sur-viv-al-ist??[ser-vahy-vuh-list] Show IPA
–noun
a person who makes preparations to survive a widespread catastrophe, as an atomic war or anarchy, esp. by storing food and weapons in a safe place.

I’ve been telling people lately that Collab21 is going to start hosting workshops and videos on survivalism. When I talk about this, I am not in agreement with the definition above. This definition is solely in regards to a person who “make preparations to survive a… catastrophe.” I’m not thinking about any specific events that could case one to have to be prepared. I’m thinking about acquiring this knowledge to add to my arsenal. What happens if you are found quitting your job to follow a dream of living in the country?

A true survivalist knows that the food and ammo runs out, that using a weapon too much will cause it to degrade and become useless. They know that storing food, ammunition and weapons will be of less value when it’s needed than when it was stored. A true survivalist thinks about how to forage foods, how to build fires, how to find water in the desert, how to live underground or under water and how to build communities so that they won’t have to do all of the tasks necessary to sustain humanity.

But at it’s most basic, survival is doing what you know to stay alive. We all do this every day. We buy food and we work to pay for the other things we need: water, shelter, clothing. Possibly more importantly – we build and maintain relationships.

In the book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, I read that agriculture is one of the man’s original inventions. Without it, we couldn’t have had written language. Agriculture allows non-farmers to do things outside of farming. At first, this was helping the farmer trade and sell his crops by providing technology, commerce and accounting. I cannot imagine any of this being possible without the right relationships.

What I mean when I tell you that we are planning workshops relating to survivalism, I’m talking about what would happen if you were one of two people left on the entire planet, and nothing that you knew today existed. How could you maintain humanity? I know this will never happen, but I think the knowledge required to be self sufficient, collaborate affectively and of the fundamentals of society are key to knowing how to succeed in other areas of life.

I am not the type to wax poetic on existentialism. Self reflection is at such an exponentially greater state than is self sufficiency that it’s not worth combining the two (although they are closely related). I think if we stick to sharing knowledge and in rediscovering lost knowledge, that we’ll be moving to a good place.

What do we expect to gain? It’s simple. I’m not the only teacher here. All of us has some knowledge that not everyone else has that can be examined, recorded and shared. When I saw the movie Walkabout, I realized that people you think least likely to help can help the most. In the movie, a native was able to find water in the desert. I don’t know how to do that, but I’d love to find out.

The things I know I can teach people about are things like fermenting foods to preserve them, beekeeping and some level of vegetable gardening. The skills I’d like to know more about are community fundamentals, building houses from scratch (trees and rocks, clay and water), first aid, hunting and field dressing and animal husbandry. There are plenty of other subjects I’d like to have covered in our Survivalism workshop series, but we’ll be moving slowly for now.

Survivalism and Collab21 is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

If you’re interested in learning how to make beer, or just want to take part, stop by my house at 6:30pm or after this Tuesday.

If you want to reserve a couple bottles, sign up for our mailing list, or leave a donation using the link on our home page.

See you there!

Beer Brewing Workshop is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

Our renewed focus is going to be on reaching short term goals rather than our current main goal of moving into a space. Some of these short-term goals are a result of a question posed to me by a principle of the company I work for, “Say you get a space, what are you going to do in it?”

I responded, “I have a prioritized list of 1000s of things.”

“Do those.”

Ideally, I would have a prioritized list of 1000s things to do. In reality, the list is closer to 50. Some of the things on the list actually require having a space, a kitchen, whiteboards, microphones, computers, etc. So I had to eliminate most of the ideas as post-space goals. Of the ones leftover, there were a couple that really stuck out to me:

1. workshops/classes/collaborative work sessions, and
2. Video podcasting

I’ve been working on re-designing our Wordpress theme to fit with the palette of our company’s website, with the idea that it will be the primary site, but will park on top of this one. Ultimately, this will be our primary website.

One of the Wordpress Plugins I added is called Gigs Calendar, which is designed to be used for displaying a list of upcoming gigs for band websites. It was the best calendar I found for free (leave suggestions for others in the comments).

I’ve so far only set up two events. One is a learn to make beer class, the other is collaborative and will be ongoing from now on. My idea of video podcasting is to film the classes, edit them a bit and post them on the blog for free. There will be a list of all classes on a separate page. I think this will be a great benefit for Collab21.com and for the community. Most of the topics I want to have classes on are passions of mine. I’m sure these will inspire more as time goes on.

Jesus teaches survivalism through parables

Finally, I’d like to announce that there will be an ongoing theme of our classes/workshops, which will be roughly related to survivalism. Call it self-sufficiency or life fundamentalism, it’s learning how to take care of your basic needs with limited or basic resources. I live in a city that’s obsessed with local food and I think that is a good thing. People are looking back at their roots. Farming is what made it possible for us to not have to hunt and gather. Our country has for too many years been separated from the things that sustain our lives. Things like water quality, food production, soil, air quality and shelter are extremely broad topics, and it’s few and far between when I meet someone who can speak to all of these things. Our goal is to learn and teach about topics that will change this.

Wheels are Turning is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles