It took three full days to make the 175 mile trip between two of colonial America's most densely populated cites, Boston and New York. It took Thomas Jefferson ten days of traveling to go from his home in Virginia to Philadelphia. And the traveling was hard and uncomfortable. The world of constant change in which we live provides something even more important than modern physical conveniences and comforts. Change provides hope.
Stability tends to be underappreciated when life is stably miserable.
The earth has existed for 4,600 million years, human-type beings for around 25 million years, and civilization for about 7,000 years. But only very, very recently, within memory of our grandparents, could many people realistically have thought that if they lived in a country of oppression they could, very quickly, emigrate to another. Few would have thought that if they were injured, fast and effective medical relief would be available. Even fewer could have imagined that that if they needed information on almost any subject, they would be able to find it on the Internet or at their local bookstore. Nor could the oppressed peoples of the world have dreamed only a short while ago that radical change might be possible without bloodshed, as the fall of the iron curtain proved.