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Dana Benner’s article about “re-wilding” ourselves to be ready for catastrophic changes to our way of life got me thinking, as I hope it did you. He makes a good point about the need and benefits of learning to do things without modern conveniences.
There’s nothing really earth-shattering about what he suggests because, aside from our modern expectations and practices, we’re not that far removed from what we consider a primitive lifestyle. In fact much of the rest of the world goes about their daily business having never known or experienced the benefits of many of the devices and conveniences most of us take for granted. Luxuries like being able to travel for hundreds of miles at a time, alone and in the quiet temperature-controlled comfort of a personal automobile are beyond imagination for hundreds of millions of our fellow humans. Yet, they get where they need to go and manage to survive the trip without the luxury of wheels.
In survival situations, one of the more profound adjustments will be to accept that our efforts will be expended to acquire things we need, not niceties we desire and that will increase or improve the enjoyment of our leisure time.
To Dana’s point, however, life doesn’t have to suck just because we give up some conveniences for the sake of being able and ready to take care of business when our machines cease to run. A little manual labor, using a bicycle or putting in a few more miles on our feet would probably benefit most of us, now and in the long run. One of the “benefits” of modern American life is that we have more time to do nothing and we’re paying the physical price for it, which will ultimately make the sudden shock of being immersed in a survival situation that much more challenging and shocking, both physically and emotionally.