Learning as Human beings to deal with multiple realities

People who were definitely crazy were much more common in the 1950s. Therapy didn't exist as much then so it seemed that almost everyone was mentally ill sort of like Donald Trump then. Think about Hitler, think about Mussolini, think about Stalin or Mao or all the others who killed millions and millions of their people.

But, even in every day life people were sort of crazy and you had to navigate this craziness much more than today. It's true that people who have taken too many drugs or have been abused by caregivers growing up often have serious problems. But, craziness in the workaday world was much more common in the 1950s than now.

It was sort of expected that you were going to meet potentially violent and crazy people even if only the PTSD of the millions of men and women coming back from World War II was evident in so many millions of people around the world after what they experienced during World War II. And even here in the U.S. many people died when people they loved didn't come back from the war too. It was a crazy time not just during that war but also after.

As a child I knew there were some people you just had to run from because they were crazy. There were children whose parents abused them by burning their arms with lighted cigarettes while they screamed. I knew several children with parents like this in the 1950s. So, dealing with people in different realities in their lives was much more common than now.

Today, children are often so sheltered from ideas and opinions different than their own that they are entirely unprepared for the real world in many different ways. Then we often had to face the daily insane people who worked whether they were crazy or not more than now.

Violent people were much more normal then but they didn't pull out a gun and shoot you like now. Instead they might hit you in the face with their fists or stab you with a knife or beat you with a club. Violence was much more normal in every day life than now.

Is now better? No. It's just different where people who are crazy are often homeless on the streets who die of the heat like now while (NORMAL?) people sit in their air conditioning in gated communities around the world and hide away from the craziness of the real world.

I think it's important to learn to deal with other points of view other than your own. You might not agree with these other points of view but I think it's important to be aware that they exist and you need to find some way to coexist with these other points of view as long as people holding these other points of view aren't trying to kill you or your family.

IF these people are actually trying to harm you or your family then you just have to do whatever it takes to protect your families from whoever or whatever the problem is.

But, learning how to cope with people of different points of view is one way we all stay alive and coexist in this world.

And the sooner children learn to do this the better for us all in both the short run and the long run.