An Early Thanksgiving

Irish ancestors, 180 years ago--the 1840s.

I have recently been despairing about the lack of truth in the world today. But that is not the whole story, and I ought to acknowledge this. Thanksgiving is almost here. It is worth remembering that a lot of things have gotten better in the world. I should be grateful.

When I was young, Ireland was dirt poor. Ireland had always been dirt poor. All of Southern Europe was poor. Even Scandinavia was poor. Mass starvation was more or less normal in India, Africa, or China. We were told the world was running out of food. It was only going to get worse.

Famines are now increasingly rare, the side-effects of war: there has been a “green revolution.” India has been exporting food for some time; that would have been unthinkable not long ago. Ditto China, Thailand. The possibilities of GMO suggest greater abundance still is coming. Returning to Toronto after 25 years, it seems to me that, while the prices of some things have risen astronomically, the cost of food is not that different. We are evidently getting more efficient at agriculture, even in the developed world.

When I was young, a third of the world, by conventional reckoning, was behind the “iron curtain,” unfree, and a civilization-ending nuclear war seemed possible at any moment. Families built bomb shelters in their back yards. I remember the air raid system being tested in Montreal. That entire complex of concerns evaporated in about 1990, as though it had all been a dream—something almost nobody had imagined to be possible a few years earlier. Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria—all members of NATO and the EU.

Aside from the Communist world, when I was young, democracy was rare. Even in Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Greece were run by dictators. So was most of Latin America, and East Asia. Now most of these countries are functioning democracies, and the freedom tide seems to keep rising. We more or less assume now that it must eventually triumph everywhere.

Even a decade ago, we were supposed to be rapidly running out of oil. After which all the lights would go out. Tankerloads of cash were being floated annually from the West to dubious governments and unproductive economies mostly in the Middle East, much of it probably funding terrorism. And the Middle East was not a promising place to which to mortgage our future.

Now the US is the world’s largest oil exporter. Followed by Canada, with the fracking revolution barely begun elsewhere.

A lot of strategic headaches are therefore gone. If Iran were now to try to close the Straits of Hormuz, the old fear, the main loser would be Iran. Anti-American Venezuela is in economic freefall. Putin cannot count on the cash to fund his military adventurism to continue.

I remember back during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis, Red Buttons did an over-the-top patriotic turn on American TV insisting that good old American ingenuity would someday solve the oil crisis. It looked then like vapid jingoism, wince-worthy; and it turned out to be exactly right.

In real terms, we are all clearly growing wealthier. Aside from food, I note that the price of cheap manufactured items, those little things you need around the house, is lower. I do not need to count the cost as my parents did before buying a new toaster. Improved technology, improved transportation, globalization—a lot of things are now made more cheaply in China, or India, or Southeast Asia.

Riding the bus today—and may I say, buses and streetcars are much more comfortable than they were in my childhood—I overheard a kid talking about her school’s recent trip to Costa Rica.

Costa Rica? When we had school trips, it was Ottawa or Quebec City. My grandparents’ idea of a big vacation was to get in the car and drive. Maybe as far as Virginia. If you ever made it across the ocean, you had made it, full stop.

In terms of entertainment and far more, the internet has improved our lives incalculably. They had radio and cinema and a phonograph, later black and white TV. With three channels to choose from. Now, whenever I need to know anything, instead of rummaging through libraries, perhaps even having to take an advanced degree, I can Google it up instantly. More often than not, I can even watch an instructional video—all free. It blew my mind the first time I was able to send an email to someone in Tokyo. Now I can move anywhere and remain in instant contact with friends everywhere. I can read or watch the news from any given city, generally free. I can also publish directly anything I choose to, in print or image or video, free. If anything happened anywhere, now, someone has a cell phone and is recording it, and it is quickly up online.

My kids cannot get interested in any toys or games or sports equipment we buy them; they sit in an unused pile, and we have learned to stop adding items. There is too much entertainment of all kinds on the Internet, free. We complain about their lack of activity, but really, the bottom line is that they have infinitely more options than we did. We were often bored. And beyond an internet connection, all this is equally available to poor kids.

The internet is also rapidly reducing the cost of many services; replacing older, more complicated systems. Uber makes transportation cheaper; AirBnB makes staying overnight in some new city cheaper. It has become dead easy and convenient to find a dentist. We probably no longer need such middlemen as real estate agents.

And smart phones. We forget how recently they arrived in our lives. Over just the last few years, smart phones have put all the world in our pockets, available at all times. Consider only the increased safety: lost? GPS. Fallen on a mountain hike in the wild and broken a leg? Call home; call emergency. Calculator, map, flashlight, translator, camera, video camera, always in your pocket. In China, you can make payments with your phone. In North America, debit cards serve pretty well; it was not long ago that I had to go to the bank weekly, stand in line, and withdraw the amount I thought I would need for the next seven days. While everyone else in town was doing the same.

And tablets. I did not at first see the point. Steve Jobs did. Tablets have vastly improved my own life. My daughter came to refer to my first ebook reader, which first allowed me to devour print from the net offline, as “Daddy’s toy.” Big enough to read on, small enough to curl up with, I am inseparable now from one tablet or another. So are the wife and kids.

When I was a kid, we still had the March of Dimes and Easter Seals, fighting for a cure for tuberculosis and polio. We kids all suffered through measles red and German, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, maybe three or four less common afflictions. My kids never had to bear any of that.

It is rather common suddenly for people to live into their nineties. We never expected this: seventy was a good run. My grandfather died at 61. And it may be uncool to mention it, but is how much better have some retirements become since Viagra appeared? It seems still only a few years ago. Nobody expected that one. In the nineties, everyone was terrified of AIDS: a rapidly growing plague, and a death sentence. Now we hardly hear of AIDS any longer; instead, of people “living with HIV.”

Despite the voices of doom that we always hear, and that we have always heard, the truth is that in material terms and in terms of comfort, life has been getting better and better for more and more people since the awful disruptions of the earlier 20th century. Which were themselves it seems only a temporary detour on a longer path of human progress that most of us used to believe in, and probably ought to again.

The downside, however, I think, is that as life gets easier and more comfortable, we all tend to forget the spiritual values. And in the end, we need them more than any material things. And suffer more from their lack.

Lord God of hosts, be with us yet--
Lest we forget. Lest we forget.