Not since visiting India and Nepal and meeting people way out in the country away from most civilization or the few times I have lived very remotely in the mountains of Northern California or stayed fasting when I was young in the desert in a cabin away from people have I experienced what I have been lately.
The easiest way I can explain it is to take you back with me to India in 1985 and 6. All the basic rules of travel that one expects in the United states and Europe only existed in India and Nepal if one was flying in a commercial jet or renting a car with a driver. And even renting a car with a driver was different than anyplace on earth I have been in some ways.
Here in the U.S. we usually expect (unless we are homeless)planes,trains, and buses to be on time and if we buy a seat on one we expect it to be there somewhere on that plane, train or bus, even if it isn't always where we expected on the vehicle. However, in 1985 and 6 India this wasn't true necessarily for buses and trains.
I was excited when I bought our first train tickets to the nearest city in India to us for my family of 5. However, when the train came I realized that the only way to ride this train was to hang onto the outside of it, and though I at the time could have without our baggage, my family could not. So I watched the train pull into the station as all our hearts sank as we didn't have a place to stay yet and it was now dark. My wife and I and our kids then 11, 12, and 14 were upset we didn't get to ride on the steam train that night. we finally gave up and got a room for the night and decided to figure something out the next day. The next day we bought bus tickets for the next big town because at least then we actually would have seats.(Later we learned that families usually rent a whole compartment which is what we did on the next train we rode on. Also, we learned that one had to use ticket scalpers who bought and sold tickets professionally to sell to wealthy travelers who wanted to travel today or tomorrow and all the poorer people just held onto the outside of the train and usually survived it without being maimed or killed.(However, most of these are young men between about 12 years old and 30 to 35). Families don't travel this way.
So riding on the outside of a train was done regularly then and was an act of bravado for young men only.
The other thing I ran into around the 50% to 60% that hadn't gone to school very little or at all(there were no public schools in India then) was a very strong spiritual belief system. This system the based there very lives upon so if they lived it was God's will and if they died it was God's will. But somehow this system once I understood it actually worked better than our more scientific system here in America. And now that the poorest 50% of America is living in some kind of alternate hell from losing their jobs, homes, families, and with so many more going homeless every day I believe you are going to see some of the things similar to what I saw in India. When logic and science and government fails people they have to fend for themselves. And one of the ways to do this is to develop their own survival systems like people have in other parts of the world which might have mostly nothing to do with what we now call science.
After all, you can't eat science. Science won't comfort your children if they are starving. Science in the end is a very cold set of rules of the universe, that in the end might be completely useless in helping individuals and families to survive.
It is sort of like if a person is stuck with their car broken down out in the wilderness. Without gas and someone to drive the car it is meaningless. Whereas anyplace that keeps a person out of the rain and safe might be useful to a homeless person.
So when people have nothing, the most valuable thing they have left is their friends and relatives who might help them and God and angels or whatever higher beings they might believe in.
When someone is starving and might go crazy or die from everything going on in their lives they have to have some real or imagined system to turn to.
I have always said that people have to do whatever works in their lives as long as it is a kind system of beliefs.
So, in these times, even in America it is very important to give even homeless people respect even if you didn't give them respect before. This doesn't mean that you should let them take advantage of you, it just means that to not give someone respect who needs it might be dangerous these days here in America(the U.S.)
So, one should expect the belief systems of the poorest 50% of the population even in western nations to start to perceive things very differently than they have up until now.
The people of all classes of the economic spectrum who have been failed by the world economic system, often through no fault of their own, will now be looking for another way, another system to make their lives work and bring meaning to their lives. Because of this, the world 20 years from now might look nothing like the last century at all but like something very different both good and bad. They will be looking for a better economic system but also maybe another spiritual and philosophy of life that serves both they and their families and friends better than the systems that have failed them and their families and their friends. It is inevitable that many changes on earth will come directly from systemic failure by governments and economic systems. I hope this will come as safely as possible for everyone.
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