Getting Out of Dodge

We humans are at it again. I’m talking about migrating, not only across borders, from one country to another, but across state borders. There is also a migration to other lifestyles. What are the reasons for these migrations? Three reasons. 1, fed up; 2, vulnerability; 3, psychopaths.

1-Fed up

Most humans live in cities. Dotted throughout our Earth, is 20 cities with 10 million, and more, people.¹ The largest city, Chongqing, in China, boasts a population of 31 million. Imagine the infrastructure of such a place. Europeans and Americans cannot hold a candle to that. The largest city in the States is New York, with nearly 9 million. In Mexico, Mexico City has about the same. In South America, it is Bogotá, Columbia, which holds the record at 9 million. London, also 9 million, and Paris has a mere 2.5 million. All of these cities are proving to be unwieldy. New York has to turn away the migrants, because they cannot be the welcoming city they think they should be.

Even the progressives of New York protested the migrants taking over schools gyms, and hotel rooms.

Add into the mix the rising crime rates, and the empty office spaces, and the subways with the sleeping homeless pissing their pants. The folks who work, and pay, for this mess, are a bit fed up.

Globally, we’ve been paying attention to that war, with Russia in one corner, and Ukraine in the other. That’s another mess paid for by Americans, and Europeans. Now we get to pull up a seat and watch HAMAS and Israel go at it. There may be a future attraction with HEZBOLLAH. And Iran, of course, is the meddler there. And guess who will pay for that?   

The question of when will people grow up, is the pertinent one. Let me flesh that question out a bit. When will the average taxpayer tell his government to kiss off?  Until that time, those who have had it up to their eyeballs, have followed Timothy Leary’s advice about dropping out. Meaning, they have migrated to greener pastures. Literally and figuratively. Some of those green pastures are in very cold climates, like Idaho and Montana. Many of them are off the grid. Others have moved to politically friendly, but humid places, like Texas and Florida. They are very much still on the grid.

Being on the grid won’t answer the larger question, about growing, up and grow out of this violence thing. The unruly gangs who push and shove, hurt and kill, need to be dealt with in a way we have not done so before now. Our tolerance has exacerbated the problems. And taking sides doesn’t help either.

Other places not at war, rattle their sabres. Or they have violence rising in their cities, due to tolerance. Add that to the traffic issue, schools that do not teach basic stuff, homelessness, the focus on madness as sanity, and the rising prices on everything, well, you get the picture.

That brings us to the second reason people flee their ancestral homes.

2-Vulnerability

People live in the cities because it contains everything, like other people, and conveniences. Like readily available food, beverages, clothing, transportation, public, schools, jobs, hospitals, security, paved roads, sewers, and housing. The inconveniences are traffic, loss of control, making ends meet, raising children in a two working parent household, pollution, random crime, and natural disasters that effect roadways and buildings.

Cities in freer states tend to be smaller, but places like Houston are reaching towards the 2.5 million mark, Dallas is at 1.2 million. As people move in, the cities grow. Many of the issues they left behind, will soon be issues in the places they moved to. Like affordable housing. Florida is now experiencing a price boom. Will it build? Its largest city, Jacksonville, holds less than a million. Miami Beach is a mere 500,000. Look for those numbers to go up, as well as housing prices.

What cities do not provide is local food sources. The southern states do provide much farming, but food is still shipped into the cities. Shelves are restocked at night. One of the reasons citizens must evacuate during natural disasters is because food cannot come into the city. Thus we see thousands stripping the store shelves bare when a hurricane is on its way. Or stack up on toilette paper when a lockdown happens.   Earthquakes shut stores down, for two reasons. The store is a mess, and there is no electricity. Gas stations cannot pump gas; traffic comes to a standstill.

As we are seeing in the two war zones, those populations are extremely vulnerable. Israel wants 2 million people out of Gaza, and in Ukraine, millions are now out of the country.

Who is not vulnerable? People living off the grid, as in homesteaders and Hunter-gatherers. People living in small towns, close to farms, and who have gardens of their own, perhaps keep chickens, and goats to milk, they will not be subject to big city crisis. Hunter-gatherer groups will live life as they always lived life. In the past, in certain places, HG’s were subjected to weather, like the Glacier Maximum of 20k years back. That one nearly killed off all the Europeans. A warm period will not kill off humans, unless they stumble onto a solar farm. Current HG’s probably know where those are, and steer clear of them.

Who do I refer to when I say “current” HG’s?

Hunter-gatherers never left us. There are traditional HG groups throughout the continent of Africa, both north and south, Arabia, Brazil, and other South American countries. In North America, I have just learned of the nouveau HG’s. I will try and locate a few of these groups. On the island of Molokai there are HG’s. I am curious to know if these are traditional, nouveau, or a mixture.

This mode of life is for very few. Because of the skill set needed, it can be off putting to the average person living in the city. Those who are highly independent, on the introvert side, would also find it bothersome, because it is rather like living the monastery lifestyle. Or being in a dormitory, in that there is not much in the way of privacy. Dorm living, however, is making a comeback. More on that in a later essay.

Traditional HG’s do not practice a lot of modesty. The exceptions would be people like the Bedouins. They are Herder Gatherers. And religious. That doesn’t mean one could not have such a group in North America. Indeed, there is plenty of land out there that would lend itself to the herding tradition.

Since humans have lived as primitives, longer than they have lived in cities, large and small, this mode of life is definitely sustainable to human life. Indeed, if we  do something stupid, which we are quite capable of doing, and wipe off most of the human population, how do we think those left over will live? Even the super rich, once they come out of their bomb shelters, will adapt themselves to this ancient mode of living.

The Psychopaths

The subject of the bomb, brings me to the psychopaths. Who are they, really? Personally, I think they are, what the Gnostics call, the archons. I also accept the word, demon. Why do I say this? A psychopath cannot be stopped or corrected. They enjoy, not just killing, but inflicting pain on others. Does an individual turn into a psychopath? I don’t see that in the bios I’ve read of serial killers. It is suggested by some researchers that their brains appear to be a bit different than the normal person’s brain.²

Psychopaths gravitate to legitimate endeavors as well as crime. We find them in groups, like the IRA, and HAMAS. We find them as heads of governments; Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and that brat in North Korea, Kim Jong Un. We also find them working for governments as the people who torture others. Some of the most corrupt politicians are, without a doubt, psychopaths. At 1% of the population, psychopaths in the United States alone, number 3 million people.

Psychopaths are everywhere, however, in a small group, they will stick out. In a small town, they will be noticed.

Historically, there were psychopaths involved in HG’s. These were probably the cultures that had leaders with absolute power over others. It was not, according to the writers of The Dawn of Everything, universal, that these groups would be lead by a king. But even kings were not all absolute. Indeed, many of these ancient groups, and early civilizations, had a variety of organized political styles. The more pointed question is why people put up with these absolute rulers that can order anyone killed?

Looking Backwards

To drop out is not an easy choice to make, because to live in a way most people are unfamiliar with, the old ways, is difficult at best. It is also a matter of resisting change. There are many people who would rather suffer what they know, then go through the process of adapting to a new way of doing things. However, learning, and practicing, some of the skills it takes to survive, just in case, is doable, and advisable.

What do I mean here? This. As someone who has camped since childhood, I keep a tent, sleeping bag, a camp stove, and insulated food storage containers. During the Northridge earthquake of 1994, with all the electricity shut off, I was able to provide coffee for my neighbors. This coffee klatch eased our fears, and it turned us into a group that organized our block to check up on people, and help anyone who we knew to be vulnerable because of age or illness. The Northridge quake was big, but not massive in the damage we sustained. Yes, buildings collapsed, and lives were lost. But nothing we couldn’t handle. We were in control as our own first responders.

For a few days, the family did not want to sleep in the house. Therefore, we put up the tent, used our sleeping bags, and had a good nights rest, except for the aftershocks that kept on rolling throughout the night. We got used to it.

Buildings have always been subject to extreme damage in earthquakes and floods. Ask the people of Turkey and Libya. For the most part, those are life’s quirks, not the routine stuff at all. What I address is the daily iffy situation city dwellers find themselves in. Like financial and safety issues. Like the constants of having to pay rent and mortgages, insurance on cars, and so forth. It never ends. As insurance rates go up, due to forest fires, and rising theft, guess who pays for it? You do. Add into that the meddlesome governments who cause inflation and recessions to be a constant cycle every decade. In truth, the average city dwellers live in a places that they have no control over.

HG’s have more control over their lives. Thus people can leave off the pressure of living to work, instead of working to live, without sitting in traffic, paying taxes, and having a charge card balance that is way over their head. Small village people can form their own association to take care of such things as the sewer, the water, the street cleaning, and the schools. The concern for such villagers is that the big city people will buy in and expect it to be like the big city. Villagers need to own all the land and buildings on it, so that they can pick and choose who lives in their village.

Folks do have choices. They can get themselves out of modernity and into a more soulful way of living. This is not about living in the past. It is about rejecting a way of life that has gone too far in the wrong direction. It has stripped people of control over their own lives. Time to take that control back into your own hands.

Get out of Dodge.

1. 2020 World Census

2. https://www.livescience.com/17159-psychopath-brain-abnormalities.html