When I most realized what a Disneyland the U.S. is compared with other nations on earth it was most obvious to me when I went to India and Nepal in 1985 and 1986 with my family. This profoundly changed how I saw everything in my life. The level of suffering in most people who were not educated there was extreme. There were beggars everywhere who had no place to live but if they could get even one scoop of cooked rice from someone somewhere they might live another day and then hopefully another scoop of rice to live the next day too.
There was this attitude which I was horrified by at the time which was: "Whatever you gave me as a beggar was not enough! Give me more!"
So, the lack of gratitude for what was given was the most obvious thing I noticed in these cultures then regarding beggars. However, in some ways they were like uneducated children who hadn't learned politeness and who had been discriminated against because they weren't the right class of people. Only the Brahmin class of people could actually become rich in this system then. And the majority of people never went to school at all because there was no public educated then either. People tell me this has changed somewhat since then but I haven't been back to know for sure.
Friends of mine are right now in India or Nepal right now as I write this. I knew at 75 that going there likely would be fatal for me because of things like Covid and other problems. Like my friends have already in two weeks both of them (a couple) have gotten Covid, gotten food poisoning, and my friend's girlfriend was already bitten by wild dog and had to get rabies treatment of shots into herstomach region.
However, when they told me all this I said that: "This sounds like India when I went there in 1985 and 1986.
Someone I met and talked with then in 1986 said to me that he had been to India from America about 20 times and how he had this Love Hate relationship with India. The love for India is just how alive the people are and how interested they are in Americans and westerners in General. Thousands of them try to get you to take them home to america with you also but this usually cannot happen simply because they were not born in a hospital so they don't have birth certificates and without a birth certificate you cannot get a passport to travel legally.
So, the American from Disneyland ( a heaven realm to many people in Asia) is one of the most amazing gifts to them. However, They only fantasize on how life would be here because the actuality would be quite different than they expect in so many different ways. So, in some ways not bringing them back here you are doing them a favor because they really don't understand what they would be in for.
For example, there was a Tibetan Lama we brought to the U.S. along with his Translator who was his nephew who was about 25 then in 1986.
However, being a rich Tibetan from Darjeeling, India his attitude about the U.S. was he didn't like it because he couldn't bribe anyone for all the things he wanted like he could in India. He also thought cars traveled to fast and this scared him too. Because most roads then in India you could only drive about 25 miles per hour at best on simply because you were sharing the road also with horse carts, camel driven Carts, three wheeled taxis called sometimes Tuk tuks and trucks and cars and motorcycles. Also, then the roads were all one lane so people who were in the smaller vehicles were often forced off the road to pass in the other direction.
For example, if you were riding in a bus you wouldn't want to be riding in front because of all the near misses with oncoming traffic and motorcycles being forced off the road along with cars and everything else. So, I learned to ride in back of a bus so I didn't have to see all this mayhem.
So, you can see how we live in a Disneyland compared to most places on earth in reality and we should be grateful for the amazing country we live in.
No. It's not perfect but most of the world is a lot less perfect than here in the U.S. .as you will find if you travel there.
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