{"id":18151,"date":"2016-02-23T13:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T18:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18151"},"modified":"2016-02-23T13:00:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T18:00:29","slug":"a-brief-visit-to-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18151","title":{"rendered":"A Brief Visit to the End of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"headline_area\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.raptitude.com\/2016\/02\/a-brief-visit-to-the-end-of-the-world\/\" target=\"_blank\">A Brief Visit to the End of the World<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-meta\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"post_image aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raptitude.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/eotw.png\" alt=\"Post image for A Brief Visit to the End of the World\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" \/>People mostly want the same thing, and many of us already have it, but we don\u2019t really notice it.<\/p>\n<p>I have no way of confirming this, but I bet that if you could interview people across different centuries and cultures, asking them what they wanted most, you would notice a distinct theme in their answers.<\/p>\n<p>Some people would want great riches or power. Others would say they want something very specific: to invent a particular thing, or for a particular person to love them, or to win a gold medal or give an Oscar speech.<\/p>\n<p>But I suspect most of them would say they want something like this:<\/p>\n<p><em>I want to be able to do my work and spend time with my friends and family, free to live my own values in relative peace. I just want a fair chance to pursue love and happiness, and a stable, humble life.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You could call this \u201cThe Peacetime Dream\u201d, a life with the normal share of ups and downs\u2014necessarily including heartbreak, health issues, setbacks and disappointments\u2014but which isn\u2019t defined by war or persecution. Almost universally, people want basic stability and basic freedom, and to someone who doesn\u2019t have those things they are clearly the best things in the world.<\/p>\n<p>But to someone who\u00a0<em>does\u00a0<\/em>have those things, their greatness is not so clear. It\u2019s easy to forget, or never notice at all, that many or most of us already have this state of affairs, more or less\u2014certainly most people who read blogs in their spare time.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also easy to forget that many (or most?) of history\u2019s humans\u00a0never had\u00a0the Peacetime Dream. I wonder how many billions of individual human lives have been lived under tyrannical regimes, forced servitude, or during a war or a plague, or maybe all of those things.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Brief Visit to the End of the World People mostly want the same thing, and many of us already have it, but we don\u2019t really notice it. I have no way of confirming this, but I bet that if you could interview people across different centuries and cultures, asking them what they wanted most, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12566,1452,2500,3391,12565,1326],"class_list":["post-18151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-end-of-the-world","tag-happiness","tag-history","tag-peace","tag-raptitude-com","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18152,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18151\/revisions\/18152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}