Paradigm Shifts

When I grew up it was the 1950s. I followed my father's footsteps in many ways. He was the Valedictorian of his High School and I was not. However, he got me interested in everything electrical, and planes and cars and motorcycles as a little boy. I always expected to become an airline pilot when I grew up but didn't because of one thing. My father's little brother was lost in a plane likely. However, it was so top secret even his father and mother weren't told the whole truth (or likely any of it) and neither was the rest of the family for about 50 years and even then it is mysterious to some degree.

My grandfather became and electrician at least by 1905 and an Electrical Contractor by 1910 all over the western United States until he settled down in Lake Forest Park outside of Seattle and bought a home on 2 1/2 acres of land around 1927 then.

However, the paradigm shifts I want to talk about here are the ones I have already lived through to give you an idea of what you are about to live through too.

Imagine this: When I was little there were no radial tires, disc brakes, color tvs that actually worked enough to want to buy one, CDs, Dvds, cassette tape players, microcomputers,  or microchips until I believe 1959. In fact, transistors weren't even invented until the year I was born.

I remember having a little yellow transistor radio with a single little earplug to listen to the two rock and roll stations when I was 8 years old in 1956. The transistor radio was about the size of my hand and had a single ear plug that plugged into it so it wouldn't disturb other people if I wanted to do that. But it sounded a lot better if I just played it through the external speaker on the little radio. It didn't play any tape or CD's because they hadn't been invented yet, just AM radio stations. I don't think the first ones even had FM stations yet.

I was about 15 to 17 years old when I first bought a Cassette player. Now, I bought this at Sears and it was the size of a 15 inch screen Macbook Pro but about 4 inches thick and had to be played on end for best results. I kept that thing for at least 15 years and played casettes I recorded as well as many I bought. But, when I bought it I don't think you could buy music cassettes pre-recorded yet just record your own stuff. So, this would have been 1963 to 1965. Around this same time I started Watching STar Trek on TV with Leonard Nemoy and William Shatner. it was the cat's meow for someone who had been reading science fiction since I was 10 in 1958.

So, around this time in 1966 I graduated High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico at a private school I went to my last year of High school from Glendale, California where my family lived then. So, my parents prepared me for going to college by having my sell my 1956 Ford STationwagon that I called my "Surf WAgon" and had me buy a 1965 VW Bug Seablue in color. I put camber compensators on it and bought the first set of Radial tires with chrome wheels on it for college. However, mostly I loved that it got over 30 miles per gallon which took me a long way for 17 cents a gallon of gas then.

By 1968 I had taken a lot of college courses in computer programming and operating IBM computers and peripherals and started making a lot of money working for computer companies by age 20. However, I got very discouraged when I realized the technology wasn't yet developed enough to do what I wanted to do which was to build myself and computer robotic sentient female that I had fantasized about after an episode of STar Trek on TV. (There was this beautiful blonde that William Shatner fell in love with that turned out to be a perfect sentient robot that looked and acted exactly like a beautiful woman).

So, that was discouraging. However, then I realized that literally all women are nit picky and that if you are going to live with one (anyone of them) this is something you have to learn to deal with as a man. So, it sort of goes with the territory. However, I was in my mid 20s when I finally came to terms with all this even though I had been dating girls since I was 15 ongoing.

I think the point I'm trying to get across is that we then had no idea of what the future would be like. Especially the 1960s and the 1970s were probably the biggest surprise. Then I would have to say that from 2001 until now has been even more insane in some ways than from 1960 until 1975 which was about as insane a time in the U.S. as I ever want to see again.

There just was too much intense change in the U.S. (and around the world) from 1960 to 1975 to ever want to go through that again. I would be like asking to go insane or something like that.

The same is true of what has happened on earth from 2001 until the present. It has been really insane in a way like few things have been since the GReat Depression and World War II.

But, being adaptable and knowing somehow you are going to survive (by the Grace of God) (if you believe in God) might be the most useful attitude. Because from my point of view the world mostly has just been too crazy to want to survive more than one decade at a time.

For me I was 27 in 1975. Anything after about 1975 has felt like I'm living in the future. For me, about 1975 has been my personal singularity where life just like always has seemed sort of like science fiction ever after.

Luckily, I'm a very adaptable person so I have survived it all. However, this is how I have felt since 1975. It's sort of like: "TOTO!  I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!" However, life's a lot like that. What happens is almost never what you expect. Because life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

If you understand that, you have a chance of dealing with all the changes you will experience in life. If not, Good luck!