Celebrating Human Achievement

We've turned on lights we usually have off at this time.

My husband is celebrating with beer since one of the oldest pieces of human writing is a beer recipe.

And I am on the computer communicating in a manner unfathomable when I was half my age (20).

I was born in 1967 and in my lifetime we've gone from vinyl to CDs to iPods. We've gone from letters to telegrams to cellphones.

No one we knew had a computer, a fax machine, or a microwave oven. My husband's family didn't get central heating until the mid-70s. I can remember a time before cable, DVRs, or even VHS. Now you get a DVD player free with ten tank fill-ups at your local QwikyMart.

In 1969, my father held me up before the TV so I could be witness to Man's first steps on the moon, now we have a space station.

And that's just me.

I grew up with three grandparents and three great-grandparents. I was blessed with a great-grandmother who lived long enough for me to appreciate talking to her about what it was like to live through that magnificent and terrifying 20th Century (she was born in 1896).

And now, as Human Achievement Hour begins, I am grateful for every advance modern man has made. I would be dead without the medical advances we've made in the last 20 years alone.

Plentiful energy. Clean water. Safe housing and construction. Comfortable clothes. Advance medical care. Easy transportation. Plentiful and varied foods year round. The list goes on and on.

To fail to be grateful for all these blessings of modern life, is as bad as failing to be grateful for all the glories of nature surrounding us. We are not Earth's infection, we are Earth's stewards and the more tools we have to care for both our fellow humans and the Earth, the better we all are.

So let's celebrate what humans have achieved so far and rather than denying or self-destructing those achievements, let's redouble our efforts to provide ever increasing access to these technological achievements for all mankind.

Let's light up Africa. Let's clean the slums of developing worlds. Let's ease the suffering of the billions of humans on Earth are now struggle without the benefits of energy, food, water, and shelter that we so easily take for granted.

That will be a human achievement we will celebrate for all time.