Feeling Grateful for... Our Plenty

We got socked with quite a snowstorm today. Outside it's beautiful, as you can see, but cold and white, with maybe 5 inches of snow on the ground, and the thermometer in the low 20s and headed down into single digit territory for the night.

Meanwhile, I've been reading a book that spent a couple years in my to-be-read stack before I got to it, The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan. Quite appropriate reading I suppose, but in a broader sense than just today's weather. In this interesting and readable book, the author discusses European climate changes during the period 1300-1850, a period that was often colder and more changeable than our present Modern Warm Period, and that has been referred to as the Little Ice Age. He does not fail to point out the effects of these changes on European and American history, as well as the (to me, anyway) unimaginable human suffering populations endured.

I have been surprised and somewhat horrified to realize that our view of how people lived in the 15th through 19th centuries has apparently been badly distorted by books and movies. The lives we read about, I suppose, are largely those of the middle and upper classes. I know I've read about paupers and starvation and beggars, but I guess I'd always assumed that these were the exception,  not that these were conditions endured by most of the lower classes at many points in European history.

These kinds of brutal conditions seem to be difficult for us to even comprehend, from the comfort of our warm homes with central heating, with kitchens and refrigerators bursting with food, and just a short trip to stores where we can replenish our stores with a fraction of our incomes. It's become apparent to me that the conditions in which even the poorest Americans live are incredibly abundant and luxurious, compared to how the poor lived in the past.

My principal "takeaways" from this book are two: (1) fear, and (2) gratitude. I understand history better now, too.

This information makes me nervous, though, because I cannot help but realize that our whole society is dependent on a complex system of supplies and delivery systems. There is a lot of talk these days about our aging electric grid, and how little it might take to knock it out for an extended period of time, and the effect that could have. For most of human history, human populations have been vulnerable to situations that could, and did, cause deaths in the tens to hundreds of thousands over short periods of time. Many of these resulted from unexpected climate shifts that destroyed harvests, and epidemics resulting from widespread severe malnutrition, but sometimes massive flood events, wars, and government action or inaction were the culprits. The Irish potato famine of the early 19th century is an example of massive loss of life that could have been prevented simply by proactive British government measures.

But we live in a country of abundance that would have been unbelievable in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even those of us living on small retirement incomes have plenty of food, heated homes, and plenty of warm clothing. The poorest of us live as only the very rich lived before the 20th century. I know we sometimes have a nostalgic view of the apple-cheeked farmer's boy living on a prosperous farm somewhere in 18th century Europe, but that apparently would have been an exception for almost everyone in the lower classes (which was most of the population) for most of that time in history.

I have realized how very lucky and blessed we are, in our place and time. We need to give thanks for that every day, and to remember that there are still places on this planet where people live in the kind of vulnerability that is almost forgotten in our western culture.