More notes on Community Networking

Sometimes its important to strip down to the bare essentials in order to refocus on why we do what we do. It doesn’t matter what the task is, be it in a professional sense or the survivalist sense, everyone (myself included) can get lost amid distractors, detractors, and shiny objects that pry our attention away. Its understandable; things happen, situations and equipment evolve, as do the requirements justifying their need. But at the core, there are two differing ends of needs which we identified in the last post- Survivalist and Tactical, with Survivalism being far more important in the long run.

Yeah, the election happened. “Our guy” (or the man who seems to be anyway) won for the moment. Maybe. Somebody go get Auntie Em out of the dugout, it looks like the tornado passed. Or did it? I’m of the opinion that the long messy divorce is just getting going; we’re in the domestic shouting phase right now, just prior to throwing random objects at each other. It doesn’t matter who’s actually right or wrong, the marriage is over and we’re gonna fight about it. And that’s ok. Its gonna suck but it happens, its needed to happen, and we’re in a much better position forcing the opposition to its extreme ends.

While it’s important (somewhat) to focus on all the doomsday civilization collapse kinda stuff, because it very well will affect you should all that happen and you are still living in your slothful suburban enclave, it’s a myopic view that’s reactionary in nature. People react to fear; they’re scared of variable-X happening, which apparently gets assigned a corresponding political party usually opposite of your particular lane. The Left does it, the Right does it. You’re all missing the larger point. Why not do for yourself that which you take for granted?

One way we do this by creating resiliency. One of the big things the far ends of the spectrum have in common is a general mistrust of what’s accepted- whether that’s your food, water, beer, security, and yes, communications; resiliency becomes control over the means of production; that is, the ability to produce. This concept should be applied to as many areas as possible, going beyond a hoarding mentality that many of us become subject to and focusing instead on the underlying values associated with contemporary Tribalism.

Survivalism then becomes not about having a large amount of stuff but rather a living version of Merton’s Retreatists in perfect form. It used to be difficult (and often still is) for Right-leaning Survivalists to understand how the Left could believe essentially in a mirror of these views, but they can, and they do. Their label is Rewilding. Its underlying philosophy lay with a Marxist rejection of Industrialization, while Right-leaning Survivalism is more John Locke, William Godwin, and possibly to a lesser extent Henry David Thoreau in its Individualist philosophy. While differing in its rejection of material goods in lieu of feralizing themselves, or at a basic level, simply rediscovering more primitive ways, the parallels to Survivalism in the Right-leaning sense are fairly strong. And a lot of lessons can be gathered from both angles. The Left however generally has a stronger focus on independent community, whereas the Right caricatures Survivalists as some sort of one man army fending off the world through a sense of ‘armed rugged individualism.’ This cartoonish image has traditionally been a vehicle for the Right’s detractors meanwhile the Left encourages similar behavior but in a collective fashion, often going unnoticed among the masses. Those lessons of community building is a critical one that in nearly every way is neglected among the Survivalist circle. It then must become more of a matter of perspective and re-discovering the ways of yore.

Survivalism then is not about a Right-Left divide so to speak; the divorce is coming, and you very well may be caught up in it. Neither the mainstream left or right brands will last long (although the Right might last a bit longer). But there’s plenty of lessons to be gathered in the meantime, which we have a bit more of now. A Survivalist in the individual sense cannot lose sight of the very real danger of which our contemporary world resides, and that apathy is the danger we’re currently in. We are still in an economic death-spiral. The weight of the Max Weber-inspired bureaucracy that comprises the Colombia leviathan will not stop with one man, although that helps. One way to diminish the blow at the local level when the hammer finally falls is to identify the local sources for the required means of production and embrace them; in doing so, you’ll build ties with your neighbors, appreciate the world beyond the closed walls we create for ourselves, and most of all, begin to rediscover the skills required to not jut survive but thrive. Self sovereignty may start with attitude but it hardly ends there. One must not only have the resolve but the means.

Make a list of the items you consume most often. Whatever that is, is what you should either focus on creating for yourself, sourcing locally, or stacking deep. You’re probably going to be doing a lot more eating, building, and pooping than you will shooting. You’ll very, very likely need a way to communicate with neighbors that works without cell phone towers or switchboards. You’ll need a way to keep warm in the winter. A way to stay cool in the summer. Home are built much differently these days than they were 30 years ago based around certain assumptions and completely reliant on outside infrastructure. A means to clean water is critical and often completely misunderstood. A means to medicine. A knowledge to put all this to use. And people. This stuff all matters far more than the simplistic paradigm of ‘I got a room fulla guns…‘ because even though those are important too, they’re tools, just like anything else.

Go out this weekend and find a community market or a yardsale. If you can’t find that, go to a thrift shop. Browse around, find old stuff, and think outside the box as to how you’ll put it to good use. Find locally made food, talk to the person producing it. Get their phone number. Make friends. Meet a local fabricator, mechanic, or small engine specialist. Find out what they like to do. Think about how you’d keep them on your side should Variable-X happen.

Do not lose sight of the very real dangers facing civilization. Use your time wisely. Most importantly, rediscover the sense of community we’ve lost among the advent of technology.