Multi Levels of Thinking
Human thought is more complex than the system 1 and system 2 explanations; but it is a good start. This complexity is the source of a few weird riddles like "no matter how sharp a sword is, it can not cut itself." Then there are the arguments whether we have free will or just chemical controlled automatons.
I chose both stories as having some truth. The first story of being born in a wealthy place and time reflects the time of the 50's and 60's where the ideal was to start a job and stay with that company until retirement. This also was a time when anyone could become president of the US and hard work was the path to a good future. The second story explains why the first story is no longer true, wealth is harder to get and it is the rare person who can spend a lifetime working for one company with all the mergers and changes in businesses and it takes boatloads of money to become president.
On one hand we are living in great times, but how can we compare our times to other epochal times? Most of history is distorted by dominate groups; the Romans defeated the Carpathians and what we are told was that the Carpathians were evil people who were cannibals, history as written by the victors. Archiology helps show a different aspect of a culture and the times by sifting through what is left and building a picture of that culture in its time.
The best analogy to our current situation is the events that happened on Easter Island prior to discovery. This is the culture that is famous for those huge heads lined up on the shores of Easter Island. The island had abundant trees that were cut down to transport the heads from the quarries to their current locations. The problem was that this process wiped out a forest and the trees could not grow back due to the demand. Easter Island does not have a lot of resources and when the situation got worse, there was no escape because there weren't any trees to use to make boats for an ocean crossing. The heads were part of the religion and towards the end, that religion failed and a new cult arose that rebelled against the old religion. The Europeans who found Easter Island found a miserable group of people who survived the civil wars and rebellion but would not talk about it with them.
Fossil fuel is limited, we are better at extracting it only because the easy fuels are used up. What will happen when the cost of oil is higher than the market can handle? How can we prevent the collapse of all we know when oil is too expensive for the output we will get? The best thing is to be prepared for a greater interruption to oil than we experienced in the early 70's.
