We Are Sane People

 Well....probably up until I left the farm at age 18.....I felt marginally this way.  

I grew up in a fairly rural farming community, and if you asked me about sanity numbers....I would have said 98-percent of the folks you ran into....were sane, balanced, level-headed, logical and sensible people.  

The other two-percent?  Touched, nutty, irrational, irresponsible, schizophrenic, or  plain crazy.  Most were 'safe'.  You'd have the people who saw Jesus in the cornfield, or guys who felt their neighbor was 'possessed', or the folks who had a dozen fans in the living room to blow around mostly hot-air, or the folks who had WW II stories but had only spent four weeks in boot-camp before getting kicked out.

After I joined the Air Force....I came to note a slightly higher number of sanity-lacking people.  I lowered my sane number for the general population to 95-percent.

Since 2000?  I've traveled across the globe and spent a fair amount of time looking at society itself.

Things have changed....mostly due to legit/illegal drugs, and most authorities fearful of putting seriously ill people into permanent facilities.

If you live around urban Seattle or Portland.....you probably would suggest that more than 75-percent of the 'street-people' are not sane or rational.  

I blame part of this on drug use....part on the mental instability of society....part on TV freak-shows....and some on our willing nature to just see how far things can go with 'Timmy' and his mental decline.

If you lived around NY City, or Chicago....you probably would suggest that only 80-percent of people are sane, and the rest are less-than-sane.  In rural areas....you might still be thinking my level of 98-percent.

Is it getting worse?  This is my general top question in this topic area.  You just see a lot of people without empathy or compassion or pity.  In that regard, I worry.

Presently, we are still sane people....but we seem to be losing the 'game' to the opposition.