Just over a year ago I was working with someone who often picked up inside information on government plans – the kind of stuff the general public is not supposed to know about. For example there was a big push on British people to rekindle their interest in growing vegetables, apparently because they were predicting major food shortages last winter.
One fascinating point – apparently London only has enough food for 11 hours at any one time – what an incredible distribution system to have so much food moving into the city 24 hours a day to keep us all fed.
Anyway, I was advised to keep plenty of seeds for sprouting to survive the food shortages. You can grow sprouts in a few days and get a highly nutritional source of fresh food. I didn’t take it that seriously and completely forgot to buy anything for sprouting and didn’t think much more about it.
But when I recently met the person who had given me this advice I was intrigued by one thing. She had recently had a very difficult time financially and for a couple of weeks had not had enough cash to buy food. Luckily she had plenty of seeds for sprouting, so she was fine.
It started me asking questions. Did she have that experience because she believed in the food shortages and therefore it happened to her, even if it didn’t happen to the rest of us? If I had taken it seriously and gone and bought sprouts as well would I also have needed them at some stage? Did the fact that I did not take it that seriously help to prevent such an occurrence? How come the predicted food shortages never happened and yet she experienced them? How local is the effect of belief?
