Your Most Important Survival Skill
If you have a tough time dealing with people today, you're not going to make it out of a civil war/collapse alive.
I can’t say enough nice things about the website The Organic Prepper for its wealth of insightful articles full of valuable advice. As I’ve said in past entries, this advice isn’t useful only when the s** hits the fan (SHTF). It’s also useful in your daily life. The privilege of civilization often makes us take for granted how much work it takes to keep any society running. We often think it “runs itself,” but this isn’t true - it takes people making choices every day to contribute to its functioning and those choices aren’t as automatic as we think.
It’s a point touched upon on this piece written by prepper Aden Tate. He explains that an inability to deal with people without resorting to violence bodes poorly for one’s chances of survival in a true emergency. It doesn’t take much to trigger people’s worst instincts:
Consider being trapped on the interstate overnight during winter conditions. Rachel detailed how people began to get out and talk with each other. They were hungry, cold, scared, and desperate. When you combine all of this together, you have a powder keg that’s ready to explode.
People already get into fist fights on Black Friday (traditionally) because of a shortage of TVs. How will things be when there’s a shortage of food?
Because of all this, I think that one of the best things you can do is to understand a thing or two about how to resolve conflict and defuse heated situations.
I can remember once watching an older friend of mine defuse what was about to become a fist fight between two other friends when I was younger. That, I think, was the defining moment when I realized, “Wow, you can actually use words to make tense situations better.”
It’s not only a vital skill in daily life, but it’s most certainly one when you’re living in an area that’s getting pummeled by looters, is filled with hungry kids and scared dads, and where there’s a lot of pent-up anger.
Personally, I find the art and science of human relations to be a fascinating topic of study, but for many in the prepping and survivalist community, it doesn’t pique interest, probably because it’s boring compared to talking about guns. The idea we might have to talk or negotiate our way out of a bad situation is emotionally unsatisfying - we prefer to “win” outright and dominate our adversary, instead. After all, survival of the fittest is the natural order of affairs, right?
Well, how many bullets do you have? Ammo is a finite resource. It might be cheap and readily available today, but when times get tough, it’ll become expensive and scarce overnight. I don’t care if you know how to make your own bullets or know somebody who does - you’re still not going to survive by shooting everyone and everything in sight. Remember - the other side can shoot back just the same. It’s easy to think the other side is either incapable or too incompetent to engage in violence and, on some level, that may be the case. But what we often find is that even the weak and decadent can be dangerous in large numbers and with the aid of more organized and better-armed groups possessing a higher propensity for violence.
You know what is a virtually infinite resource? Words. Not everyone you encounter is going to be a left-wing partisan who wants to kill you because you’re on the other side. Many of the people you deal with are just trying to get through the day or, under more extreme circumstances, trying to survive. Not to mention violence rarely settles the matter once and for all, even in a state of anarchy. Rarely can you hurt someone or take their life and expect there to not be some sort of consequence down the line. Certainly, people get away with murder more often than we’d like to admit, but there are also people getting arrested and charged for war crimes years after the fact.
If it came down to it, would you be able to defend yourself and your actions? You’re not going to be playing by your own rules if you found yourself having to do so. What makes sense in your mind isn’t enough to get you out of trouble and again, that’s true in both the good times and hard times.
Witness this incident from over a year ago. You want to see how quickly a situation can escalate to a lethal encounter (WARNING: graphic content)? I’m not sure what this dispute was over, but from what I can tell, nobody’s life was in danger until the car’s windows started getting smashed:
Rule of thumb: if walking away safely is an option, then violence is likely not a justified response. Angry words and hurt feelings are never an excuse to use to harm or kill someone, no matter how abusive or cruel they may sound. Are words really enough to set you off? Then you, of all people, should make a concerted effort to avoid trouble and minimize conflict. If you have a tough time dealing with people today, you're not going to make it out of a civil war/collapse alive.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Learn some people skills today so you can stay out of trouble during the good times and maintain your composure if SHTF ever did occur.
I can’t say I’m a paragon of interpersonal relations. But I do stay out of trouble in large part because I take proactive steps to minimize conflict. It’s one thing to avoid conflict because you’re a coward who thinks there’s nothing worth risking anything over, aside from hurt feelings. It’s another thing to behave foolishly and irresponsibly because your needs and wants are more important than everyone else’s. Of course, we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness and well-being, but living in peace means we need to pick our fights wisely and devote our energy and resources to the struggles that really matter. Again, if fighting really solved all problems, what use is order? Get right down to it, order is just a question of who can exercise violence legitimately and when.
Allow others to save face: It’s easy to succumb to the temptation of “burying” someone, especially if you feel wronged. Seldom are people trying to intentionally hurt someone, however. I recently had a bad experience with a small business that wasn’t delivering the product I’d paid for and the owner had become impossible to get in touch with. I’d been waiting months of the job to get done and it was beginning to look like he’d get away with both my money and the product.
It turns out he was dealing with some serious personal problems that were distracting him. When I finally got through to him, he was highly apologetic and confessed that his personal problems were no excuse for being hard to get in touch with. He’s certainly correct, but what would it have said about me if I refused to accept his apology and chose to bury him, instead? The fact is, it costs us nothing to show empathy or at least restrain ourselves. The energy it takes to hold yourself back is, in the long run, less than the energy you’d exert in a fight, to say nothing of the fact you may not even win the fight in the end. If you have any conscience whatsoever, it’ll weigh on your mind later.
Even when it seems impossible, allow others to walk away while saving face whenever the opportunity is available. You’d want others to do the same for you. No matter the circumstance, be reasonable.
Don’t fight for what’s right. Fight for what’s worthwhile: The truth is, not everything is worth an argument or a brawl. There are some genuinely awful people out there and I don’t like having to tell anyone it’s better to just let them walk all over you. If you don’t want to find yourself in a position where you need to respond with some shade of your own, you need to avoid falling into such a trap in the first place. This is where being considerate, courteous, and respectful towards even those who don’t deserve it comes into play. If you don’t want to do it for anyone else, do it for yourself.
If someone flips you off on the road and you start chasing them down, what exactly have you accomplished? Creating a dangerous situation? Delaying your arrival at your actual destination? The saying “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” comes to mind. Keep your eye on your goals. Nobody likes being disrespected nor insulted, but these are, at the end of the day, distractions. You’d be shocked at how quickly you get over things that make your blood boil in the moment. Believe me when I say that when your life is truly in danger, your being disrespected is not at the top of your list of concerns.
As my mother once taught me, don’t get in the way of people in a rush. Again, it costs you nothing and they’re willing to lose more than you are to get where they’re going.
Let go more than you don’t: I’m currently watching Wrong Side of the Tracks on Netflix. It’s a superb program out of Spain and I recommend all readers give it a watch if you subscribe to the service, in large part due to the series’ excellent main character. Much as I identify with him (he’s the protagonist, after all), one major character flaw is that he feels the need to respond to every slight and sees everything as a challenge to prove himself equal to, a laying down of the gauntlet. I found myself screaming, begging him, “Just let it be, for once!”
As I said before, conflict expends a tremendous amount of energy. Insisting on always having the final say, resolving every clash to your satisfaction, it’s exhausting and triggers a never-ending cycle of confrontation. Eventually, you meet your match, someone who’s as much up to a fight as you are. Then the clash becomes existential and consumes the entirety of your existence. How many hours are there in a day, anyway?
Not everything is worth your attention nor a response. Fighting must serve a purpose and not as an end to itself. Save your energy for the stuff that really matters. You often gain more, including respect, by demonstrating your ability to fight for what’s really important, not from trying to “win” every little squabble. Again, what do you think you’re gaining? Self-respect? You’re certainly not winning the respect of anyone else. And respect is precisely what someone’s trying to gain no matter how they behave. Respect is how you bend others to your will or discourage them from getting in your way.
Be unpredictable: One of these things is not like the other and this bit of advice is it. What we’ve talked about thus far is concerned less with how you deal with people you know, but people you don’t know, though both contexts are certainly important. It’s always easier to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t and how you deal with unfamiliar people and situations is a better mark of your social skills than your ability to deal with the familiar.
Basically, don’t show all your cards. If you come off as too friendly of a person, the wrong party will see you as any easy target for exploitation, violent or otherwise. If you come off as too unpleasant of a person, not only may people not want anything to do with you, but they may also come to resent you and use that resentment to justify harming or violating you in some fashion. Who cares if I scratched his car? He’s just a mean old man, anyway!
Ideally, you want to come off as polite, while also giving the impression you’re not to be trifled with. Not all of us can pull this off - either we lack the necessary personality mixture or we’re just not physically imposing. But we can remain mysterious: show only the side of you which is necessary to be seen at a given point in time. Nobody ever has to know everything about you all the time, so keep the interaction appropriate to the matter at hand. Don’t treat a personal interaction like a business deal and vice versa. I tend to be protective of American culture, especially in a world utterly hostile to it, but one thing I don’t like is the tendency for Americans to personalize every interaction, as if we couldn’t possibly get anything done together unless we were all great friends. Call it cynical on my part, but people generally attempt to personalize interactions because they think it’ll make it easier to get things from others.
Protect your integrity. Don’t allow yourself to become exploited.
Tune out the noise: I tend view social media more positively (crazy, I know), but there’s no question the role it’s played in cultivating a society of narcissists. So many have an inflated sense of self-importance because they have access to a captive audience that’ll reflexively “like” anything they say, no matter how meaningless or nonsensical it might be. And for what little they claim to care about what anyone thinks of them, they’re more preoccupied than most about what others think, hence they talk about “stereotypes” and “changing perceptions.” Nothing says “I care about what other people think” than trying to change the way people think.
Everyone seems to want attention for all the wrong reasons. This is why it’s important to not take the bait and give it to them. No, you’re not going to put them out of business and that’s unfortunate, but it more than suffices as a win when you don’t let it affect you. The same thing goes for non-electronic interactions. Not everything concerns you, nor do you have to render an opinion on every issue. It’s funny how people will tell someone they’re not allowed to express their thoughts on a given matter, then in the same breath whine and moan about how there isn’t enough of a conversation regarding said matter.
Why waste your energy engaging with such people? They don’t matter.
I believe learning to deal with other humans peacefully isn’t just an underrated survival skill, but the most important one as well. Again, you can only fight your way of so many situations before it catches up to you. Even if our world were to unravel completely, anyone who exercises violence recklessly will bear the mark of Cain. Doing harm to others, even when justified, isn’t without consequence. The difference is, when we should, it’s because the alternative is to be killed or maimed. But most conflicts you’ll encounter in your life aren’t of an existential nature. It’s just that some people find a way to convince themselves it is.
For your sake and that of everyone else, but especially yours, learn to deal with people. At best, it’s the difference between a life of happiness versus a life of misery. At worst, it’s the difference between life and death.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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