Hardly anyone today remembers the Great Depression.  A person who was born in the year that the stock market crashed (1929), launching a global economic depression that lasted nearly a decade, would be 76 years old in the year 2005; individuals who were adults during this difficult time would be more than 90 today.  Furthermore, the number of people who have any firsthand experience of World War II, another period of hardship and sacrifice, is rapidly decreasing.  Having had few extreme experiences such as these, most of us who are alive today do not realize how fortunate we are.

Certainly, every generation has its crises and problems, and people in many parts of the world still suffer from almost unimaginable hardships – extremes of poverty, hunger, and deprivation.  Today, the specter of terrorism haunts us all, and the possibility of a cataclysmic global war has been a reality ever since the first atomic bombs were dropped.  However, we do not often appreciate how good our lives have become, comparatively speaking, and each generation seems to take for granted blessings that were rare or nonexistent for the previous generation.

No matter what our social or economic status is, most of us – at least those who live in the so-called developed countries – would do well to consider what we have that our parents did not, what we claim as "givens" that were beyond our grandparents' most extravagant dreams.  Perhaps it is asking too much to expect people to imagine what life was like when the only way to travel long distances overland involved using a horse (or walking) and when illuminating the darkness required use of candles or lanterns.  Is it too much to ask, however, that we reflect upon what it was like without television, jet planes, microwave ovens, and, yes, computers and cell phones?  Many people still alive today can recall when none of these things existed, when they seemed to be, in fact, beyond imagining except by wild-eyed dreamers.

Yet the explosion of "creature comforts" in the past three-fourths of a century – and, in some cases, much less than that – has resulted in at least two generations of people (my own aging generation included) who not only take such conveniences for granted but think of them as entitlements.  Granted, these wonders of technology have their disadvantages:  television can be mind-numbing, cell phones can be intrusive, and everything can become more complicated.  However, few people except the most reactionary old poops would want to return to "simpler" times before such devices existed.

Nonetheless, complacency about the benefits we have accrued as a result of other people's hard work, sacrifice, and creativity can make us spoiled, as surely as the bratty child who does not get the hoped-for toy for Christmas.  One definition of "spoiled" is to "having developed a negative character or nature as a result of overindulgence" – and that would certainly apply when we act as if simply being alive entitles us to all these comforts, forgetting that many people don't have them or that people had quite satisfactory lives without them.  The presumption that we "deserve" all these goodies affects character, embodying most of the seven deadly sins – greed for more, lust for what we do not have, envy of people who have what we don't, pride in thinking that we're entitled.  (I'll let the reader figure out how anger, gluttony, and sloth fit in.)

One consequence of all this material progress has been, of course, greater emphasis on materialism – a society in which people are rated by how much "stuff" they have, as in the ironic statement that the man who dies with the most toys wins the game of life.  There's nothing wrong with having "stuff" (this author has more than his share), but not appreciating what we have is a serious detriment to character.  And I'm not referring just to the teen who can't live without a cell phone but to the adult who can't live without a 50-inch plasma TV or the latest-model SUV.  When our wants and our needs become so confused that we can't tell one from the other, we are spoiled.

Unfortunately, I believe that many young people today, having been raised by equally self-indulgent parents, are especially incapable of distnguishing between wants and needs.  Impelled by an advertising-intensive culture, they equate wants and needs to the point where a desire becomes a virtual entitlement.  Although there is some evidence that a countermovement is taking place – glutted with "stuff," a few are seeking less materialistic values – the drive for conspicuous consumption, with little appreciation of what we already have, continues.

We all need to step back, view our fortunate lives in the perspective of history, and try to be more grateful for what we have.  As I drive my car (which, after all, gets me where I need to go in considerable comfort), I should stop looking enviously at the Mercedes or Jaguar that pulls up next to me.  As I watch movies on DVD on my TV set, I should stop hankering after a 60-inch screen and a 7.1 home theater sound system.  As I sit at my computer with its magical power to perform dozens of tasks, I should stop wanting something that can do even more.  I should consider how my parents, who lived through the Great Depression, would have felt about any one of these, and many more, blessings that I take for granted.  We live in amazing times, but what is most amazing about them is that we aren't easily amazed anymore.