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luciaphile's avatar

I volunteered after a hurricane-prompted evacuation once, and only once.

I was fascinated by the people who came to shelter in a high school that was closed to students in order to house them.

They soon got to quarreling. Many complained about the public school food, which they had had to endure so far once, even though nearly all of them would’ve been through public school themselves and presumably had some familiarity with what is possible there.

They had strange requests like can you get some antibiotic for my pet bird?

A lot of of them expected that various medicines would be provided for them, rather than having brought them.

These were not people who had lost their homes. They were kind of reacting or overreacting to a previous natural disaster and running away from the coast. They were doing as they were told or encouraged to do. They had no desire not to herd together, or seek out relatives or other arrangements.

They had spent a lot of time in their cars, probably on the way as everyone made their exit from a large area.

I remember thinking, I would have stopped the car anywhere and slept there. Brought a tent. Whatever.

They seemed simultaneously comfortable with this kind of ward of the state situation, and also very vituperative about it.

Some clearly regarded it as a sort of party.

They all seemed pretty helpless.

They had not brought bedding for the most part. They complained about their cots. They got into tussles over the space in the areas like the gym that were given over to them.

In any case a food inspector showed up and decided that a lot of the food had reached the wrong temperature so it had to be thrown away, so those who hadn’t like it then complained about the loss of it until more could be prepared.

You can be full of compassion for people you don’t know, and I understand that that is a normal reaction for some people to feel. I was horrified to discover that the people were so different from myself, having been told so often that people are all the same.

It was a moment of utter alienation. I did not betray this, but I understood that people volunteering wasn’t for me. Live and learn.

It would be interesting to know if the people in the Swiss village are much like these people I’ve described, who are numerous in America, and the majority in many places.

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Robert Stephenson's avatar

(USA) I've been a lifelong sci fi fan, and have been disappointed at the devolution of the entire genre into dystopian nightmares. Turns out, we're in one. Day after day is a constant drip drip of the latest loonacy from a parade of ass clowns... the latest; a WWE style take down of a California Senator at a press conference in LA. Saddest of all? I fear we let our secondary educational outcomes slip away unnoticed over several decades, to where we are way down the list in terms of STEM outcomes in the world among advanced economies. I am not sure we can ever get it back. Are we going to enter an insular dark ages in the USA because of it? I mean, you have to have a whole lot of sub par graduates to elect something like the current clown show. Now that morons outnumber the rest of us, who's going to vote for rigorous outcomes that may, in time, lead to the critical mass of critical thinking necessary to maintain a bulwark against another lowest common denominator reality show takeover of the country? Keep fighting the good fight, Mari.

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