A Common Thread ?

While I was working for a candidate during our past local election cycle, the topic of the under performing schools and neighborhoods came up.
One of the more affluent ladies, who was working for another candidate for a different position, mentioned that the well being of the 'hood had nothing to do with her life.
And that those who lived in such areas were just dumb and poor and deserved to live that way.


But obviously, she failed to take into account the theory of entanglement
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement )
(No, not on a Quantum scale, but one in which most people could identify.).


Have you ever dated someone with whom you'd developed a close relationship or connection?
One day, one of my young cousins stopped to talk to me because something was wrong.
After I asked the usual school, home and friend questions, he mentioned that he just felt that something was wrong.

I asked about his girlfriend.
He said that they were doing fine and that she was at her friend's house getting ready for their date later in the evening.
Then he said that he just felt like he was on a roller coaster.
I asked if he had butterflies in his stomach.
"Yeah!", he replied.
I just said, "Oh, you're girlfriend is cheating on you."

He said that I was wrong and that they were getting along famously.
Later that night, I saw him at his aunt's house, listening to the Blues and crying.
"How did you know?", he asked.

Because it has happened to me, even when the girl was in another country or on another continent.
(I used to send my girlfriends on vacation so that it was easier for me to cheat on them - twice, it backfired.)
But how do we know?
Is it some type of shared consciousness?
Kind of like when the characters in Star Wars felt a disturbance in The Force when that planet blew up?


It's just that all people and things are somehow connected.
It's why the Bible says to forgive people of the sins that they may have committed against us.
Our anger and bitterness hurt us.
That's why G-D says that vengeance is His.
If we take revenge, we harm a part of ourselves (or sin against ourselves).

But a more basic example of how the suffering of others can ultimately effect our well being is represented in the average incomes, education levels and/or social conditions of any given town.

If a town has half of it's residents that are poor, uneducated and poorly adjusted socially,
and on the other side of the tracks ,
the residents are rich, educated and civilized
- even if kept separate, the average lifestyle of the whole is still less desirable than one would wish.

Those who are seen and kept in the lower strata (or stratum) of society would be more likely to lower the test scores in the town's schools (and lowering the housing values on the good side of town) and the crime rate might increase as well (keeping better shops and stores away from the town).
The unkempt neighborhoods would maintain a price closer to their true value while the pristine neighborhood's prices would be compromised.

Those lower test scores would create an environment at the schools that accepts failure (as seen by most of the middle class' standards) as an option.
The lower school ratings and property values would become a negative indicator to any corporation that desires highly skilled or highly educated workers - lowering the town's potential for collecting higher taxes on more expensive homes and the big businesses' earnings.
The whole town would suffer - not just those directly effected by the less desirable environment.
But this pretentious woman (She wanted to be a snob - but please... she lives in Beaumont, Texas.) failed to grasp the effects on the whole by the conditions and actions of the few.

There may be too much fuzzy math in the whole entanglement argument,
but why does it appear to be true empirically?
How do actions that seem counter-intuitive (going against the presumed laws of nature of putting one's self first) end up being in all of our best interest?