At times like these, I wish I taught history.
On my way to school yesterday, I listened to the new Dan Carlin Hardcore History podcast. He raises a very interesting scenario, which would be a great assignment for a history class.
He posits that there are two countries equal in man power, technology, natural resources, supplies, military, weapons, and size had to fight each other.
The only difference is that one is us and the other is our grandparents. Imagine if our generation (Gen X and the new Millennials) had to go up against the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers.
Now, this hypothetical battle could take place at any point in time. We could be transported back in time to 1945. Or our grandparents could arrive in modern America and we could fight this war now.
Who would win?
How interesting. You can rule out our ability to use our technology because, remember, we are totally equal. The only difference is the people fighting the war.
My gut tells me we'd get slaughtered.
Not only were our ancestors hardier - think of the hardships they had to deal with (the great depression, infant mortality rates, more diseases, fewer amenities) compared to us.
As Mike, one of my colleagues, admitted to me when I ran this idea by him - grandfather might make his truck last for 15 or 20 years, but Mike - whose own truck was having some engine problems - was thinking of buying a new truck instead of having his current one fixed. It was just easier.
And wouldn't that be our major disadvantage? We have adapted to our easier lives. We certainly can't help this. It was a result of what the greatest generation and baby boomers did that allowed us to have such nice and cushy lives.
If we fought this war in 1945, could a modern person handle the decisions and repercussions that our ancestors did. Think of a bombing raid. A thousand planes aloft in the sky so they blot out the sun. Could you imagine seeing this today? I certainly can't imagine such a thing. But not only that - imagine each plane is loaded with tons and tons of bombs. So many bombs that they will destroy a city - schools, orphanages, churches, roads, water supplies, and so on - and will kill 10-15,000 people. Could we today handle such carnage?
Think of the deaths in Iraq for example. If 12 soldiers are killed, that makes the news. Our ancestors wouldn't blink at that. That many died in the first millisecond of the surge at Omaha Beach.
And if we fought the war today, would our ancestors think twice about using weapons of mass destruction? Certainly, they had little trouble using the atomic bomb. What would stop them from using nuclear weapons? At the end of the Korean War, MacArthur was pushing to use dozens of atomic bombs to spread cobalt radiation along the border between Korea and China to seal off the communists. I think today you'd be hard pressed to find a rational person who would even lobby for using nuclear weapons in Iraq.
We just seem soft. But, again, that is not necessarily our fault. We have grown this way because of the sacrifices of previous generations to make our lives easier. And our lives are certainly easier and safer.
Now I'm starting to wonder if we'd even stand a chance.
I think of just how tough our ancestors had to be. My father always told me that my grandmother had a brother who either died when he was born or shortly thereafter. He was buried in the same cemetery as my parents. But over the years, the grave was lost. Now no one knows where the child is buried.
Something like that happening today is unimaginable.
Think of the horrors the WWI and WWII vets witnessed. Yet, most were able to come back and return to a relatively normal way of life. Today, more vets commit suicide than actually die in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Now, this might be an unfair comparison, for who knows how many WWI or WWII vets really did commit suicide or just withdrew from society or drank themselves to death. That was just something that wasn't discussed like it is today.
Maybe we are not all that different from our ancestors. Yet, I can't help but think of all those hardships they had to endure (I recall asking Dad once what he would have done if his and Mom's hot water heater went out - they didn't have credit available as readily as today. Dad simply said, "Then we'd take cold showers until we had the cash to pay for it." That never happens today. Thanks to credit cards and zero percent financing, if we want something, we can have it now. Instant gratification. Or I think of how some boot camps in WWII would have to feed the new recruits for several weeks in order to put some pounds on them before sending them out because they were really starving during the depression. Now, if there was a draft, the boot camps would have to run an extra couple months to work the fat off the new recruits).
When I think of the hardships our ancestors had to endure, I can't help but think the battle would be over before it even began. We'd be wise to work out a pact of mutual non-aggression as soon as possible!
2 comments:
I think you're right. Today's generation would get slaughtered. Another tidbit is that Mike's grandfather would be able to fix the pickup instead of having to bring it in to be fixed. Self-sufficiency goes along way. Some friends and I were talking about this after church last week. Lots of people today don't know how to grow their own food (or preserve it) or slaughter an animal if food wasn't readily available at a grocery store. You need to visit with Aunt Elaine and Jim about how things were when they were growing up. They have great stories!
Good points. And I tend to agree. When I read accounts of the early settlers, and how creative and adaptive they were in dealing with farming methods and ingenuity, I'm always amazed. I still think some of that goes on (such as Gates or Jobs or Stordahl starting companies in their garages or out of their cars) but certainly not on the level it once did.
There is a book called "The Dangerous Book for Boys" that harkens back to the time when you could admire the men in your lives because they could do so much more than we can today. In the 1950s a man with no high school diploma could still do carpentry work around the house, fix the car, repair the washer and so on.
But as the author explains, our ancestors also lived in a simpler world. Today we are so dang complex: just open the hood of a vehicle today (compared to one from the '50's) and it's totally different. Today, you have to hook the engine up to a computer and the computer in the engine tells you what's wrong! If my iPod breaks or my MacBook goes bad, there's no way most of us could hope to fix it - better off shipping it to Apple and hoping my Apple Care protection plan hasn't run out!
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