Imagine...

 

Imagine being born in 1900.

When your 14 years old

World War 1 begins

And it ends when you are 18

With 22 million dead.

Shortly after, a world pandemic,

an influence called “Spanish”,

It kills 50 million people.

You come out alive and unscathed,

you are 20 years old

Then at 29 you survive the global economic crisis that started with the collapse of the New York stock market, causing inflation, unemployment and famine.

At 33 years old Nazis come to power.

You’re 39 when World War II starts

And it ends when you’re 45 During the Holocaust (Shoah) 6 million Jews die.

There will be over 60 million dead in total.

When you are 52 years old the Korean War starts.

When you’re 64 the Vietnam War starts and ends when you are 75

A baby born in 1985 thinks his grandparents have no idea how difficult life is, 

And survived several wars and disasters.

A boy born in 1995 and today 25 thinks it’s the end of the world when his Amazon 

package takes more than three days to arrive or when he doesn’t get more than 15 “ 

likes” for his posted photo on Facebook or Instagram…

In 2020 many of us live in comfort, have access to different sources of 

entertainment at home and often have more than necessary.

But people complain because of everything.

Yet they have electricity, phone, food, hot water and roof over their heads.

None of this existed in the past.

But humanity survived much more serious circumstances and never lost the joy of living. 

Maybe it’s time to be less selfish, stop complaining and crying.

(Anonymous)

 

 

The above was posted on a friend's Facebook page - spelling, punctuation as per original. I've seen loads of these sort of memes and all I can say about this one is whoever wrote it was wise to stay anonymous. 

 

 A baby born in 1995 lives in a world in which if s/he is lucky enough to be born into affluence may indeed have electricity but around one billion people don't.

  

They might have access to a cell phone but 40% of the world's population do not.

 

Parts of the world have more food than they need and waste obscene amounts of it but around 700 million are under-nourished and every day scores die of starvation.

  

Let's forget the luxury of hot water – let's look at safe drinking water - around 800 million people don't have that, and in fact most drinking water across the entire globe, even if is considered 'safe', is heavily polluted with industrial and agricultural toxins – and is getting worse every year.

 

A roof over their heads? Around 1.6 billion people are homeless. 

 

And as to none of these advantages having existed in the past – the Romans, as just one example, had running water, underfloor heating and public loos and it might come as a bit of a surprise to Anonymous but people have been building various sorts of houses with roofs for thousands of years. 

 

So whoever wrote this bit of homespun nonsense clearly lives inside the imperial bubble and doesn't bother looking outside it. 

 

ALSO, let's just consider the world these ever-so lucky kids born in 1995 live in.

 

If they aren’t in one of the parts of the globe suffering famine or food shortages caused by war – thanks to the explosion of hyper-processed food, they are much more likely to be obese, develop type-2 diabetes, colorectal and other cancers and – thanks to the approximately 144,000 chemicals humans have released into the environment so far and are still releasing at a rate of about 2000 a year, and the 250 BILLION tonnes of toxic waste poured out into it every year – are far more likely to suffer DNA damage and/or endocrine disruption. 

 

And then there's the fact that they and their kids face a future – not just of a threat of global pandemics, nuclear, chemical or biological war or accidental catastrophe, but global warming and mass species extinction - including of species utterly essential to our long-term survival – indeed to the survival of pretty much everything except cockroaches and Donald Trump.

 

Plus they have been deskilled, dumbed down and made reliant on various forms of technology that stop the moment the electricity supply fails.

 

And as for wars – how dumbed-down do you have to be to not know that, since the end of the Vietnam war, around 21 million people have died in or as a result of the constant wars being waged across the globe, including many examples of America's imperialistic meddling. 

 

And what do all these things have in common? Like the wars listed in the post – they're pretty much all directly caused by greed – lust for wealth and power – aided and abetted by people idealising and not learning from the past, and taking a narrow view of the present.