My husband is a “t.v. guy.”  If it was up to me, I’d toss my television out a window and into the yard where I would proceed with large implements of destruction like an ax, a chainsaw, and possibly a wood chipper.  Everything about television from the violent and sudden changes in volume (particularly during commercials) to the garbage they are peddling as important to society (like who will be the next idol-in-the-pan and the Kardashians – who are famous for what, exactly?) annoys me on a basic level.  Yet, somehow, I married a person who watches incessantly.

In his recent tuning-ins, he’s been watching a show called Doomsday Preppers.  I have never been the doom-and-gloom type, and I don’t intend to start now.  However, we have to understand that, now more than ever, the chance of a societal meltdown is very real.  This is, in fact, part of what Occupy stands in the face of: the deconstruction of life as we know it, the collapse of a functioning social structure, an inevitable conclusion if the current unchecked economic power system stays in place.  Whether it is a food system failure, an environmental crisis, an economic collapse, or even civil or world war, we are suddenly standing at the brink of something.  Hopefully, it is greatness, but even steel is forged in fire…

Nevertheless, I suppose I should count my blessings that at least what my husband is watching is somewhat intellectually based and not of the TMZ variety, and admittedly, you can learn a lot about catastrophe survival from the borderline insane who are bracing for it at every moment.  Store items of basic necessity; learn how to procure food independently of the market; and be able to defend yourself because in every Doomsday prophecy there is the part where desperate people do desperate things.  This is the part the strikes me most.  We are keenly aware that in an emergency situation people will push for their individual survival, even if that means literally stepping on someone else.

Of course, when we look at people in emergency situations, as we are all glued to the footage from the Costa Concordia’s botched evacuation, we experience sympathy for them.  We can understand the pushing, the chaos, the fear, yet we often forget to measure in our basic human history and the thing that has been all but conditioned out of us.  Like modern chickens that have forgotten to sit on their own eggs or turkeys that are incapable of foraging for food, we have left behind the very thing that saved humanity from extinction thousands of years ago: community.

For those of you who passed Bio before science has revealed our true human history, or if you went to one of those schools run by geniuses who don’t believe in teaching evolution, there was – at one time – great variety in the human species.  In fact, it is believed that numerous types of human ancestors inhabited common spaces and literally fought one another for survival.  After centuries of natural selection weeding out the losers in this miraculous honing, only two species remained: Cro-Magnon Man and the Neanderthals.

It is now believed that Cro-Magnon Man and the Neanderthals were forced into one another’s territories by shrinking resources in an age of extreme cold, and that they may have even crossed paths with some regularity.  In fact, many scientists argue that the Neanderthals may not have died out completely.  They suggest that a small number of them acculturated and mated into Cro-Magnon populations as their less-adaptive kin died off because of their inability to learn the more sophisticated methods of communication and cooperation that defined Cro-Magnon Man.  Community made the difference.

Humans survived extraordinary odds, dangerous and terrible animals, extreme temperatures, and thousands upon thousands of years to evolve to the top of the food chain and the master of his realm because he was thinking, courageous, and calculating.  In the end, however, the thing that set us apart even from similar and familiar versions of ourselves was our ability to function in a community and to apply the strengths of this arrangement to our environment.  Community is the thing that saved us from extinction and that will continue to hold us together when all else fails.

In today’s society, absorbed with our own schedules, focused on our own families, and overwhelmed by the sheer size of our population, we have turned away from our sense of community.  Sure, there are exceptions to this.  Perhaps, we attend the neighbor’s holiday party; we chat with the other parents on the sidelines of soccer practice; we even exchange pleasantries with the mail carrier and the clerk at the grocery store, but we lack real connection and interaction with those around us.  In the event of a serious and widespread emergency, we would see most of the people in our community as potential threats to our security and the safety of our family, not as fellow humans with whom we can exchange resources and rely on for increased chances of survival.

Perhaps this is the natural consequence of a population that has simply rocketed beyond reasonable, or perhaps this is a modern social conditioning intended to realign the human loyalty to things instead of people.  Our market lifestyle sees resources as acquisitions available for purchase at an ever-increasing number of locations while they simultaneously become more difficult to obtain in any other fashion.  While we gear ourselves at break-neck speed toward a culture of technology and consumption, the market providers slowly hoard production resources and bloat their already swollen control over our basic necessities.

With profit margins the sole focus, they raise the price of everything from water to furniture, forcing us to commit more time and energy to earning the money we need so we can meet the increasing financial demands.  Driven by basic survival instinct, we put our shoulder to the grindstone, working longer hours, forgoing community activities, skipping vacations, and finally handing over our children to a new and highly lucrative daycare industry just to put them somewhere “safe” so we can apply both adults in our household to the duty of earning income and acquiring resources.

We have become slaves to a system that intentionally divides us, that breaks down the final piece of our human identity, and that robs us of our community as well as our families.  We struggle to keep our heads above the waterline.  For some, that line is as simple as heat and food.  For others, it is a McMansion and a luxury SUV.  In either case, we are all still slaves.

In looking at our own American history of slavery, we know that the last thing slave owners wanted was for their slaves to feel a sense of community.  It is why they broke up families, disallowed mothers from raising their own children even if they belonged to the same master, and refused slaves the rights of marriage and familial identification.  It is why slaves were whipped for singing in the fields, prohibited from socializing during their few non-working hours, and conditioned to fear the consequences of collaboration on anything other than focused, productive labor.  By stripping slaves of their community, slave owners could reduce the chance of uprising, increase productivity, and wield a psychological control over their subservient that was far more powerful a message than any number of stinging lashes.

Our society has become a modern interpretation of the vulgar and deranged human condition of slavery.  We have syphoned off every possible excess, trimmed every non-essential, and whittled down our existence to “making time for my family.”  Meanwhile, the market machine turns, gobbling up not only our tangible resources but our human ones as well.

In a crisis situation, according to the Doomsday preppers, you need weapons to ward off people who will try to invade your property and steal your resources.  All I can think is, “Yes, but what if he possesses a skill or knowledge you do not?  What if he has access to something you require?  Do you shoot first and ask questions later?  Or do you address this human and then put one between his eyes if he isn’t useful to you?  And how long do you think you can survive like that?  No doubt your tune will change when you run out of ammo.  What if you have to leave your space and look for help?  Is your survival instinct going to be so appreciated when someone else is shooting at you?”

Maybe instead of hoarding supplies and weapons, and worrying about the legions of animals that will surely become of some people in a crisis, we should be working on reuniting our families, rebuilding our communities, and pushing back against the slave drivers that intend to keep us apart.  Maybe we should be singing in the fields… or in the case of modern times, marching in the streets.  Oh, wait, that’s right!  We are!  Well then, I guess we better invite the neighbors… and by neighbors, I mean, everyone.