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Knowing Your Neighbors: All For One and One For All
Sound like an old cliche? “One for All, All for One”? A phrase from the past.
But it is as valid today as it has ever been. Togetherness, cooperation, teamwork, none of those match the totality of “One for all, All for One”.
Of course there is no substitute for preparedness. As a former EMT, a person who has taken CERT training in my community, and who, as much as I can given my limited financial resources, taken the threat, for any reason, of societal breakdown seriously, I can attest to this.
I remember my instructor many years ago in Red Cross Advanced First Aid. Dear Mrs. Young. At the close of one training session, she grew introspective. She simply talked to us. Something she said has stuck with me all these years. “If you are ever needed to perform life-saving first aid, CPR, mouth-to-mouth, stopping bleeding, it’s a good bet that you are going be surrounded by total chaos. People screaming, maybe at night, complete hysteria. The methods I’m using to teach you will mentally snap you back to this classroom; you will do the right thing at the right time. Because you are prepared”.
Well, the same thing applies to the principle of banding together in times of crisis. No man or woman is an island and that also is as true today as it has ever been. Given the results of forty years of the “it’s all about me” way of thinking in this country, even more so. Should, God forbid, calamity in the form of a massive earthquake on the San Andreas, or a total meltdown due to a cyber-attack on our hopelessly “all or nothing” system of communications, essential utilities, or food delivery occur, our world is going to shrink to a local level at appalling speed.
Local. Our horizons are going to contract. What is happening twenty, two hundred, or two thousand miles away will be of little concern. Sporadic radio communications, if nothing else, will see to that. It is what could be happening in your immediate vicinity that will matter the most.
It is at this point that neighbors and community provide a powerful means of protection and deterrence. In fact, it is almost certain that this will be your only source of genuine protection. Because, as the former Los Angeles Fire Department instructor in my CERT course repeated so many times, “We (the Police and Fire) won’t be there”.
There truly is safety in numbers.
But just as we try to prepare by stockpiling, food, water, filtration, medical supplies, clothing, weapons and ammunition, so too must we prepare for communal defense and support.
And the only sure way to do that, to prepare so that critical time is not wasted when, not if, disaster arrives, is to get to know your neighbors beforehand. Now keep in mind that the things I’m talking about pertain to all people, no matter their location, but specifically to people living in the suburbs.
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