You may have heard that someone had a winning lottery ticket for a prize of 1.9 billion dollars. A friend's adult son calculated that such a prize, taken in monthly payouts, would bring 35 million $ a month. Months have 31 or fewer days so that amount would be more than a million a day. A man recently commented that he didn't want that much money. His wife said that is too many doughnuts.
If you take reaching the age of 40 years to be a good lifetime for primitive and early humans, we are consistently reaching twice that number in many groups. I suspect that in the years past age 70, we find new sorts of wisdom and recognition of life's truths. Among these is the revelation of the difficulty of picturing paradise. Lying or sitting on puffy clouds while playing harps seems a limited way to spend the rest of all time. I guess when humans, say in Europe or some other feudal place, worked under the authority of a local lord, that man's house and position might well seem heavenly. However, those workers are more educated now. They can often read and write. Their education, regardless of which genitals they have, urges them to stand up and live a life of their choosing. They are more likely to have smartphones and can develop critical thinking, doubts as to the truth values of longtime guidelines their parents and earlier ancestors took for granted.
Yesterday, I ordered a paper copy of the book The End of Power by the Venezualan journalist Moises Naim. From the write-up about the book, it is a review of the downsides of being in charge, being the top dog. The very fact that an elderly man in a small city in Wisconsin knows about such an author and book is just one sign of more critical thinking flaring up all over among humans.
I am falling back more and more on the conclusion that this life, this wife, these friends, are as close to paradise as I am going to consciously experience.
