Too many people think of survival along the OMG! We’re all gonna DIE! variety, but really, survival is about getting through each day as comfortably and well as you can.
Do you check the weather before you leave home? If it might rain, do you grab an umbrella? That’s survival.
If it’s cold, do you dress in layers with a coat, hat, gloves, scarf? That’s survival.
Do you bring a few extra dollars in case you get stranded or want an extra coffee? That’s preparedness.
If you have to wait in line a long time or have a long wait between meetings, do you toss in some granola bars and a book to read during your waits? That’s survival.
Do you have a good spare tire, with the tire wrench and jack, in your car? That’s survival.
Do you check MapQuest before you set out to someplace new, and take a print-out of the map with you? That’s survival.
We are all survivalists. We just don’t all call ourselves that. Everything we do to make our lives better, more comfortable, happier, safer is a step in survival. Most people survive haphazardly because our world is now so safe it’s possible to do that, and has been for more than 50 years. There are people who’ve grown up never consciously aware that their actions were actions of survival. They just thought it was “growing up, getting a job, paying bills” life. They didn’t plan for their lives to happen as they did, they just happened that way because it was the easiest course to take.
Things aren’t quite so cut and dried right now. Now, we need to pause, look at our lives, and see how what we’ve done has led us to the point where we are now – and what we need to do, based on our past, to get where we want to be. If that “want to be” is simply to stay employed, stay housed, stay healthy, and have food to eat, it may take a bit more planning than it used to.
Walking in to the grocery store brings home just how things have changed. There are empty shelves, devoid of product. Not just a thin layer of product – none at all. Scarcity is coming not because things are scarce, but because the methods of bringing those items to us is having problems. The infrastructure of our society, upon which we’ve relied for so long we forgot about it, is in desperate need of repair and bolstering.
This isn’t something we as individuals can do by ourselves. Our input into this is selecting good political representatives who know what the problems are and have some idea of how to fix it, willing to listen to us, do the research we lack the time to do, and then speak for us in getting things done. Who we pick for our elected employees is critically important because those are the people who help shape the frame in which we live day to day. Voting is the most important thing we can do for our survival in the long term. Look carefully at the candidates. Pick wisely. Communicate with them so they know what you think and how you feel. Once we select our elected employees, we have to supervise them, or they will go off and do stupid things, just like any other unsupervised employee.
I know, many people claim they don’t have time to vote, time to pay attention to the issues, time to get involved in politics. But honestly? Politics is key to our survival – as individuals, as a communities, as a nation. Politics is the one thing we cannot let slide, and we have. How many of us know the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the major Supreme Court decisions that have changed our society? How many of us know how a bill becomes a law? How many of us even know our local municipal laws? These laws determine our survivability just as much as grabbing an umbrella or printing out maps from MapQuest.
It doesn’t take long to familiarize ourselves with the important things, and there aren’t that many legislators we need to supervise – our local city-level elected employees, our state Representative, our 2 state Senators on a federal level, and on a local level, our precinct or district representatives. That’s it, somewhere around a dozen people with whom we need to communicate and track – and most of it can be done on line, conveniently from our own homes or offices or the public library.
Vote Smart is a good tool for finding out who your elected employees are, and some of the important issues in your area. Your state government pages will give you more, as well as your city government pages. Bookmark them and plan a time to check them regularly. That way, with minimal fuss, you’ll be informed. You can send almost all of them email anymore – how easy is that? You can govern during commercials or while waiting for pages to load or while chatting with friends online. That will take hardly any time from your busy day - multi-tasking at its best - and most useful.
So, like the umbrella or dressing in layers or packing a granola bar, you can act upon basic, simple survival needs with a few clicks of your mouse and reading a few web pages. This is a survival tool we all need to remember to use monthly. That’s right. Once a month, just check up on your very own elected employees. Every now and then, go vote. Being civicly involved is simple and quick now.