1. I agree completely on people not even being willing to consider many possibilities. In the last century we had 2 world wars, a decade plus economic depression, a cold war, massive change in technology, but if you suggest to anyone that any big changes are coming in the next few years (outside of the ones they want), you are often immediately dismissed. Trying to tell someone that a lot of actions being taken can easily lead to a world war in the next decade or so is treated like absurd. Telling them that our debt driven economic system has mathematically no long term solution but to crash is ignored (people either think of the economic as run by experts
or by almost like magic with no way of predicting long term results).2. (regarding earlier posts)The cultural components are very important to look at. We very much do put a Western type mindset on the thinking of most people and it's a definite fallacy. I agree we have to be careful in our discussions of differences, but we have to look at them too if you want any chance of predicting the future.