Self-Reliance ... A Weird Lifestyle

One of the fastest ways to start an argument in the woodcraft-bushcraft-survival community is to get into a discussion about tools. Particularly a discussion about knives and axes … which ones to carry and what or what not to do with them. There are a few more carry item discussions that can invoke quick arguments.

I’ve been engaged in a few of those discussions and have learned to avoid them.

Let me be so bold as to say something here about kits and the items that make a kit.

You can build an entire, good, usable carry kit for the cost of 1 fancy knife or 1 Swedish axe or 1 oil cloth tarp or 1 fancy pack to carry all that you will normally carry on your person … despite all the well-intentioned amateur reviews on youtube and despite all the slick marketing techniques of manufacturers and marketers that enjoy our hard earned dollars rolling in.

Now don’t get me wrong.

I’m not intentionally poking anyone in the eye with a stick. I’m not downing any of the toys that folks are playing with. Folks can purchase and use anything they want.

I’m just saying. I’m just trying to keep it real. Especially for the common person clawing and scratching their way with a limited amount of cash in their budget … for folks that don’t have $300.00 to throw at the latest knife that has pretty two-tone scales.

Pardon me for saying so, but I think that … and mind you this is just my personal perspective … when it comes right down to it, a lot of people are missing the boat when it comes to this issue of self-reliance.

The last thing I want to do is to delude anyone into thinking that having a 10-plus piece kit, along with the knowledge and skills to use the items in their kit, is going to make them self-reliant or turn self-reliance into an easy project. A good kit makes for some great outdoor weekend adventures. A good kit can turn an otherwise bad short-term situation into an adventure. Self-reliance, however, as a lifestyle … particularly a lifestyle in a long-term situation whether it is chosen or SHTF … involves a lot more than a kit that can easily be assembled and pressed into service over the course of a weekend.

In this lot is a total mindset change and the psychological adjustments that accompany it. This change and these adjustments are not purchased from any tool vendor. This change and these adjustments are in our psyche. They are reasoned, sought out, fought for, and earned every step of the way. Folks that surround us, folks that we have to do with on a normal daily basis, are ok with what we are doing as long as we are hobbying around with this woodcraft-bushcraft thing. They are good with it as long as we are dabbling in areas of self-reliance.

Their impressions of us begin to change drastically when our hobbying around begins to take on the appearance of a genuine lifestyle. We become weird to normal folks. Our circle of true friends and associates goes through a shrinking process. Partly because our priorities change. Partly because a lot of friends and associates cannot accept or handle the change in our personal priorities. We simply do not fit into their social scheme of things and discover ourselves, for lack of a better word, ostracized.

They move on.

We move on.

I’m not sure who coined the phrase. 

It’s one that sounds good. It’s one that holds some truth. It’s also one that has become something of a standard cliché in the woodcraft-bushcraft community, one that is thrown around a lot in the tool and skills department. You know how it works. Somebody says something. Somebody repeats it. Then all the parrots start their parroting.

“The more you know the less you need.”

The playing out of the cliché might get you through a short-term thing. I would not want to depend upon it in a personally chosen long-term or SHTF situation. The latter requires more than a 10-piece kit.

There is a self-reliance side to this that applies to more than the tool and skills department. This is the side that is in our psyche. It is a side that applies to the people department … especially to that part of the people department that moves on because we have become too weird for them to handle.

We move on because we have changed.

They move on because they haven’t.

And we are comfortable with the moves.