Category Archives: Commentary

Personal posts on general, administrative, or non-related topics.

Is college headed online?

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Scott Galloway, a Silicon Valley prognosticator with a respectable track record is predicting the Cornavirus and resulting stop-gap measures of moving education online is going to become the disruption that changes the university system forever, with tech companies partnering with colleges to become hybrid, virtual campuses. In an interview with James D. Walsh of New York Magazine he had this to say:

Colleges and universities are scrambling to figure out what to do next year if students can’t come back to campus. Half the schools have pushed back their May 1 deadlines for accepting seats. What do you expect to happen over the next month?

There’s a recognition that education — the value, the price, the product — has fundamentally shifted. The value of education has been substantially degraded. There’s the education certification and then there’s the experience part of college. The experience part of it is down to zero, and the education part has been dramatically reduced. You get a degree that, over time, will be reduced in value as we realize it’s not the same to be a graduate of a liberal-arts college if you never went to campus. You can see already how students and their parents are responding.

At universities, we’re having constant meetings, and we’ve all adopted this narrative of “This is unprecedented, and we’re in this together,” which is Latin for “We’re not lowering our prices, bitches.” Universities are still in a period of consensual hallucination with each saying, “We’re going to maintain these prices for what has become, overnight, a dramatically less compelling product offering.”

In fact, the coronavirus is forcing people to take a hard look at that $51,000 tuition they’re spending. Even wealthy people just can’t swallow the jagged pill of tuition if it doesn’t involve getting to send their kids away for four years. It’s like, “Wait, my kid’s going to be home most of the year? Staring at a computer screen?” There’s this horrific awakening being delivered via Zoom of just how substandard and overpriced education is at every level. I can’t tell you the number of people who have asked me, “Should my kid consider taking a gap year?”

…

Ultimately, universities are going to partner with companies to help them expand. I think that partnership will look something like MIT and Google partnering. Microsoft and Berkeley. Big-tech companies are about to enter education and health care in a big way, not because they want to but because they have to.

Let’s look at Apple. It does something like $250 billion a year in revenue. Apple has to convince its stockholders that its stock price will double in five years, otherwise its stockholders will go buy Salesforce or Zoom or some other stock. Apple doesn’t need to double revenue to double its stock price, but it needs to increase it by 60 or 80 percent. That means, in the next five years, Apple probably needs to increase its revenue base by $150 billion. To do this, you have to go big-game hunting. You can’t feed a city raising squirrels. Those big-tech companies have to turn their eyes to new prey, the list of which gets pretty short pretty fast if you look at how big these industries need to be in that weight class. Things like automobiles. They’ll be in the brains of automobiles, but they don’t want to be in the business of manufacturing automobiles because it’s a shitty, low-margin business. The rest of the list is government, defense, education, and health care. People ask if big tech wants to get into education and health care, and I say no, they have to get into education and health care. They have no choice.

There’s a certain amount of sense in what he’s telling us. American universities have begun to lose sight of their original purpose: to dispense knowledge. They’ve become factories for wholesale social change, and in the process have added so much overhead to their cost structures that the price of their knowledge-offering has increased exponentially while the actual value grows increasingly questionable. And now the Coronavirus has shown students that not only is the knowledge product not worth the cost, but the online experience has diminished it even further. It seems doubtful that universities will be able to continue charging $50,000+ a year for Zoom classes. Where they once derided online universities such as University of Phoenix (my MBA alma mater) they may find themselves studying their models, perhaps even purchasing them outright.

However, if such a model is to work there will first come a major upheaval. Today’s teachers are ill-prepared for the online classroom. I’ve been watching as my sons have struggled with on-line school from their local high school. The quality and intensity of the assignments have diminished, while the teachers largely have retreated to a consulting role, not even attempting to teach the subject matter in even a virtual classroom setting (with the interesting exception of their release-time religious studies teacher). One son is struggling mightily to complete the two classes most critical to his future career plans because the teacher had largely left them on their own.

I don’t doubt there are teachers who can adapt, improvise and overcome, and perhaps even thrive in this new model, especially at the college level. As I mentioned above, I earned my post-graduate degree in a hybrid setting, long before video conferencing software became cheap and ubiquitous, and we were able to make it work. But we were all working professionals who had outgrown the need for classroom learning. We knew how to learn. This model may not work so well for K-12 education, and I suspect it won’t be applied any time soon.

The university system, however, is ripe for it. The real question is whether universities will be willing to give up their role as engines of social change and retreat back to mere education. Or will the corporate partners assist them in policing the minds of their students more efficiently than ever before? We may be on the verge of a fundamental ground-shift, and only time will tell if it was for better or worse.

Trailblazers and Trail Maintainers

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I discovered the website “The Art of Manliness” several years ago and enjoy dropping by now and then to see what they have to say. While much of it, obviously, is aimed at men, there’s a lot of it that is applicable to anyone, like a recent post in their “Sunday Fireside” series, titled “Blessed Are the Trail Maintainers.” It’s short, but here’s the most relevant section:

It is easier and sexier to start things, because novelty generates a neurochemical bloom of involuntary motivation. It is harder to sustain things when this cognitive cocktail dissipates — when the thrill of pursuit dulls into the mundanity of upkeep.

But the difficulty, the rarity – the chosen intentionality – of perpetuation makes the task all the more worthy, and valuable.

Ever seeking the not-yet-possessed, without caring for the already-obtained, is like drilling a mine that never breaks the earth’s surface; building a skyscraper that never rises above the ground floor; writing a story that never progresses beyond the introduction.

Brett & Kate McKay

It definitely feels satisfying to accomplish something new. It’s much less so when it’s something you finished some time ago–and still have to keep looking after it. It’s satisfying having 72-hour kits prepared for our entire family. It’s…less fun going through them every year to make sure the food hasn’t expired, the spare clothing still fits, nothing has leaked, etc. It’s nice having a well-tended yard, but not so fun keeping it that way.

And yet maintaining what you have is the essence of self-reliance. It’s keeping the tools sharp. It’s re-balancing your 401K. It’s rotating your food storage. It’s cleaning the garage. It’s identifying the things you no longer use and getting them to someone who will use them or getting rid of them. It’s not just noticing that the stopper that shunts the water from your bathtub faucet to the shower head is getting old, but actually making a to-do item to replace it… (Speaking of which… one moment, please! Okay, done!) …and then following through (Oh.).

Self-reliance can be sexy. I’m still rather proud of my nice new water storage stack. But that will fade. And when it comes time to check it and replace it it probably won’t be so fun. Becoming self-reliant may be sexy, but remaining self-reliant will likely become work. But it’s the maintaining that matters. What good is having food storage if, when you really need it, the flour is full of weevil, or you find moisture has gotten to your cans and rusted some of them through? What good is learning how to change your own oil if you never do? Or building a new fence and letting it fall into disrepair?

Everyone loves a trailblazer. But it’s the trail maintainers who keep the trail worth taking.

COVID Confusion

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I found this in our local monthly/marketing newspaper in a humor piece of things the author learned from social media during the COVID-19 quarantine:

In effort not to get sick we should eat well, but we should not go out to get healthy fresh food when we run out and eat whatever pre-packaged food we have on hand instead. However, we should order out at our local restaurants to help keep them in business. Then it’s okay to go out to pick up the food. Your food might be prepared by someone sick that doesn’t know they are sick, but that’s okay if you pay by credit card and take the food out of the container. However, you should avoid going to the grocery store at all costs because you might get sick.

Joani Taylor, “The Social Media Scandal – What I Learned During Quarantine”, Sandy City Journal

If there is anyone left out there who still believes there’s a perfect response to a pandemic, especially one where the details about the virus aren’t really known…well, they’re probably on social media telling the rest of us what we should be doing. I’ve been fortunate enough to live in a state that took a somewhat moderate approach, while managing to keep the death rate fairly low, but the nags and scolds have been everywhere all the same.

Sure, I get it. People are scared, and fear makes people thrash about desperately in search of some way to feel in control. For many people that means lecturing everyone else. But the rest of us, when faced with conflicting information, reach a point where we just have to decide for ourselves which advice we can keep and what risks we are willing to take. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned (or re-learned) from all of this:

  • Preparation buys time. We were not as prepared as we wish we’d been, but we still had at least several weeks worth of all essential items. Even though we weren’t sure how long our toilet paper supply would last, we had enough to hang in there until more started appearing. We didn’t need to panic, spend exorbitant amounts of money to secure the essentials, and could put off even shopping for groceries until things calmed down.
  • People don’t want or can’t handle fresh. When we did go shopping we had no trouble finding fresh fruits and vegetables. Do people just not buy the more perishable items in an emergency? It’s not like we were without power. Veggies keep for weeks in the fridge. Or do people just not know how to prepare fruits and vegetables anymore? Not that I’m complaining. We’ve been able to eat healthy while everyone else, from the look of the store shelves, are existing on flour, pasta and beans.
  • Savings are essential. I am one of the fortunate people who can work from home, even if it’s not my preferred way to work. But even I had been furloughed or laid off we would have had savings to get through this.
  • Flexibility and resilience help. When things like this happen we can sit back and complain over every inconvenience or difficulty, or we can relax, take a deep breath (or two or three), and deal with everything one step at a time. This is easier to do if you’re not worried about basic survival.
  • Cut everyone some slack, including yourself. I’ve had to continually remind myself that people are experiencing widely varying levels of stress right now. On the other hand, if there were people whose stress was causing me stress, I’m not obligated to keep absorbing their stress. There are some where I hit the “social media snooze button” so I wouldn’t have to deal with them until things calm down again. For the most part people have been keeping things on an even keel, and when they aren’t I would try to be kind and remember where they’re coming from.
  • Even introverts need people. While introverts across the world have been cheering about this being the moment they were born for, the truth is, introversion does not mean we don’t need anyone else. Introversion/Extroversion is more a matter of where we get our energy from. Extroverts get their energy from being with others. Introverts get theirs from being somewhat isolated and quiet. We can enjoy social interactions, and even get some energy from particularly enjoyable ones, but most drain energy from us, and sooner or later we need to get away and recharge. Being shut up at home hasn’t been particularly difficult for me, but after a couple weeks I found myself reaching out to people much more than I usually do. I miss the depth, breadth and variety of my normal interactions.
  • Focus on what you can do. This crisis quickly revealed where our family is not as prepared as we should be. The problem is that some of that just can’t–and perhaps shouldn’t–be fixed right now. We found we were least prepared in our supplies of paper products, baking supplies, and a few other food categories. And yet if we’ve learned anything about shortages, it’s that running out and stocking up just make things worse for everyone, so we’ve had to resist that urge. Instead, we identified some things we can procure right now, and we’ve focused on that. We have a much better water storage now, and we’re better prepared for the next power outage (and in our area, there will be one). I feel satisfaction and accomplishment at having done something useful, even if I can’t solve all of the problem just yet.
  • Have a plan for the rest. As I said above, there are some preparedness deficiencies we can’t fix yet. But I’ve learned from sad experience that if I don’t have a plan in place for when we get back to normal-enough I’ll likely forget to do anything at all. I can take this time now to at least come up with a plan so that I know the next steps to take once we can take them.
  • It’s difficult to be prepared for everything. I’ve been a homeowner for over twenty years. In this part of the world we have to be on guard against mice. Right before our state went into quarantine we discovered something entirely new: rats. Mice we could have dealt with. Nothing we had worked on rats. And even after some online research and a curbside pickup purchase it took a long time to figure out what would work.

I could probably go on, but I’m hearing too many heads hitting keyboards already, so I’l spare you. This quarantine experience has certainly given us a lot to think about, and a lot of time in which to think about it. Right now the biggest question we should all ask is, “What do I do about it?” What are we going to change as a result of our experiences? Set a goal, make a plan, and get it done.

Diogenes and self-reliance

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The story is told of Alexander the Great visiting Diogenes and finding the philosopher laying in the sun. Alexander approached him and asked him if he could anything for him. Diogenes replied, “Yes, stand a little out of my sun.”

Kyle Eschenroeder examines this exchange in more detail and analyzes what Diogenes tells us about self-reliance in his article, “A Man’s Guide to Self-Reliance” from The Art of Manliness website.

Diogenes’ simple, ascetic lifestyle may seem to exemplify self-reliance, but these externals are not its essence.

Rather, self-reliance is a mindset, an approach to life that can be adopted whether you live in a wilderness cabin or a “little box” in the suburbs. Self-reliance is about living a life in which you make decisions and opinions with primary respect to your own experience of the world. You trust yourself. You’re true to yourself.

This doesn’t mean living in a void, it just means that we’re conscious about our relationship to the world and other people. It’s not rejecting external advice outright, but trusting ourselves enough to sift through which advice is worthy. We’re aware of the agendas of others, and don’t let them sway us from our self-determined path. Self-reliance doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting all established customs and values, it just means experimenting with them so we know if they work for us. It’s putting stock in our inner wisdom.

There’s a lot to unpack in this, but the last paragraph is especially of interest to me, especially these two lines: “It’s not rejecting external advice outright, but trusting ourselves enough to sift through which advice is worthy. We’re aware of the agendas of others, and don’t let them sway us from our self-determined path.” Put simply, we need to think for ourselves.

Far too often these days we are expected to buy into an ideology and follow it to the exclusion of all else. If we relate with an identity group we must think a certain way to remain in step with our fellows. Our news media, where once they would simply report the facts and let us decide what those facts mean, increasingly tells us what to think of those facts as well. Anyone who disagrees needs to be beaten down. We get our information from headlines and proceed as if we know and understand not just the details, but the nuance.

But how can we? Why should we? Why should we blindly accept another person’s “truth?”

The short answer is, “We shouldn’t.” We need to question, to seek to see as broad a perspective as we can, to measure what we’re being told against what we have learned through our own experience. We need to seek to verify, not just accept. We have far too many examples of history where terrible wrongs were committed under the cover of “I was just following orders,” or “It didn’t want to go against the crowd.” If we are to be judged and sentenced we should at least be so for our own beliefs, not for someone else’s.

Intellectual self-reliance is not an easy path. The world is a complex place, and it takes time and effort to sort through that complexity. But while we need to question, we can’t afford to continually question everything. We need some solid ground to stand on before we can move forward. We should be willing to adjust as we discover new information and encounter new perspectives, but be prepared to stand firm on our own foundation when a choice must be made.

Perhaps most importantly, even when we come to reject a particular philosophy or ideology, we need to resist the easy temptation of “that which we cannot believe we must despise, must hate.” We can oppose, but even when our own thinking in solid we can still learn much about ourselves and our beliefs through associations with those with whom we disagree. Someone with whom we can disagree, yet still respect and listen to, is invaluable in this world. It’s far too easy these days to dismiss anyone who thinks differently, but such intellectual reactionism is as wrong and dangerous as those who follow the herd. From Eschenroeder again:

In fact, there may never have been a time when developing this type of self-reliance has been more important. We’re over-politicized and polarized. Advertisements are creeping further and further into our content, making them less obvious. The Internet has given us two or two-thousand sides to every story. Social media feeds allow our peers to weigh in on our every decision. The comment section of a blog post allows us to see what other people thought of an article before we’ve formed our own opinion. It’s increasingly difficult to live a life that is inner-directed rather than other-directed.

In order to operate effectively in this kind of autonomy-sapping environment, developing a strong sense of self-reliance is crucial.

To be truly self-reliant may mean we not only stand firm, but that we stand apart. To follow the crowd too closely, however well-intentioned, is to invite disaster. As anyone in a mob or riot or Black-Friday frenzy understands, if you stand in the middle of any crowd it can be extremely difficult to escape before they run headlong off the cliff. Keep an intellectual distance, and trust in yourself to decide what is best for you.

To carry or not to carry (mobile phones)?

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The other morning I had a dream. My wife and I were out walking our dog when we saw a family playing together in their front yard. I’m not sure if we knew these people or not, but we decided to sit down on the side of the sidewalk (which was at the top of their lot, dropping quickly down toward their house).

Suddenly one of their children came running up to us and told us their parents wanted us to come hide with them quickly, because something bad was going to happen. This being a dream we quickly complied, and we ended up hiding in one of their storage rooms–and suddenly it was dark outside. We could see police lights flashing outside, and there was some sort of commotion, including gunshots.

I decided to see what was happening and crept over to the window to peek out. I could see a man just out side the window, and I think he was armed. I ducked back down again, afraid he might have seen me. At that point I woke up, and I lay in bed contemplating the dream in one of those half-asleep states where thought is conscious, but not entirely rational. My biggest concern about the dream was that we hadn’t taken a cellphone with us, and we had no way of calling our boys to tell them not to come looking for us and put themselves in danger.

My wife and I have a love-hate affair with technology. I work in IT, but I’m not a gadget guy like so many of my peers. My wife is Finnish, but in spite of her people practically inventing the cellphone, she doesn’t like using them, especially since they became portable time-wasters. So unlike most people, we look for opportunities to leave our gadgets behind. We don’t want to be connected 24/7/365. People have become too dependent on instant communication, and assume everyone should respond immediately to everything and anyone. They can do without us for half an hour.

And yet as the dream pointed out, there are times when communication is critical. We have had several dogs during our marriage, all of them rescues, and all of them older. My wife usually walks them in the morning while I’m getting ready for work, and there have been several times through the years when something has happened and, for various reasons, it becomes questionable if the dog will make it back home.

As a result we’ve many times discussed the necessity of taking a cell phone with her so she can call me for help. We agree it would be a good idea, but she never does.

Similarly, one several occasions we’ve been out walking and encountered a stray. Many times they have collars with a phone number. It would be handy if we had our phones to just call the owners then and there and spare them and us some worry. But we never do.

And there are Saturdays when I spend most of the day outside working on this or that. Sometimes I keep my phone with me, which comes in handy when my wife wants to call me to lunch. Other times I leave it in the house all day and find hours later that someone needed to contact me.

As much as I hate to say it, we would probably be much more self-reliant if we carried those darn phones with us. But the argument could also be made that not having to have them with us is also showing our self-reliance. Are we just being digital hermits, or is it sometimes a good thing to not have the world always a text away? Life is full of such dilemmas.

Spherical gardening?

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I’ve heard of Square-foot Gardening, but IKEA now has something new in mind: spherical gardening.

Read more at the link, but the idea is that the design ensures that all levels get air and light, and you can access it from both inside and out. Heck, it might even make a nice little reading nook or a meditation chamber. It certainly looks like the Yoda version of Darth Vader’s meditation chamber:

See the source image

I like the idea but, seeing as it’s made out of wood, how long before weather and water make it unstable? We’ll have to check back in a few years and see how well it works.

The plans are available online. If anyone out there has built and used one of these, please drop me a line and let me know how it works!

Maslow’s hierarchy and Self-Reliance

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I’ve been studying some of the material I have available about all the areas covered under the header of self-reliance. It started to fit into a mental diagram that, the further I went, looked more and more familiar. It finally dawned on me that I was describing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or at least the lower 60% of it.

FireflySixtySeven / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

For those of you unfamiliar or having forgotten, Abraham Maslow posits a hierarchy of needs or motivations any normal person needs in order to achieve their full potential. While his theory is open to debate, it’s hard to argue that a person can achieve true self esteem when they spend each day scrambling to obtain enough food or water to sustain them for another day. It’s difficult to provide any long-term safety for oneself if your health is so poor you can barely move.

Having made this connection I decided to redraw the pyramid from a different perspective, establishing the foundations of self-reliance. Not all areas of self-reliance are created equal. I’d argue that if you’re not already providing for your daily needs you stand little chance of providing for your more long term needs. Having an awesome exercise regimen when you have no water only means you’ll die that much more quickly.

Similarly, in comparing this hierarchy with Maslow’s, self-reliance can only take you so far. It may help with your relationships, but it is much less applicable to establishing self esteem or self actualization–though it can at least contribute. But helping you find your true purpose for living? That’s quite likely beyond the scope of self-reliance.

Philipp Guttmann re-conceptualized Maslow’s hierarchy as more of a continuum, which demonstrates some interesting ideas:

Most notable about this chart is the interplay between physiological needs and safety needs. While safety is never completely ignored, initially it doesn’t matter nearly so much as meeting our basic needs. It’s only as we start to regularly and predictably meet our physiological needs that we feel the need for safety more acutely. We’re starting to get somewhere in the daily struggle for survival, and we now worry that someone or something will come along and take it all away, dealing us a serious setback at best, ending our life at worst.

And as we begin to achieve more and more safety, we feel secure enough to start letting people into our lives, building relationships and collaborations that in turn increase our security, reducing the intensity of our need. Now, I’m not so sure we don’t start experiencing a need for companionship and belonging so far down the progression, but that’s just details. The hierarchy is not a empirical, data-driven model. It’s a psychological model of human development.

The underlying concepts, however, apply well to self-reliance. Anyone living day to day undoubtedly starts to desire the means to break out of that cycle. From the first cave man who killed a bison and ate like a king for a day or two only to have the rest of the carcass rot, to the average college student who waits tables to pay tuition, rent, and still eat, everyone longs to have enough of what they need to not have to wonder each day where their next meal is coming from or where they will sleep next. Self-reliance is knowing your needs are covered for a reasonable period of time, so that if something happens to threaten that, there’s time to set things right before your resources run out.

That’s not to say self-reliance is easy. It’s not. Nor is it automatic. Success in breaking out of the lowest level of needs into the second or third. On the contrary, as the above diagram shows, the intensity of a need may decrease, but it remains a need. Just because you’re making enough money to get you through a month with money left in your checking account doesn’t mean you’re not one pandemic or job-loss away from starvation.

That’s the position I nearly found myself in this year. I’m making good money. Our needs are covered every month. I have investments I can tap into if things get tight. But the COVID-19 showed me that sometimes it’s not the lack of money that’s the problem. If the stores are out of things because everyone is panic buying, money isn’t going to solve that problem so easily.

Self-reliance takes work, planning, and sustained effort. It takes focus, and there will never come a time when you can dust off your hands and say, “Done!” It’s not a task, it’s a way of life. But hopefully it’s a rewarding way of life.

Entropy on the homefront

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Over the weekend I participated in a long and noble tradition: cleaning the garage. If there was ever a clear example of entropy it’s the typical garage. You work hard for a day to get it clean, and for a day or two it looks great! Then some leaves blow in from outside. Some mud on one of your car tires falls off. Someone decides to store something there, but doesn’t know where to put it. Someone uses something from the garage, but doesn’t put it back where it came from.

Then one day you realize: This garage is a mess!

Actually, I’d say maybe 50% of all garages even hold vehicles anymore. Most of them get filled up with other things until the vehicles have to park outside. I have fought that battle all my homeownered life. Occasionally I fail. Like a few weeks ago when we decided to sell the kids’ bunk beds and I stored them in the garage until they sold. My car had to park outside. Or sometimes I’ll have a woodworking project in there that takes more than a day or two.

Anyway, it’s a miracle for a garage to stay clean and organized for more than a week. And so it is I’m holding my breath and crossing my fingers. This most recent cleaning job has to make it at least two weeks!

I’ll explain more later, but we recently made some large purchases toward our emergency preparedness, and one of them has to go in the garage, in the space I cleared this weekend specifically for that purpose. Will that space still be there when it arrives?

Tune in next week…sometime…when the purchase supposedly will arrive!

The other one is supposed to arrive today. If so, I may have an initial product review to post up next week after I take it for a test drive.

UPDATE: The FedEx guy has been a frequent visitor today! First he brought something for my son. Then he brought three boxes which I thought were the shipment I was expecting today (though with considerable assembly required). And less than an hour later he brought the shipment I was expecting today in a single box that most resembles what I was expecting. So, expect some posts next week, if not sooner!

Self-Reliance for city-folks

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The other day I googled (Okay, actually a Bing search) “self-reliance” just to see what I would find. As I mentioned previously many of the sites I used to link to are no longer in existence, and I wanted to know if anyone else is still out there. What I found was a little surprising, at least to me.

The self-reliance sites I found fell largely into two categories (besides the many, many sites dedicated to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay): Living off-grid (also, preppers), and food storage.

I was a little frustrated. Self-reliance is much more than food storage, and it by no means involves going off-grid, building a cabin in the middle of nowhere and living on whatever you grown, make or gather yourself. That’s what I would consider self sufficiency, and while I can understand the attraction, most of us will never get there, even if we wanted to.

So let me be clear: when I talk of self-reliance I mean the reliance on ones own powers, resources, etc. A self reliant person doesn’t have to be able to do everything for themselves, they merely need to be able to provide it by some means. It’s not the exclusion of others from our daily living, it’s being able to secure what we need without having to rely on the kindness and charity of others, even if the normal economy is interrupted.

It’s not necessarily being so well off and secure that we can exist indefinitely on our stockpiles of goods, but being able to weather any immediate interruptions in our normal “supply chain” long enough to find alternatives to sustain us for the longer term.

It’s not a matter of country-life versus city-life, though location can mitigate or exacerbate the challenges of self-reliance.

It’s more of a journey than a destination, and it’s different to each person. It’s not something where you can check off all the boxes and declare, “NOW I am self reliant.” Even the off-grid preppers, if you were to pick them up and deposit them in an entirely different part of the world, would likely no longer be self reliant, at least for a while until they acquired the new set of skills needed to survive in a new environment. No one will ever be perfectly self reliant, and no one needs to be.

And that is why site will never be the cure-all for anyone, either. I can’t tell you how to be self reliant. You define that for yourself based on your circumstances. I can tell you what most likely works for someone living in Sandy, Utah, USA, but even then I’m largely telling you what works for me. There will likely be a lot of commonality on the principles we follow, but the self reliant person in New York City’s solution is going to look quite a bit different from mine. And vice versa.

What I hope this site will become, however, is a community, a resource, a place where we can learn from each other, encourage each other, and improvise, adapt and overcome together as circumstances continue to evolve–and they will, as 2020 has already demonstrated in spades.

What this site will never be is a call to abandon city life and heed the call of the wild. While I love nature and the great outdoors, I really would prefer to live in suburbia where most of my comforts are already established and require only a little forethought and preparation to maintain. To be fair, most of the more prominent off-gridders are not advocating that for everyone, either. They’ve made a deliberate choice that works for them, and the bulk of their experience is useful in any circumstance. So This site will also not be a platform to diss the survivalists, preppers, off-gridders, or rural-lifers. To each his own, and to the degree that makes them happy.

After all, the truly self reliant needn’t feel threatened by what others peaceably do with their time and resources. We all have things to give and receive, to teach and to learn, from one another.

Takin’ care of business

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At the risk of getting political, I want to share this article. It’s not really about one person, who happens to be a politician, but a contrast in attitudes that are shaping our country. One is self-reliant. The other…is not.

May I suggest that the way of the Braskem America workers is the spirit that built America into the greatest and most prosperous country the world has ever known. It’s also the animating force by which our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond were able to survive and sometimes even thrive in a world far different and far harsher than our own.

The attitude of responsibility and hard work. Sleeves rolled up. Playing through the pain. Standing tall as one on whom others can lean in tough times. Whatever needs to be done — just turn me loose on it. I’ll get it done; I’ll figure it out. And keep your handout! I’ll work for my own. And I’ll outwork anyone here. I’m grateful for my job — and I’ll be running this company in five years.

– Adam Ford