Crisis? What Crisis?, page 6

Good and insightful topic. Crisis, indeed? To the person who has lost seemingly all recently...there is no question he would say, "Yes". Many of us have lost future value in our 401k and house, but these are future losses. However, most have, thus far at least, lost little more than confidence. But, the entire currency we use today is backed by nothing, save confidence.

I am now 62 years of age (an early model baby-boomer), just retired. My mother, now 85, grew up during the Great Depression. She told me of her recollections as a child, in Kentucky. Her father died at the beginning of the depression and her mother was left with the burden of raising her alone. The only job she could get at the time was as a seamstress with the WPA (Roosevelt's make work program for the poor). No welfare existed at that time...no food pantries...nothing in rural Kentucky. The soup-kitchens were just in the big cities.

She said all they had was a back yard to grow a garden and her mom's small check every other week from the WPA. I remember her telling me of her joy when her mom received the check, because they would go to the grocery and they could get a pound of bologna...the only meat they would have for the next two weeks. They toiled in their little garden to raise enough veggies to can for the winter and some kind hearted souls would on occasion give them some fresh eggs and cow milk. They got by.

She then told me somthing unexpected. She said, "We all helped one another get by". Mom then related that when they had a meal, if they had any left-overs after eating, her mom would wrap them in newspaper and set the left-overs on the fence post out front. Before long, it would be gone. A homeless person (back then called a hobo) would silently, but greatfully take the offering and leave. So this is how helping each other worked back then.

Fast forward to today. Look around you. Do you see patient understanding caring souls about you who would be content to exist in conditions such as described here, hoping for a better future? Some would, but let's be honest, that person who put out the left-overs on the fence post, in today's world would probably have his door smashed in and be burglarized and possibly killed. The problem today is in the condition of man's wicked heart. He doesn't know the first thing about growing a garden and barely knows his neighbor. In many cases, he is a spoiled consumer brat that cares only for himself and his desires with little empathy for anyone, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Crisis? Sure we have a way to go to hit full-bore depression. But we certainly may see it come. If it does, we can't count on the good-will of our fellow man to fill the gap. The government knows this. That is the real reason for the FEMA camps...God help us! I have a bad feeling that we may discover how far we have strayed from those time-honored values of our parents and grandparents in a most painful manner. I don't care so much for myself...it's my grandchildren that will have to endure the results of our "advanced society".

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