Even though Swaziland is 8 hours ahead in time, I often feel like I am entering a time warp and going back 100 years in time as I go there. Seeing people plow fields with horse drawn plows, houses without plumbing or electricity, doing laundry by hand makes me think more about my ancestors who first settled in the United States. But I find that it makes me question who is more developed & who has made all the progress, and for what. I realize this is oversimplifying things, and there are huge ways that our technology & progress have helped the world, but I often wonder if we suffer from some type of chronological elitism....where we think we are better or smarter than those who lived 150 years before us. Or than those who live in the majority developing world, similar to the US 150 years ago. I really think that a majority of us in the United States are really just lazy and unintelligent, relying on the technology that a few really smart people have developed over the last few centuries. I mean, really, if you were without power, indoor plumbing, phone service, a car, and an education, how would you survive?
The ironic thing is that the more “progressive” & somewhat trendy cultures within the US are trying to be more like the majority developing world, without even knowing it. We have programs to help people walk & bike to work, people are intentionally trying to get to know their neighbors that they’ve never talked to or needed to talk to, we are reusing containers instead of throwing them away, we are using real bags to carry stuff instead of plastic ones, we are reselling clothes so that they can be worn until they actually wear out, we are saving energy by hanging our clothes outside instead of using a dryer, we are having more and more babies at home every year.
So maybe Swaziland is really 8 hours ahead, 100 years behind, and 50 years ahead...
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