“I have a question for you. I know you like questions to build articles on. I want you to resist breaking this one down and just give me an answer. Is this the best time, so far, for a person to be alive on earth? Or was their some better time?”
To avoid breaking it down into material and spiritual, and then by gender and race and class, I must answer this subjectively, as James LaFond, failed boxer, lingering stick-fighter, reviled writer, loathed man, and damn near penniless bachelor.
I live in the best time, thus far, that a man of my makeup could live.
In any age or place before 2/14/1929 I would have died 12 years ago, before I wrote anything worthwhile, before my grandchildren were born, before I got kicked clear out of the ring by the second best fighter on the planet.
I have also not suffered from the terrible psychological dislocation that most people I know have suffered. I take this as meaning that I’m naturally suited to live in such times as these due to some oddity of the mind, and that I would have, in previous ages, surely been stoned, drowned, drawn-and-quartered, shot, thrown to the dogs, hanged, or blown away [my favorite] by my pitiless masters for the odd views I hold.
“I’ll take it,” said the boy beneath the shattered piñata. I might as well.
2/14/1929? Hmmmm… are you referring to the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, or is it the discovery of penicillin? So James, are you intimating that had you been born prior to that date you would likely have died of syphilis like Al Capone? LOL!
But seriously folks… what would be the best age to be alive in? Interesting question. It depends on whether you value adventure or security and comfort, doesn't it? Like they say, in dangerous times it’s the level-headed, practical people that cope the best; the strong get stronger and the weak fall apart. During safe, secure and comfortable times it’s the dreamers that prosper. Hard to tell what our millennial generation wants for itself. Some seem to hunger for excitement, while so many others are risk adverse buzzkills. mediaite.com/tv/jay-leno-college-kids-now-are-so-politically-correct. So which side will dominate and what kind of future will it create?
“People can have a long-term life plan only if they know their private property is secure.”
-Mencius, Chinese Philosopher, 371-289 B.C.
“If you don’t get what you want, it’s a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.” – Rudyard Kipling
Being Al Capone might be worth the syphilitic end!
They gunned own those Irishmen the day that infectious disease took a shot in the balls! Of course I meant penicillin and no slight to my drug-running Irish readers. Working in refrigerated conditions has rendered me susceptible to the 'old man's friend' pneumonia.
It really is one of those 'depends on who you are' questions, and that is related to what, where and when you are. As a young man I would have wanted to be alive in 1700, standing in the Cumberland Gap, looking down into a new land, and hopefully keeping my scalp on my head.
Kipling certainly was a character.
The Cumberland Gap circa 1700? Hey I can dig it! I can see you stripped naked and forced to run for your life from the Blackfeet Indians like mountain man John Colter, and then dying of jaundice at age 39 like Colter did. LOL!
“In an honest service, there is thin victuals, low wages and hard labour. In this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power…No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto."
Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, 18th Century Pirate
Personally I think the best time to have been a child was in the 1960's. Everyone should have as much fun as I did when I was a kid back then. youtube.com/watch?v=cvCTJlADySQ
americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/when_happiness_was_a_warm_toy_gun.html
In those days the worst things I had to worry about was getting pushed into a mud puddle or having my hat thrown up in the trees; I didn't have to worry about somebody wanting to fuck me.
Even Black Bart had to worry about people wanting to sodomize him, so yes, the 1960s sounds quite reasonable on that count.
Your fiction is <a href=log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=06-05-2015;, but you shine in essay form. This one is outright excellent, damn near poetry and perhaps the best I've read in its vein since <a href=hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/gallica/Chronologie/15siecle/Villon/vil_lais.html>Le Lais</a>.