on.
This miracle has happened in the USA, and is still happening. However, the grander miracle is that this is happening around the world. This transformation from a lifetime of ignorant, manual labor to a lifetime of educated freedom has happened to nearly half the world in the last three decades. The rate of change is faster elsewhere than it was for the USA, since the technology has already been invented. In our lifetimes we can expect that the experiences of the "golden age" in the USA, that of the 1950's and 1960's, will be the norm for people around the world.
Why does this matter? Why should we, who have not only the benefit of this miracle but also no realistic expectation that we or anyone we know might have to deal without this miracle, care about this miracle? It matters most importantly because a happy life is one that acknowledges the good things in life, and almost every single moment of every day there is something that is better than it used to be, and for this we should be grateful. It matters because it is so much better to feel good about how things have gone and therefore to be optimistic about the future. It matters because if we acknowledge that this is a transformation miracle in people's lives then we can work to encourage more of these miracles. Happy, optimistic people trying to improve the world produces more happy, optimistic people, and an improved world.
While many of us spend our time bemoaning politicians, corporations, the system, the terrible economy, the instability of our culture, our greed, the vileness of human nature, and the idiocy of those with whom we disagree, these are the things that have produced the greatest change for good in the history of the world.
There is a miracle going on around you, and it is a miracle of great goodness.
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