When All Hell Breaks Loose (11 page)

Controlling Fear in Others

Be a positive example
. Maintain a calm presence and keep control, even if you feel out of control; inspire courage, hope, faith, and the willingness to keep trying. This is especially important around kids.

Maintain discipline
. Work toward finding and maintaining order and harmony within your family and throughout your neighborhood in a gentle yet firm manner. Search out people's strengths and assign them focused tasks to assist the group. Giving people things to do lessens feelings of helplessness and takes their mind away from the current situation, while giving them a sense of control regarding their destiny.

Exercise positive leadership
. Be firm, determined, confident, compassionate, decisive, honest, and humorous.

Stay alert for early signs of fear in others and, when recognized, deal with them immediately
. Knowing how the people in your family react to and deal with stress is priceless. Be intuitive to the needs of others and offer whatever support you can. Remember that one rotten apple can spoil the bunch.

Cultivate teamwork and mutual support early on
. Perhaps no other experience on Earth will require such a tightly knit and supportive family for success than the survival situation. The group that initiates and maintains a positive mental and emotional outlook, putting all of its efforts and concerns into the welfare of the entire tribe, is an extremely powerful force for staying alive.

R
ecent natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in the United States, have proven how far we have to go in the realm of emergency planning, cooperation, and, most importantly, taking personal responsibility for our own welfare. Local, state, and federal agencies couldn't seem to pass the buck quickly enough for the initial embarrassing, inept response to the hurricane. As people lay dead and dying, some of my finer countrymen and women were busy arguing about who should have done what. People in the midst of the devastation were quick to hand out blame as well, as if taking personal responsibility for their welfare were an alien concept. It was painful to witness.

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

Many people demand outright that someone else think for them, practically throwing themselves at individuals and organizations who will act on their behalf so as to avoid making a personal commitment to their lives. Taking responsibility for oneself has been sacrificed upon the altar of dependence upon others, and insurance companies, corporate health care systems, politicians, banks, and anyone else who stands to make a profit are all too willing to keep up the illusion. This is
not
holding to the spirit upon which our dear country was founded.

The Rainbow Family: An Example of Selfless Service
without the Hierarchal Headache

"W
E GOVERN OURSELVES, RATHER THAN EACH OTHER, BY OBSERVING THE CONSENSUS OF PEACEFUL RESPECT
."

—R
AINBOW
F
AMILY MEMBER

 

Through the haze of self-induced conformity and powerlessness, there have always been those who have bucked the trend and refused to give up their personal power, ideals, and freedom. We typically call them rebels or other labels thrown about by the mainstream media.

One such group is known as the Rainbow Family of Living Light. My rationale for using this, at first glance, "fringe hippy group" as an example should be obvious to those versed in the art of true survival. Unless you have ample
altruistic planning
and
cooperation
to complement your preparedness, you are not prepared, and a
Lord of the Flies
-type nightmare scenario can quickly come to fruition. Unless you are willing to toe the line and do your share in a group crisis—possibly much more than your share—for the benefit of the whole, you might not survive your emergency. Unless you are committed to the welfare of your tribe by having a healthy respect for taking care of your own needs, you're dead weight. In tribal societies the world over, if you were repeatedly a pain in the butt and refused self-correction and responsibility, you were either killed or banished. Centuries ago, going it alone usually meant death. In a strict survival sense, if the single foot protests and will not move and walk forward at the expense of the body as a whole, it must be cut off to save the organism.

I have witnessed the greater Rainbow Family effectively manage more than 20,000 people, some with altered states of consciousness, within a remote wilderness setting, needing no outside assistance whatsoever. Perhaps even more astonishing, they did so using no formal inner hierarchy, as the Rainbow Family has no designated leadership.

According to the Rainbow Family's unofficial Web site, the Family didn't begin at any specific time and has never existed as a formal organization. To quote one source, "In many ways, it is a fundamental human expression: the tendency of people to gather together in a natural place and express themselves in ways that come naturally to them, to live and let live, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us." There are no membership qualifications or fees or dues of any kind. The gatherings are nonaligned both spiritually and politically. They are noncommercial, everyone is welcome, free of charge, and there are virtually no rules other than one of peaceful respect.

The Rainbow Family's unconventional leadership style was initially honed from hard lessons learned at the many megaconcerts and gatherings of the late 1960s and early 1970s, where skills for coping with and caring for the feeding of tens of thousands of people at a time were necessary.

Rainbow "leadership" has no individual leader. There is no leader/follower decision-making process or hierarchy. All decision-making power takes place at a main council that is open to all. All individuals hold equal power and all decisions are made only by unanimous consent. Although tedious at times, this method makes it impossible for authorities, individuals, groups on a power trip, or others with a self-serving agenda to intimidate or manipulate individuals to the disadvantage of the greater tribe.

The council works for the best interest of the whole. Decisions from past councils are weighed to carefully consider the effect of any new proposal, following the self-governing tenets of the Cherokee Indian tribe in eastern America, which made no decision until the effects of that decision were considered for seven generations into the future. The Gathering itself is a participatory workshop in self-government.

Individuals called "focalizers" take the diverse energy among the Rainbows and bring it into a sense of one-pointedness. They offer direction and get people working together. Focalizers are not placed over the group or elected in any way. They are followed, according to one Rainbow person, "because the people trust them, feel they have wisdom, find their own feelings expressed through them, and expect success from following them." If the people lose confidence in a focalizer, he or she is simply no longer followed. Although the focalizers try to facilitate the consensus of the Rainbow Tribes on a local and national level, things get done in the Rainbow world by the voluntary effort, personal responsibility, communication, and cooperation of individuals
—altruistic participation is the key
.

Donations of money or goods come from individuals through kind offerings and elbow grease. Money required to purchase food, medical supplies, postage, photocopies, and other things comes from two main sources: the Magic Hat (direct donations on-site at a gathering) and Rainbow Benefits. For medical emergencies, CALM (the Center for Alternative Living Medicine) is always open and is also the Rainbow Family healing arts center. True to dealing with the cause and not simply the effect, their treatments focus on getting to the root of disease, not merely temporary remedies. CALM is staffed with people from diverse backgrounds such as ex-military field trauma soldiers to regular doctors, nurses, EMTs, and herbal medicine and touch healers.

For many Rainbow people, the following four attributes are hallmarks of the Rainbow way of life and are a matter of pride at gatherings:

Be self-reliant.

Be respectful.

Keep the peace.

Clean up after yourself.