It's hard to put into words. I think the essence of you questions is "what is your philosophy now, and how does it differ from before?" That's a question I've been struggling to conceptualize myself for a while now, so I can't describe it with any sense of coherence in a public forum.

I will say that, at the root of it all, we are who we orbit.

> Biggest surprise for me was the sense of community that seemed present in the lower earners.

I was once in an environment where, depending upon how I was dressed, I would either be addressed in english and called "Sir" or addressed in spanish and called "Paisano".

Why was the community surprising? (I mean, my mental model is that most dyadic social interactions can be approached with either authority or community, so I'm not surprised that groups without much authority tend to play the community card instead)