Common Sense and Self Reliance

Eh, I’m miffed by people in general again.  Reading up on the nasty storm that whacked the east coast (how can one avoid it) and the reports of people “shopping by flashlight and cellphone screen light”.  Really?  You all knew this storm was coming and you knew you could be out of power for an extended time and you weren’t intelligent enough to prepare ahead of time?  Geez, even an apartment dweller can buy a $25 coleman camp stove and a couple $3 bottles of camp fuel for it!  It cooks just like that gas stove you never use.

“Clearly, the challenges our city faces in the coming days are enormous,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said as officials warned that power might not be back until the weekend for hundreds of thousands of people accustomed to a life carried by subway, lit by skyline and powered by 24-hour deli.

What’s that old saying, ah yes- those that refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  How did we allow ourselves to become so complacent?  Seriously, being so completely dependent on outside influence to live is not freedom.   

The eastern seaboard is densely populated.  One does not have to be very smart to know this simple fact.  So, the damage from a supercell storm seems to be so much more devastating than one that hits somewhere in the midwest.  But, really, is it so much more than somewhere else where only 200 people get wiped out?  Some fly over state gets hammered with 3 or 4 tornadoes and farm crops get wiped out, a couple dozen houses get flattened.  You see a couple pictures on the news and then not another word.  Those people lost everything they had and those crops lost are food the people in those densely populated areas eat with.  Nobody hears about how those folks recovered.  People in the cities just whine about higher food costs while they continue to buy their meals one day at a time.

It’s all an illusion.  It doesn’t matter if it costs $1.00 or $1,000,000.00.  All that really matters is what a person does because of it.  Do you continue to be a slave to society, buy your food one day at a time, rely on others around you or do you decide to take control of what happens to you and do more to rely on yourself?

Not doing anything at all to be even the slightest bit self reliant is willingly signing up to be a slave.  You have given away your freedom to be controlled by society and any outside forces that come along.  You are at the mercy of everything you have chosen to not do anything about.  Not like you really could do anything in the first place.

All those millions of people think they are free.  They say “we do whatever we want to, we can get a meal 24 hours a day, take a cab or a train to anywhere we want to go, party all night…”  oh, wait, the subway is flooded, you might have to share a cab with a stranger and the power is going to be gone for an extended period of time.  Now what?  You shop by cellphone screen for foods you would never have eaten before to take home and cook on a stove you’ve never used before.  How many people will learn that the clickers on the stove are electric only to not have matches or a lighter to light the burner?

Well, the bubble has burst, welcome to reality.