Feeling like Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Earp was born mid 1800s and died 1929.

His entire life was horse and cariage, steam trains- old west stuff.

He saw flight go from novelty to commercial. He saw machinery take over every aspect of human life. He saw the invention of automobiles, electric power, radios, tv. He saw them become common place (tv being the exception- but he saw it coming.)

He saw the great war machine erase an entire generation of young men. He saw the rise of feminism, national socialism, progressivism.

He saw the national parks initiative. The paving of roads and building of dams.

They were all firsts. New ideas that transformed the world he knew and lived through into something futuristic and completely foreign to everything he knew.

My father was born in 1950. In his lifetime he has seen the world Wyatt Earp left behind change into yet another foreign future to his generation.

Automobiles are now high tech space aged earth bound vessels- some even driving themsevles now totally autonomous. His generation went to the moon and back again, only to be called cranks by their grandchildren. "Did that really happen though?"

He lived through political coups and assassinations, the cold war, the space race.

He saw the highways expand into the vast freeway systems we see today.

He saw poverty virtually dissapear in America, only to be strategically applied to politically undesirables.

He saw the genocide of abortion erase more generations than all wars of his life combined- a father of seven, he saw America shift to a negative birth rate.

He saw computers go from filling entire floors of a high rise to fitting on your desktop, and in your hand.

He saw the commercialization of everything- the expansion of everything to sheer abundance. . . and the then outsourcing of that abundance- the outsourcing of America, the factories his father worked closed down- entire industries rise and fall. Now AI. . .

He'll die in a world as foreign to him as his was to that Old West Marshall. 

He will likely see space flight become somewhat accessible to the average person, as flight was in 1929.

He might see AI revolutionalize industries and change the human/work dynamic in ways unimaginable to him.

He might see the utter collapse of the western world and free markets and the rise of Islam in America. The end of freedom.

I was born in 1981. The world I grew up in is already gone.

I wonder. . . As Wyatt Earp saw the world change, was there hope for humanity in his eyes when he died? I think so.

Here I am feeling like Wyatt Earp living in a world I barely recognise, knowing this future is going to be even more foreign to me- envious of my father who might can see it with some hope, as he will not have to live much longer through it.

I am envious of Wyatt Earp dying when he did, before WWII in the opulence of the roaring 20s, before the crash, the poverty, the Nazis. . . Before the horrors he was probably too hopeful to see coming.

I am envious of his world. How I would rather have been born in 1881 rather than 1981- even if to die in the great war with so many noble men. . . Just a little younger than I am now. Envious of their legacies.

Maybe we all feel a little like the aging Wyatt Earp, reminiscing of the good ol' days, the glory days. . . The '80s the '90s. . . The past, ours or some one elses shot we missed out on. 

Was it really like that? I myself wonder sometimes- even though I saw it. We all have to face the future with the past behind us and answer "yes, give or take a lie or two." and move onward into that unknown just as our fathers did, no matter how long we have in it. This is our time. Only ours.