Worse, not Better

How people react to disaster during and after the pole shift will be worse, not better, than today. How does anything change just because we're going to have yet one more disaster looming? All the things that control the priorities will still be in place, right up to and past the shift. The only things that will change at that time will be

- more injury and panic
- more looting and personal opportunism
- in some small cases resourcefulness and new leadership
- more starvation and illness

In sum, how does a community suddenly transform? This doesn't happen when we have tornadoes, or hurricanes, or quakes. So why would the shift change these communities? I think at that point, you're more likely to get me-1st-ism. What happened on the Titanic? What happens when you yell "fire" in the theater? People are distracted by their anxieties, and focus on personal safety and security. Very few people emerge during a crisis to greater maturity and judgment. Most go the other way. I won't argue that individual acts of courage occur, or immediately after a disaster that there are those who help others! I'm not saying it will be a zero. I'm saying community wide, the starvation and injury and panic will not be a factor for success in any community survival plan. The opposite. If food is to be grown, then you have x mature people saying "plant, don't eat the seed" and insisting that well padded folks live off their padding during this time. Is that going to be accepted by the majority who have gnawing stomachs?

My point is that if today, we have homeless and vast percentages of workers in the US without health insurance, and millions of kids in the US going to bed hungry every night, then if the folks in the communities who can rise to the occasion and make things go right can do it after the shift, then why are they not doing it now? You can't expect better cooperation and effectiveness. You have to expect worse! To assume the premise that it is a given that a community will be calm and mature and deal with the issues would be to mislead, my thoughts. We should state that each family or group should take individual responsibility. If we tell them that this kind of emerging maturity will occur, there will be those who will rely on that, sit back, wait to be rescued. This would not be a service.

Offered by Nancy.