Nobody’s Coming to Save Us

I suppose this title is the closest thing a blog can get to clickbait, but it is true. One of the core ideas of mutual aid, to me, is to establish self reliance in a community to provide for itself when the state is unable or unwilling to do so. If we can’t trust the system to meet our needs, we have to meet them ourselves.

There are so many ways, big and small, to do this. Everything from community vegetable gardens, first aid classes, food banks, and tool libraries to offering a spare room to a homeless person or checking in on an elderly neighbor and making sure they have transportation to a doctors appointment.

When I was in college, I had radical dreams of doomsday prepping. Not in the “I’m going to rule the wasteland with an iron fist” kind of way, or even the “I’m gonna build a bunker and bury a generator to live out the nuclear winter” way, though that’s getting closer. I was the sort of person who kept a 72-hour bag in their closet and had bookmarked all the cool gear and guns I wanted to buy for when society collapsed or whatever. It was childish, but ultimately harmless. But when I look back at that version of myself, the thing I always focus on is that, in my imagined doomsday, I was alone. I packed enough gear for me, had a one-person tent, that sort of stuff. And what a fool I was.

The real preparation for doomsday, or more likely for a breakdown of social services in the midst of an authoritarian takeover, is community. No amount of canned food in your basement is going to protect you better than being friends with your neighbors and knowing where the doctor lives. We are a social species for so many reasons, and we frankly won’t survive on our own in ANY future.

I might make posts about emergency preparedness or more specific skill building in the future, but when I consider the reality that nobody is coming to save us, that’s not the stuff that comes to mind first anymore. When I think “the storm is coming and nobody is going to save us,” the response I hear in my head now is “well then we better put together a neighborhood potluck.” Because if we can build relationships with the people around us, we can prepare with the people around us. We can train each other, provide for each other, and protect each other.

Nobody is coming to save us, but if our community is strong, then we don’t need them to.

~Inchoate Clay