“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is far more important that you understand this than that you become overly concerned with labyrinthian “past reasons,” for you can get so lost in a negative approach that you forget that these beliefs can be changed in the present. For various reasons, you hold beliefs that you can alter at any time. Many individuals die young, for example, because they believe so strongly that old age represents a degradation of the spirit and an insult to the body. They do not want to live under the conditions as they believe them to be. Some quite frankly prefer to die in what others would consider to be the most dire circumstances — swept away by the raging waves of an ocean, or crushed in an earthquake, or battered by the winds of a hurricane.

Culturally the region did not have its own identity, though it has always striven for some kind of characteristic expression. It saw government funds go past it to other sectors more economically depressed. The people had individual dreams and hopes, and en masse these represented a regional vision of improvement at many levels. At the same time feelings of discouragement grew. The young and the old, the conventional and the unconventional, had small skirmishes, where some of the city fathers objected to the long-haired youths in a city park — quite trivial incidents, and yet indicative of splits of values and misunderstandings between the generations.