We Were Like Little Soldiers

"We were like little soldiers set before the slaughter of real life".

I was born in 1948, so I grew up in the 1950s which was a very different time than now. And yet, we may be moving back towards times like this once again they way things look  like now all over Earth.

I was walking in the woods about a mile from the nearest human being through redwood trees and pines and Oaks and ferns and tall grasses down the valleys and canyons of a very humid late spring day (in Fall 2011 today). I was walking along a horizontal fire road which was relatively level along the side of a hill when a very little boy about 5 to 7 years of age rode by on his very little mountain bike. He rode like he was 10 to 14 instead of 5 to 7 and had a much older attitude. But because he was obviously so young away from any seeming adult supervision I said to him as he rode by, "Do you know where you are? And Are you with  an adult?" He gave me a strange look the kind of look I might have given to an adult asking me this when I was 5 on a bike miles from home in 1953 and said, "Yes", to my question about being with an adult. However, after he passed by out of reach he added, "I've been riding here thousands of times." and I realized he hadn't told me the truth because he didn't know me or trust me. So, I thought to myself, "You don't really see stuff like this in this era even though this would have been perfectly normal in the 1950s." Now you don't usually see boys alone in wilderness younger than about 10 to 12 and even then they usually have a good sized dog or a another boy their age with them to sort of have reinforcements in an emergency.

I was a little concerned about this young kid alone on a dirt fire road so far from home. I passed by another gentleman about my age (63) and told him of the young fellow out so far from home alone on a bike. He too, seemed a little uneasy in this era to hear this even though he agreed that when we grew up this would have been normal.

When I got home I wanted to write about this but discovered my wife wanted me to go to a movie called "Crazy Stupid Love". We had wanted to see it when it first came out but then my son had just broken up with his wife and we both knew the movie would make us cry and we had to be strong for our son.

So, when I go back to when I was 4 or 5 again I came up with the true statement of how I feel now about all the boys my age back then, "We were like little soldiers set before the slaughter of real life."
As I thought about what it was like then most of us boys expected to die one way or another by ages 20 to 25. We all were very aware we could die from Polio (my best friend from 12 to 21 when he went away to the Viet Nam War had polio and leg braces until he was 6 years old.) Or we could be killed by other kids(this was quite common then) by a club, a rock or a knife. Partly this happened a lot because there were no legal abortions like there is now. So, literally, all the very unhappy and often crazy little bastards might kill us like they almost killed me on multiple occasions as I grew up. There were so many abused children back in the 1950s it was a wonder any of us grew up alive and sane at all. Or, we could fall in love and kill ourselves over an unhappy love(this also happened a lot). Or finally, during the Viet Nam War many people both in Viet Nam and in the U.S. scared of having to go to Viet Nam or of dying horrible some way there overdosed on drugs or alcohol or both, crashed their cars or motorcycles and died or there were the 50,000 who actually died during the Viet Nam War in Viet Nam and the 250,000 who were wounded during that  terrible war. So, even as a 4 to 5 years old child I knew I had only a 50-50 chance of surviving to age 25 even then. So, if I wasn't killed by polio or another childhood disease or by crazy abused kids from my public school or from crazy gang by club or by knife or by chain or by some other blunt instrument, then I might die riding my bicycle or be hit by a car or be thown from a car in an accident at any point in time(because seat belts didn't exist in any cars then except on the race track. Death was a whole lot nearer to us then. But we all accepted these problems because this was just normal then.

When I look around me at all the things going on here on earth we may be in for times like the 30s, 40s and 1950s once again. A student of history said that the 1870s here in the U.S. and the 30s and 40s are very much like from 2008 until now. So we may be looking at a very difficult 20 to 30 years ahead for the U.S. and Europe at the very least. When I grew up if you didn't have a very good immune system and a very strong internal compass and strong external body to defend yourself, the likelihood of your ongoing survival was in jeapordy very far into the future. We may be facing times like this worldwide once again. I hope not. But if you read in between the lines it looks very likely. Though China did better than the rest of us in 2008 until now along with India, only India and Brazil have the kinds of governments in Place like the U.S. and individual European Governments to survive all this very well long term. China is too much run like a corporation. This only works so far. One needs more flexibility than that in the long run. Only Democracy brings that flexibility unless you want to see millions die in social unrest. So, it is possible within the next 20 to 30 years we may see extreme social unrest in China because of this. So, long term, the U.S. Europe, Brazil, India, Canada and Australia will likely fare the best with what appears to be coming now.

But we may be looking at boys and now girls too in the position of being soon, "Little soldiers set before the slaughter of real life." On an individual level this might be hell for some people. But there is also another way to look at it. People who survive really difficult times here in the U.S. will create a whole new and different breed of people than those since the 1960s that is much more like the people here in the U.S. from 1776 until the 1950s.

"Necessity is the Mother of Invention"
This looks like our future.
So, the people who survive will have to do whatever it takes to survive individually and in groups, cities, states, nation and world. So, how we do this now is based upon experience and adaptation. And a democracy has the best chance for the most people physically, emotionally and spiritually surviving these times worldwide. Those who survive the next 30 years will likely be sadder, wiser and tougher than any we have seen since the 1950s here in the U.S. and around the world.