Crisis Management 101 in an Irrational Society

When people are afraid, they often will falsely believe that someone or something else will make it all better for them. “Someone is coming to rescue me” is the unarticulated emotion even many grown adults will feel.

They revert to a context of a parent telling a frightened five-year-old, “There, there it will be all right”. We all have an inner child of some kind inside of us, in that we were all once children and there are memories and programming (largely subconscious) from that much earlier time. The kind of adults we are, or the way our inner child asserts itself, will vary widely from person to person.

It’s important to recognize that if you have this experience, of feeling frightened or unsure for a moment, it’s perfectly OK. Maybe it will flash through your head that SOMEONE is going to tell you what to do so you can momentarily escape the responsibility of choice or judgment. I know people for whom this would NEVER occur, but there are many more who have this experience all the time. Especially when the media and self-serving authority figures are telling us that it is, in effect, the end of the world and you must let them take over.

But none of this “inner child yearning” has anything to do with reality.

If you had the kind of parent who would reassure you when you were frightened and helpless, then you now must understand that life isn’t like that. It wasn’t like that for your mommy or daddy when he or she reassured you. You know that, even without a crisis.

Survival belongs to those who most competently and efficaciously ensure their own well-being. Sometimes that includes the help of others, or people working in mutual cooperation, of course. But you don’t save yourself just because you collaborate with someone else. That collaboration, just like any individual effort, must be competent. Otherwise, your efforts (joint or individual) will backfire, and you will suffer or even perish. You are not safer just because someone else is with you.

The last people who are going to rescue you are the types of people who go into politics or government as a career. I think if most people are honest, they will concede that they don’t trust the vast majority of persons elected to maintain or run any level of government. They are not all bad. But most of them are, especially on the national level. They are in charge of resources (trillions of dollars at the national level) that don’t belong to them. They gain these resources via coercion (taxation), intimidation, the exercise of pull and brazen deception. And NONE of them — even the OK or pretty good ones, if they exist — have any real accountability other than to their own bureaucracy and their OWN pressure group/donor constituency — which doesn’t necessarily include YOU. Maybe you will find a savior in your life, but it will never be these people in D.C. or your state capital.

Whether you live on a primitive island or in a complex twenty-first century technological society, certain principles remain intact and universal. One of those principles is that nobody is coming to rescue you. If you’re to survive, you have to THINK and ACT for yourself. Be as competent, accurate and efficacious as you can. Look to others (if you can find them) who deserve your trust and respect, and who have earned it by showing they’re good in a crisis, or perhaps are simply competent at everyday life.

But look to yourself first and most of all. You are all you’ve got, for sure, and you’re the only one who will be by your side 24/7 until the moment you die.

Do NOT believe everything you hear. When facts don’t square with what you’re told, remember that facts are primary and the motivation of the people telling you what you must do will not always be YOUR motivation.

People who thrive or even just survive in life recognize all of what I’m saying in normal, everyday life. It applies in a crisis too. The rules don’t change. Be safe, but more importantly: Be smart.

 

 

 

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