Introduction
- I had planned to title this post: Boomer thoughts: the value of labor in the founding of America.
But that seemed like a title which would draw a limited audience, and these thoughts are not limited to me as a boomer, but it's one of my duties as a boomer, to pass these thoughts on to the next generation. As a boomer I represent a bridge between the past and the present, and to a certain degree the future. I knew my grandparents, and my parents, I know my children and now I know my grandchildren. This fact puts me in a position of spanning five generations. It’s very interesting to me, to think that when I die, I won’t take just my memories to the grave, but I will take the memories of my parents and my grandparents, which have been interested to me, in an informal process of storytelling to me. Heavy thought
Therefore, I feel an obligation to pass on the memories of my grandparents and my parents to my children and my grandchildren. Perhaps most importantly to my grandchildren, because like me they will span five more generations.
Through me, and after me, through them, my grandparents live forever, in an eternal chain of memories and stories.
My job, and henceforth theirs, is to pass on the life stories of my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, my great great grandparents and great, great, great grandparents of mine. Literally five generations.
One of those words of wisdom and detailed stories is that it took labor to build this country of America. And we should never forget it, because it helps us understand an important idea, Who Really Built America.
Perspective
When I say perspective, I think it’s important to realize that the history that we read doesn’t contain all of the memories of the people who were living at that time because our brains, living in current times, can’t except them, thus reject them, as implausible, based on our current experiences.
These thoughts are difficult for us to comprehend because they are based on a reality which no longer exists.
Stories about living in a two room house, surrounded by thousands of acres of nothing are so foreign to us now, as to be incomprehensible.
We are like people who have lived in the dessert, and we find the stories of bodies of water so large you can swim in them so incomprehensible that we reject the notion of lakes and oceans entirely, as works of fiction.
That’s why we must stay true to the stories we pass on, even when it reflects a perspective completely foreign to us.
Because it represents the memories of the people living at the time. They saw things we can never see because the landscape has been forever changed.
Labor built America
My great, great, great grandparents came to America, and the American they knew was a very different place. This country we call America was a wild frontier, and there was a lot of land that needed to be cleared. There was a lot of rocks and trees to remove. There were ditches to dig, roads and bridges to build, and all of that requires labor.
One of the things people don’t always think of is that labor is the most valuable commodity that exist when you’re building a country because you build it by hand. And the labor, which built American came from all over the world. This great land was built by groups of people who employed their children, their siblings, their friends, and also hired workers, rented indentured servant workers , captured Indian workers and bought slave workers. These people called sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, workers, indentured servants, captured Indians, and yes slaves, provided the labor, which built America.
So when people today say that this great country called America was built by people from one country in Europe called Great Britain… I say… actually, according to the people who were here, during the actual building of this country, into the beautiful finished product it is now. This country was built by the labor of many people, from many countries and many continents. Many of whom died during this great labor project spanning over 100 years.
Many, many people were called from every corner of the earth.
I say in these next words in a realistic, relative and metaphorical manner. That it was such a huge undertaking to carve out this beautiful finished work of art, we call a country, a country, we call America.
From the huge rough stone called North America. A land mass larger than all of Europe. A project accomplished and literally built by one of the largest assembled work forces in history.
This workforce composed of men and women, husbands and wives, moms and dads, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, hired workers, indentured servants, captured Indians, and yes both African and European slaves. They were predominantly European, but they were also from all over the world. These people built America with their labor; their blood, their sweat, their tears and sometimes their lives.
They who built America are a group of people, from almost every continent on earth. Who despite their diverse ethnic, racial, linguistic and cultural backgrounds built a relatively homogenous language, culture and national identity.
These people became a new country, collectively known to the world as Americans.
Americans built America, and we are one people, who are the descendents of many people. We are many people, who became one people. We are Americans, and almost all countries on earth can take pride in our existence and our accomplishments, because they all can see themselves in us, because as a body, we took our parts, from many bodies of the world's people.
The Americans, a people who represent the world’s many becoming one.
