Reflection

This week marks one year since several events occurred which each by itself seemed innocuous enough, but combined have permanently altered my life to a point where it is nearly unrecognizable. Over the course of the last four years there have been three major disasters that have reshaped my life large steps at a time, this last year feels more like a fine grade of sand paper beginning to polish the surface. If you had said to me last year that in one year X, Y, & Z would be true I could not have believed it.

My Own Progress

Last week I basically gave up my lovely customized home desktop computer. It was tough. I sacrificed it to become the media center. My morning schedule has been disrupted more than I realized. I usually pack away my laptop before I try to sleep so that I don't have to do it in the morning before leaving for work, so I wake up and no email or no checking the news online. And no TV either. Because this week to finish what I started I terminated my DishNetwork service. I could get online and go to a station and check their streaming video for news. It is so much easier to just click a remote and get instant on so now instead of mindlessly and out of boredom turning on noise I have to think and deliberately choose what I listen to or watch.

It is always scary to take steps that bring you so far outside your comfort zone, but really felt it was needed. We now have one less bill each month and one less outside influence upon which we are emotionally dependent. And you want to know something? It hardly even hurt. We still watch DVDs and hulu.com works perfectly. Of course we also have hours of non-electric sound, listening instead to birds, wind, crickets, frogs, rain, whatever nature has to offer at that moment. It forces me to explore other options for everything. For example as I write I am using an app on iPod called 5-0 Radio, listening to a Fire and EMS scanner channel from a nearby city. We still have not replaced any sort of radio since the tornado. Might have to do that.

Not sure what my next step will be. For now I will just adjust to where I am.

A Friend's Plan

A friend said that he only needs enough stuff stored to eat until the garden comes in. This is basically sound, but overlooks an important fact. I have experimented with eating only garden produce for a day at a time. The first time or two isn't bad, but by the third time in one week the fault of this plan begins to show. Even I, who do moderate level work was starving and exhausted by early afternoon. I had been eating as much as I could since morning and even threw in some exotics such as bananas and avocados which will not grow here, consumed my regular caffeine and vitamins. What would it be like to do hard work like digging a garden or cutting wood on this diet?

Some of the men talk of eating fish and game, but we will figure that by now in the scenario there is no electricity, so no refrigeration. You will have at best forty-eight hours to consume whatever you kill, so add hunting to the physical work on a regular basis. Of course growing grains might yield a small crop but is more likely to bring the game animals to you. So for a few weeks you have meat, but after that the grain crop has been consumed without harvest and the animals are gone to look for other food.

So there must be another way found for people to survive the collapse of the economic/societal system on which they are depending today. Adam Smith wrote about the answer over two hundred years ago, we might need to revisit his work and begin to apply it to our plans for survival.

This Week's Achievment

On a whim I submitted a photo to TechRepublic's call for an Image Gallery entitled Cluttered Workspaces. lol, see if you can recognize my desk.

Talismans

Talisman -
1. An object marked with magic signs and believed to confer on its bearer supernatural powers or protection.
2. Something that apparently has magic power.

A Bible is not a talisman. Church membership is not one either. There is no object on the face of the planet that can protect you magically, supernaturally or in any other way. I see the sad condition of people clinging to an object, particularly a Bible somehow wishing, hoping that it will keep bad things or events away from them. This makes me feel that memorization is a good thing. If you have the words locked in your head you do not need the object. I am sometimes tempted to take the book away from such a person and ask them to quote me some passage from it. That would be rather mean, but I know that they could not, except maybe John 3:16, and that sentence is rather impractical.

There is a great deal of practical wisdom to be found in a Bible but most of it is not the out-of-context feel-good bits that superstitious people like. If you want to use a Bible, well good, use it. Read it. Learn what is in it. It will be a whole lot harder than you think it will be, but you will gain from the effort. If you do not want to read, do not carry it, you look foolish.

If you do not like what I have just said, I would refer you to Proverbs 26:7.

Know Yourself

Do you know your own weaknesses? The main reason for years that the military and intelligence communities did not allow homosexuals to serve was the threat of blackmail by enemy agents. It was a vulnerability that could be leveraged against the person making them a security risk. What in your life could someone use against you if they controlled your access to it? Can you wake up in the morning and start your day without a specific type and amount of coffee at a set time? Do you get upset if your favorite TV show is not on? How addicted are you to tobacco products? What about another substance such as a prescription drug or a particular brand of food? Never assume that just because you can easily obtain something today that you will have the same access tomorrow. Analyze honestly your routine, you don't have to change anything today, but just aware of what you are doing and why. Know yourself.

Survivors' Club

I think that everyone knows about the 80/20 rule, the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results (Pareto's Principle.) This applies to work, wealth, elections, almost everything that happens. I had recently heard the fact that faced with a true disaster (tornado, volcano, flood, war) 80 percent of people go into denial as a defense mechanism, because we don't want to have something bad happen, and that the other 20 percent splits into two groups. The first group of the 20 percent sees what is coming and makes correct and logical decisions and responds in a way that they survive. The second half of the 20 percent sees what is coming and actively and almost angrily denies it to the point of accusing the "survivors" of creating the situation or worse taking advantage of it to hurt the 80 percent who are in deer-in-the-headlights mode. Much of the loss of life in the aftermath of some catastrophe is the result of the tension and fighting between the two active groups, normally precipitated by the Angry Deniers.

Think of a tsunami. Some people see the warning signs and starting heading inland, telling others as they go to get away from the water. The deniers start accusing them of scaring people and might even confront them physically. Most of the people like sheep begin to stare at the water as it moves out, collects and rushes back in and over them and do not begin moving until swept away.

I know that I am a survivor. I have dealt with many tragedies in my life and always knew what to do and when. When I stood in the door of the storm shelter in February of 2008 watching a mile and half wide wall of black, roaring destruction bearing down on us, with debris flying at me, I remember thinking "This is not going to end well." It didn't. I never doubted for a second my decision for the first and only time in my life going to the shelter and was already planning what would need to be done when we came out again.

The first rule of survival is "know yourself." Are you a survivor? Or a denier? Or are you waiting to see what the survivors do?

Stupidity

"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever." - Chinese Proverb

Ignorance plus arrogance equals stupidity. Ignorance is not a choice, it is a condition which can be corrected. Stupidity is a choice, which by giving up arrogance, humbling yourself can be corrected.