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Image | Cultivating Inner Resilience in the Face of Crisis
Cultivating Inner Resilience in the Face of Crisis

Abraham Maslow detailed a hierarchy of human needs as drivers of human motivation, postulating that we first attend to our physiological needs for air, food, and water, followed by our need for safety. Only when those needs are met do we then attend to higher level needs, such as creativity and achievement. Recognizing that energy descent will require significant changes in standard of living for most of us, we immediately want to secure the basics and find ways to make supplies of those basics resilient. 

 

 

Like many people, when I first learned about Peak Oil about six years ago, I began with physical preparation for a lower energy future. It makes total sense that many of us do this when recognizing danger ahead. The What Should I Do? guide here really supports us in learning about physical preparation. Chris says, “We are more resilient when we have multiple sources and systems to supply a needed item, rather than being dependent on a single source.” However, as Chris and many others have pointed out, all of our physical preparations are “necessary but insufficient,” because we simply don’t know what exactly will happen and we are totally dependent on natural resources for everything we consume every day.

So what else can we do? I believe we need to focus a significant part of our crisis preparation on developing inner resilience in addition to cultivating external, physical resilience. 

Cultivating Inner Resilience in the Face of Crisis

Abraham Maslow detailed a hierarchy of human needs as drivers of human motivation, postulating that we first attend to our physiological needs for air, food, and water, followed by our need for safety. Only when those needs are met do we then attend to higher level needs, such as creativity and achievement. Recognizing that energy descent will require significant changes in standard of living for most of us, we immediately want to secure the basics and find ways to make supplies of those basics resilient. 

 

 

Like many people, when I first learned about Peak Oil about six years ago, I began with physical preparation for a lower energy future. It makes total sense that many of us do this when recognizing danger ahead. The What Should I Do? guide here really supports us in learning about physical preparation. Chris says, “We are more resilient when we have multiple sources and systems to supply a needed item, rather than being dependent on a single source.” However, as Chris and many others have pointed out, all of our physical preparations are “necessary but insufficient,” because we simply don’t know what exactly will happen and we are totally dependent on natural resources for everything we consume every day.

So what else can we do? I believe we need to focus a significant part of our crisis preparation on developing inner resilience in addition to cultivating external, physical resilience. 

Image | The Keys to Transitioning Healthcare: Empowerment, Education, & Prevention
The Keys to Transitioning Healthcare: Empowerment, Education, & Prevention

A few months ago, I developed red spots on my face and neck that were kind of itchy.  After another day or so, the spots had progressed down my torso and onto my thighs, so I decided to go to a doctor.  Although I have health insurance, at the time I did not have a primary care physician, so seeing a doctor quickly proved to be difficult.  Most everyone I called told me to go the emergency room, a ridiculously expensive suggestion, given that my situation was certainly not a life-threatening emergency.  I finally got an appointment with a nurse practitioner at a local clinic.  She hurriedly looked at the red spots, pronounced that I had hives, and immediately decided to give me a steroid injection and to prescribe a week-long dose of Prednisone.  There was no discussion of reasoning for her prescription, likely symptom progression, or treatment options.

I know that steroids significantly impact my body through increased anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and suppressed immune response, and I was about to leave on a month long trip, so I really didn’t want any of these side effects.  I slowed her down long enough to get her to tell me what I could expect if I didn’t take the shot or the Prednisone.  She told me the hives would likely progress through the rest of my body, enter my lungs and then cause difficulty breathing, and that I definitely needed both the injection and the Prednisone.  By this point, I internally questioned her judgment due to her extreme prognosis and lack of willingness to engage with me, so I accepted the shot and decided to mull over whether or not to fill the Prednisone prescription.  That afternoon I spoke with a friend of mine who is an MD (I should have called him first), and he said that I likely would not need the Prednisone and that I should see how it goes for a couple of days.  I did not need the Prednisone and the hives disappeared in a week or so.

So why am I sharing this story? In my opinion, health care remains one of the thorniest problems that we face, because even with relatively abundant cheap oil, our current system serves us poorly.
The Keys to Transitioning Healthcare: Empowerment, Education, & Prevention

A few months ago, I developed red spots on my face and neck that were kind of itchy.  After another day or so, the spots had progressed down my torso and onto my thighs, so I decided to go to a doctor.  Although I have health insurance, at the time I did not have a primary care physician, so seeing a doctor quickly proved to be difficult.  Most everyone I called told me to go the emergency room, a ridiculously expensive suggestion, given that my situation was certainly not a life-threatening emergency.  I finally got an appointment with a nurse practitioner at a local clinic.  She hurriedly looked at the red spots, pronounced that I had hives, and immediately decided to give me a steroid injection and to prescribe a week-long dose of Prednisone.  There was no discussion of reasoning for her prescription, likely symptom progression, or treatment options.

I know that steroids significantly impact my body through increased anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and suppressed immune response, and I was about to leave on a month long trip, so I really didn’t want any of these side effects.  I slowed her down long enough to get her to tell me what I could expect if I didn’t take the shot or the Prednisone.  She told me the hives would likely progress through the rest of my body, enter my lungs and then cause difficulty breathing, and that I definitely needed both the injection and the Prednisone.  By this point, I internally questioned her judgment due to her extreme prognosis and lack of willingness to engage with me, so I accepted the shot and decided to mull over whether or not to fill the Prednisone prescription.  That afternoon I spoke with a friend of mine who is an MD (I should have called him first), and he said that I likely would not need the Prednisone and that I should see how it goes for a couple of days.  I did not need the Prednisone and the hives disappeared in a week or so.

So why am I sharing this story? In my opinion, health care remains one of the thorniest problems that we face, because even with relatively abundant cheap oil, our current system serves us poorly.
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