Guns, money or love? What’s your apocalypse plan?
Relationships are key to our survival, but what they are based on makes all the difference.
Collapse has been a hot topic for some time now. Climate change, environmental destruction, social unrest and of course the COVID-19 pandemic are just some of the reason many people think our society could collapse, or maybe is already in the process of doing so.
Whether you agree with those assessments or not, I would argue it doesn’t hurt to think about it.
As an Australian I’m sadly all too familiar with natural disasters and know from bitter experience that anticipating the possibility of one and having an appropriate plan of action in place should it arrive can actually be the difference between life and death. People in bushfire zones, flood zones and earthquake zones are all encouraged to plan ahead “just in case”. So what’s the harm in applying that same thinking to the possibility of wider social calamity?
If the COVID-19 pandemic has proved anything it is that sudden and far-reaching shocks to society can and do happen. So planning for them isn’t being “doomist” it’s just prudent.
Against this backdrop a friend of mine recently — somewhat lightheartedly — referred to his “apocalypse plan”, which of course prompted me to discuss my own. There were some significant differences in our respective approaches, and reflecting on those differences led me to think about the fundamental importance of human relationships to our survival in times of crises.
In my own life I have already lived through a number of tumultuous events in a number of countries: violent and murderous civil unrest; major natural disasters; and now quasi economic collapse. And in all these situations it is human relationships that have underpinned peoples’ ability to survive and recover from the crisis. But this experience also has shown me that not all human relationships are based on the same thing. In fact I see three main things that can underpin them — which I loosely categorise as love, money and guns — and these three bases lead to very different kinds of relationships and very different outcomes.
Love
The first basis for relationships is love. And by this I mean that the relationship is based on a positive emotional connection reflected in things like kindness, care, empathy, respect, patience , tolerance, trust and compassion. I think these are the sorts of relationships we all relate to most easily and probably the ones we aspire most to have. This is family. This is friends. This is belonging and community. This is working cooperatively for mutual benefit. Our sense of security and our other needs are met through a system of positive mutuality and reciprocity.
Guns
The second basis for relationships I am calling “guns”. But really that’s just my shorthand for physical violence. This kind of relationship is based in fear, specifically the fear in one party of the violence that is (or can be) inflicted by the other party. No one likes to be part of this kind of relationship but they are nonetheless a sad fact of life. These are the relationships of war, of conquest, of coercion — and they reflect an imbalance of power where one party gains their sense of security and their other needs by inflicting (or threatening to inflict) physical violence on the other party. While this sort of relationship is most easy to identify in situations of war and conflict, domestic and other personal relationships can of course be based in violence as well (and of course not all forms of violence are necessarily physical).
Money
The third basis for relationships is money. And in this case the relationship is based neither on a positive emotional connection like love, nor a negative emotional connection like fear, but on a somewhat more emotionally neutral connection around exchange. This is the sort of relationship most people have with their boss, their landlord, their hairdresser and their mechanic. That’s not to say that those relationships can’t also have positive or negative emotional elements (maybe you love your hairdresser, or fear your boss). But the fundamental nature of the relationship is exchange. They have something you want or need and your connection with that person is based on an exchange of money. Money has tremendous power in this regard. And people want money precisely because it gives them this power. It enables us to get our security and other needs met by an exchange of money, without the need for love or violence.
What’s your apocalypse plan based on?
When it comes to “apocalypse plans” it seems to me they are typically focused on one or other of these three types of relationships.
Some people believe that their money will shield them from any major disruptions to society. And this, on the face of it, is not an unreasonable expectation. History would suggest that the wealthy do in fact fare well in crisis scenarios. Money does have significant power with others, so if you have enough of it there is every chance you can secure your safety and have your other needs met. As long as others continue to recognise the purchasing power of your money you may be fine. But therein lies the vulnerability of these types of relationships. If the money loses its power so do you. And money can and does sometimes lose its power, through hyper-inflation for example, or the collapse of a currency. So if your security and needs are met only through relationships based on money how will you fare? If your supply of money was suddenly turned off (like it has been for so many here in Bali) would you have enough in store to survive? And if your money was suddenly worthless for exchange, what then? It’s worth thinking about.
Other people’s plans for surviving an apocalypse seem to be based on expectations of violence. They are buying weapons and building fortresses to defend themselves, their loved ones and their possessions against marauding hordes. They expect a “kill or be killed” world to emerge and they are attempting to position themselves to be the ones doing the killing rather than being on the receiving end of it. They believe that their security and other needs will be gained through the exercise of violence. On the face of it this also is perhaps not an unreasonable expectation. There is plenty of historical precedence for the success of violence as a strategy for survival — at least in the short term. But violence does beget violence. There is always going to be someone out there who has more or bigger weapons, and when resources start running low might they not just come for yours? It seems to me that violence has serious sustainability issues. And I think this is one of the key lessons of history. Those who live by the sword do seem to me, more often than not, to end up dying by the sword. And that is definitely worth thinking about!
Finally then there are apocalypse survival strategies that centre on love, where people are working to build strong interpersonal relationships based on trust, respect, empathy, kindness, patience, tolerance, compassion and care. Where security and other needs are met through cooperation and an ethos of mutuality and reciprocity. Money isn’t actually required, and violence is antithetical. On the face of it this strategy might seem to many to be madness, especially if you’ve grown up in the ‘western’ world where money and violence are the mainstays of security and survival. But in fact there is abundant evidence from history that societies can be like this and in fact that they can be robust, relatively peaceful and sustainable. And if you think for a moment about your first relationships, and your most important and enduring relationships, are they not relationships based in love? Are these not the sort of relationships that we all want deep down? And don’t these relationships have incredible power in terms of security and the provision of other needs? This most definitely is worth thinking about.
My apocalypse plan
My own apocalypse plan, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, is based on love. As mad as it may seem to many I genuinely believe that the only truly secure and sustainable human society is one based on cooperation, mutuality and reciprocity. I reject fear-based approaches, partly because I believe they are fundamentally unsustainable, and partly because I don’t want to live in a society where relationships are based in fear and violence. I recognise that fear and violence are part of human nature — I am not naive. But I also recognise that love, empathy and compassion are equally part of human nature. And given the choice I chose love.
My own plan also does not rely on money or material wealth. Of course I am happy to utilise it to the extent that it is available and can help. But I do not believe I will necessarily be able to rely on it to survive. If there is one thing I have learned through my experiences of major crises it is that during and in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe money is essentially irrelevant. It is not money that plucks people from burning buildings, or off the rooftop of flooded houses, or that digs them out from under rubble. It is family members, neighbours, friends. When crises hit humans instinctively switch to love-based relationships. I have observed this phenomenon over and over.
When the “Black Saturday” bushfires razed vast areas of regional Victoria in 2009, destroying entire towns and killing hundreds of people, the survivors rallied together, self-organized, and demonstrated unprecedented levels of care, compassion and empathy. Townsfolk who previously had been lifelong antagonists were seen hugging and crying together in the ruins. Every survivor did their utmost to care for and support their fellow humans (and indeed also wildlife) in whatever way they could, despite their exhaustion, despite having lost their own loved ones, homes and businesses. The natural instinctive human response was love. Money and wealth was suddenly and shockingly irrelevant. No one did anything because of money, or failed to act because of its lack. People were motivated entirely by love.
It is this immediate and unconscious reversion to love-based relationships in times of crisis that leads me to the belief that my own survival in any major crises could well come down to the compassion of others. As might their survival depend on mine. You can argue that the sort of responses I described above are temporary and that as things get back to normal they fade. But what if things don’t get back to normal? If there is no electricity and no internet what is your cryptocurrency worth to you? If there are no deliveries to supermarkets and no ATMs working how are all the electronic numbers in your bank account going to help you? This is why the priority in my apocalypse plan is to build and nurture love-based relationships within my local community.
I know some will regard this as starry-eyed delusion. And maybe I’d share this view if my only knowledge of human society came from movies and life in a modern industrialised city. But it has been my privilege to live in a number of alternate societies where money is relatively less important, where violence is the exception not the rule, and where the social fabric is knit with love and is not easily torn.
I determined some years back that my calling was to “plant now those things that will be sorely needed 20 years hence, 30 years hence”. And that is what motivates this article. I am not naive. I know first hand the horrific role that violence can play when a society is falling apart. It was only a year ago that people were fighting each other in supermarkets over toilet paper! But that is kind of my point. What if we had collectively anticipated and planned for a shock like the pandemic? What if people were emotionally prepared for it and, confident that they were supported by strong bonds of love, were not so easily panicked into fighting in supermarkets over basic supplies?
I think it is sadly inevitable that if multiple major shocks were to hit modern industrialised countries today that large parts of those societies would descend into panic, chaos and violence. Because right now we are not prepared. Right now it is still taboo to even talk about it. But those shocks are coming. And if we anticipate them and prepare for them now, then we may actually avoid a lot of self-inflicted pain and suffering when they do.
