For those of you that have made it this far in my rant.... congrats!
And the good news is that I have ruled out the borders and "beauty of your surroundings" thing and decided on a new reason for why people treat strangers differently here on the island - with open arms and an open mind.
It came to me when I was having lunch at the airport in Dallas over the weekend, on our way back to Anguilla.

Amount of (Immediate) Choices
See, on the island there really aren't any restaurants.  I mean there ARE restaurants here (although not a single fast food one)... many of them.... but they are mostly 4 and 5 star places where each meal will easily run you $125/person.  For those of you that know that there are 6 people in our family, that is the same as there really NOT being any restaurants here at all.
To be fair, there is a pizza place here ($20/pizza) and some amazing CHEAP BBQ that can be purchased out of a tent "downtown" on weekend nights. 

So my two boys, at the airport, about to eat lunch, have been living in that type of environment, eating 3 home-cooked, from scratch meals per day for almost a year.
And when I asked the boys, what they would like to eat, from the 6 possible restaurant choices that we were looking at, the weirdest thing happened.....

One of them got upset and angry (not vocally but internally) with me and the Pizza Hut person because Pizza Hut was out of cheese pizza.
Now, they weren't OUT of pizza, they had 5 other kinds!
Pepperoni, veggie, sausage etc, but they didn't have the ONE thing he wanted.

It shocked me because here on Anguilla, there ARE no such choices. 
a) there isn't a Pizza Hut or anything like it
b) the pizza place we do have we rarely eat at
c) our pizza place regularly runs out of ingredients and usually at least a third of the possible choices aren't available

So what is different about  that scenario when it happens in the States?

(And yes, I understand the "he got upset because he usually CAN'T get any pizza he likes" and the "he is a kid that just spent a week in culture shock" arguments, but just work with me for a minute.)

I think the answer to "what makes people treat each other with disregard" is quite possibly related to the amount of choices we have offered to us. 
More specifically, the amount of choices that are SUPPOSED TO BE available to us IMMEDIATELY.

When I say "immediate choices" I am talking about fast food restaurants that allow us to not have to cook, nor wait for our food.  I am talking about super-stores that make it possible to NOT have to go to the butcher, the baker, the market etc.  I am even talking about cell phones and computers, that enable us to communicate, without actually having to initiate human contact.
All those things minimize human interaction and they minimize the time it takes to get our daily tasks done.


Was your grand-mother able to buy food AND make dinner AND have the tires changed AND check in with her sick sister, all in less than an hours by means of Wal-Mart, a microwave oven and a cell phone?
No, and she didn't think she missed a thing.
Instead she would have gone to the butcher, the market, spent some time at home cooking and scheduled a visit to see her sister and to bring the __(fill in mode of transportation)__ to the shop.

So what happens when we progress to the point of having all the conveniences in the world? 
What do we do with all that extra time?
Is it possible that we are so focused on minimizing the time spent on daily tasks that we in fact start to minimize human interaction?
Is it possible that a stranger coming to our door, asking for food turns from someone needing help - to someone that is trying to keep us from doing something else as fast as possible?


Now am I saying technology and progress is bad - no!
Am I saying I would be able to live without some of those conveniences (hint, I am typing on a laptop in the Caribbean right now and you could read this 10 seconds later wherever you are)  - no!
Am I saying I wouldn't give my left pinkie finger for a more convenient way to feed my family here (and stop boiling gallons of water a day) - HELL NO!


But I think something happens to us when we are offered too many choices and begin to think along the lines of faster task accomplishment. 
It's human, it's natural progress, it's TV's and commercials telling us what we want or SHOULD want. 
And to me, it explains why a stranger would be received with an open mind.... where I grew up in Switzerland, where I live now in Anguilla, and even in rural US of A.


But enough ranting for now.... I gotta hurry home and cook dinner!