Monthly Archives: April 2020

Maslow’s hierarchy and Self-Reliance

Posted on by

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.

Preparedness gap: Water

Posted on by

“But when it comes to slaughter   
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.”
– Rudyard Kipling, “Gunga Din”

A little over a year ago we got a text from our son at the high school basketball game: the local news was reporting that our water supply was contaminated and the city was instructing residents not to drink any of it until further notice. It turned out at one of the pumping stations the machinery that added fluoride to our water had malfunctioned and dumped a whole bunch of it into our water system. That, in turn, may have stripped the inner layer of the pipes, putting potentially dangerous levels of metals in the water. All residents in the affected area (which included us) were not to drink the water under any circumstances until further notice.

As it turned out they had the problem corrected within a couple days, but in the mean time we became aware of just how much water we use–and just how little we had stored. We had three 5-gallon containers to go around for five people and four pets. Had it gone on a couple days more we would have been in trouble.

We vowed then to get more serious about water storage–but we never got around to it. Fast forward a year, and the COVID-19 outbreak came along and revealed more deficiencies in our emergency preparations. Remembering our experience the year before, water storage got moved to the top of the list. We decided to use our government stimulus check to start improving our circumstances.

After some research and some calculations we ordered enough containers to put us in a much better position should water ever become temporarily scarce again. They should be arriving in a couple weeks. By then I hope to have a few things reorganized around the house so that we’ll have places to put all that water.

When we get everything settled I’ll post a review. My brother and I were discussing water storage a week or two ago, and he’s going a different route with his. Perhaps I’ll solicit him for feedback as well.

It’ll be a relief to have that particular deficiency resolved. Water is not something you want to be without. I don’t want to be lickin’ anyone’s bloomin’ boots, thank you.

Entropy on the homefront

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

The Grand Unified Theory of Self-Reliance

Posted on by

Ten years ago I seemed to be looking for some way to identify and link all aspects of self-reliance into…what, exactly? I’m not sure what I was thinking way back then. Some amazing infographic? Some impressive looking model? Was I planning to write a book on the subject? A competing tome to Thoreau’s Walden? I don’t remember any more.

But I’m not sure it matters. While I may not be that much more self reliant now than I was ten years ago, I’ve learned a few things. One of those things is that sometimes looking at the entirety of a problem only serves to stress people out. There is nothing simple about self-reliance, no matter what I may choose to call my blog.

The important thing with self-reliance, as with many other useful endeavors, is to start. Just pick someplace and start there. As I mentioned the other day, my return to pursuing self-reliance began a year and a half ago when I decided to gain better control over my money. It wasn’t a conscious effort toward self-reliance; I just wanted to see if I could find more money in my budget. I identified a pain point and started there.

That, I think, is the key. It’s fine to look at the whole picture and recognize your ultimate goal, but you can’t start everywhere at once. It’s much better to start with what’s bugging you most right now. What’s the one thing that you wish you could fix. Start there, and ask yourself, “What do I need to do to become more self reliant in this one area?”

That exercise may lead you somewhere else first, but at least you’ll know why. For example, if your goal is to become more self sufficient in food storage you may look at that more closely and realize you don’t have the money to build that up as quickly as you want. Perhaps you may want to look at your budget first. That may lead you to determine what you really need is a better job, and to get that you need to work on your networking skills. It doesn’t matter where you end up, so long as you determine a single place to start, a single goal to pursue.

So yes, I imagine sooner or later I’ll sit down and hammer out all the areas I feel are part of self-reliance and share that with you all. But for all that, this blog is about simple self-reliance. It’s about making it all manageable, about getting there one step at a time. In reality self-reliance isn’t binary. You don’t suddenly hit a point where you are now officially self reliant. It’s a continuum, an incremental process. You steadily work at becoming more self reliant than you were before. It’s as simple as making sure you have a full month of toilet paper next time there’s a run on the stores instead of being caught with only a few rolls left. It’s making sure you have enough savings to cover your next car maintenance bill instead of having to put it on the credit card and pay it off over the next few months.

It’s not about reaching a point where you can say, “There’s nothing I can’t handle now.” It’s about being able to say, “If X happens I think I’ll be okay. I’ll have enough cushion to be able to avoid panic while I figure out how to overcome this.”

And that’s the other thing about self-reliance: what I have to do to achieve it may look different from what you need to do. The problems I need to plan for may be entirely different from what keeps you up at night. Up here in Utah it’s safe to say I don’t need to have a plan for hurricanes. Down in Florida you probably don’t have to worry about your pipes freezing if your power goes out in the middle of winter. There’s no single solution to self-reliance, at least not at the detail level.

Ultimately I don’t think I can come up with one Grand Unified Theory of Self-reliance. I’m always going to miss something simply because my perspective is limited. I may be able to take into consideration every possible scenario in the United States, but there will always be something I have no experience with, such as locust swarms in Kenya or poisonous snakes in the dunny in Australia.

I think all I can really do is show you what my goals are and invite you along for the journey of getting there. I can try to provide a place where we can share ideas and learn from one another. If this helps someone else along the way it’ll be worth it.

Dusting off the old blog

Posted on by

I spent some time reading through my old posts here. What a walk down memory lane, for better and worse. So much has changed in ten years. For example:

  • A majority of the blogs and resources I cited and linked to are no more. So much information lost. So much experience and perspective gone. And my efforts to not borrow too much from anyone, but rather refer readers to those sites instead has left my own blog largely useless. Perhaps I should have summarized and quoted more, just in case. Lesson learned, I suppose.
  • My sister, aka TaxiDriverMom, passed away from cancer a few years ago. I had forgotten she’d had a blog–and that I’d guest posted on it. Not all walks down memory lane are cheerful ones.
  • I cringe a little now at my bold declaration, upon setting out on my short-lived consulting career, that I was now liberated and would never go back to corporate America again. Though I’m technically a successful entrepreneur, I’ve been entrenched in corporate America for the past eight years.
  • My little kids have grown. My oldest is in Canada, living on her own, and studying concept art. And I failed to buy her a basic tool set when she left, though mostly because the dormitory she lives in doesn’t give her much chance to need them, but also because space in her luggage was at a premium. Perhaps when she graduates or moves into her first full apartment situation.
  • My business (or rather, my fourth attempt at a business), VIP Gamestore, will turn ten years old this year. I’m proud of what my partners and I started, even though I’m more of a silent partner these days. The residual income has been a real blessing through the years.
  • Our house here in Sandy, Utah, hasn’t proven to be as great for storage as I’d hoped, even after I built another shed. The shed is my best one yet, however.

One of the main impressions I came away with was that I was very unfocused and hesitant to offer any personal experience on the topic. It was a discussion of theory, of concept, but I turned to everyone else for substance. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I do hope to have some substance of my own to add now.

Let’s do the timewarp again

Posted on by

Holy moley, where has the time gone? Today I got a little curious and decided to take a look at just what I have on my Simple Self Reliance Facebook page. There were a bunch of links to content on a website. I had honestly forgotten that Simple Self Reliance had once been a blog. I had forgotten that I had once cared deeply about self reliance.

Thing is, I still do. I didn’t for a while–not so much, at least. Moving to Utah opened a whole new chapter in my life that pulled me off in different directions. And here I am now, nine years later, caring deeply about self reliance again.

Back then self reliance was more about weathering the financial storms of life. The biggest problem I had faced to that point was regular bouts of unemployment. When we moved to Utah I likely thought that problem was behind me for a while. I also resurrected a writing career I had talked myself out of in college, and my blogging attention went in another direction on a different blog.

More importantly I largely forgot about self reliance. In spite of a new job that paid more we never seemed to have the money to put into building up our food storage and getting other emergency items together. The kids were getting older and more expensive (teenagers do more than just eat a lot!), and in spite of what they told me at the time, the cost of living is considerably higher in Salt Lake City than in Boise. We’ve been getting by okay, but perhaps we’ve been too comfortable.

Whatever the reason, self reliance has not been foremost on my mind.

That has been changing, however. Around a year and a half ago I began to realize I was losing control of my finances. Nothing serious, mind you, but I found I was only tracking our expenses, not really monitoring them, and not doing anything to improve our financial situation. I’d been investing in my 401K at work, but my over-all financial goals had largely fallen by the wayside. A lot of unnecessary things had crept into our budget.

A little over a year ago a pumping station in our city water network malfunctioned and dumped some chemicals into our water supply at hazardous levels. We were unable to drink water from the sink for over two days while they sorted out the problem. We had some water storage, but we suddenly had to wonder if we had enough–and if it was still good.

For the past several years our neighborhood electrical grid has been unstable, leaving us without electricity for five or more hours at a time, and usually during prime electricity-usage hours. We had plenty of light, but dinners (we have an electric stove) were a bit of a struggle. Once my wife had to go out to find food from a restaurant outside the blackout area which, being vegans, was tricky to find.

Then, of course, 2020 arrived in all its horrific glory. Last October I was informed my job with the bank would end at the beginning of the year. My most recent round of unemployment was, quite fortunately, also my shortest. The day after my job ended I got a job offer, and I started work a week and a half later.

The Coronavirus caught us a little off guard. We’ve generally been pretty good about keeping a few weeks or months ahead on our food supply, but when our state started implementing restrictions the timing was poor. The panic-buying and hoarding began while we were at a low point in our purchasing cycle. We’ve been okay, but we’ve had to carefully monitor our usage on a few things.

In the middle of all this our metropolitan area experienced a 5.4 scale earthquake. Though we live more than 15 miles from the epicenter and only felt the initial quake and one of the many aftershocks, it was a wake-up call all its own. We live next to a major fault line. We might not be so lucky the next time.

The last week or so I’ve been getting very serious about emergency preparedness. My wife and I have made a goal that we will never be so unprepared again. Finding this blog just now seems too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. It seems like a good time to start writing again, to capture our journey as we get serious about self reliance once again.