I was eight years old at the end of World War II. I have lived in the happiest era in human history. My life has been bountiful. I’ve travelled the world for seven decades in the modern world of global airlines and lived many years abroad. The whole planetary adventure was at a cost of one or two earlier transAtlantic steamship trips.
I’ve owned homes, raised successful and happy children who have raised spectacular children of their own. We have all had medical confrontations that would have maimed or killed us in the era before I was born. Our health has thrived.
I’ve lived fully in the era and enjoyed telecommunications, computers, private airplanes, a wide range of technologies, the abundance of food and the most exquisite culinary joys ever known to mankind.
I have created many new businesses, including creating Mastercard the basis for the first global currency. Which I used to travel from the old villages of Indian untouchables to open markets with European goods in the most remote inner towns of Cameroon.
I lived in San Francisco, the capital of the hippie world, as a healthy male, during the twenty year sexual freedom experiment.
I uniquely enjoyed the prosperous world around me. I got to wallow in the abundance. I earned my own living from age 17. My only financial inheritance was under $40,000 when I was 37 years old. I supported my parents in their old age. For most of my life I was self employed and did what I wanted everyday and every hour. I had many hundreds of beloved friends (and still have many) and an abundance of fascinating lovers.
Nothing I did has been secret. I’ve written more than a dozen books based on my experiences and over five thousand blogs.
This has been possible for only one reason: I have lived in America during the most successful commercial period in world history. The Cold War kept the Marxist anti-American Left out of power in America during those decades.
I believe anyone, with an adventurous nature, born during my lifetime could have enjoyed what I have. My last book was an homage to the sources of America’s commercial triumph. The Most Important Book in Human History. It explains for all who are willing to listen; the sources of American innovation and greatness. Our meritocracy.
Blessed is he who appreciates what we have, understands it’s exceptional nature, its fragility and fights to protect it for our children.
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