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In my last post, I introduced the idea of “psychotechnologies for survival”.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll assume you haven’t read it, and will start from the beginning.
Let’s start with the basic premise that a “technology” can more or less mean “a tool”.
When man tamed fire–boom–new technology.
Hand tools, the wheel, the written alphabet, and the invention of debt are other obvious examples.
Nowadays, we live in a magical world run by computers and algorithms.
It’s worth making the distinction that tech ≠ technology. We’ll leave the discussion of tech optimism/utopianism for another time :-)
For this post, we’re going to continue our exploration of psychotechnologies for survival.
To recap, a psychotechnology is a mental model, framework, process, or collection of techniques that helps you live more fully. Psychotechnologies are especially useful for meaning-making.
My goal for this post is to show that psychotechnologies are also very useful for survival.
In simplest terms, a psychotechnology is a technology that you carry in your brain.
Meditation is a psychotechnology. So is therapy. So is the socratic method, visualization, and the practice of a religion.
Problem solving frameworks, NLP–hell, you could even argue the production and experience of art are psychotechnologies, under this definition.
Living In a Meaning Crisis
In my last post, I mentioned John Vervaeke’s work on the Meaning Crisis in the West.
In his lecture series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Vervaeke asserts that we can use certain psychotechnologies to help us reclaim a sense of the sacred.
History shows us(and Vervaeke artfully lectures) that the industrial and the post-industrial worlds of capitalism have systematically leached a sense of the sacred from public and private life, starting with Descartes invention of the Cartesian grid.
The above thread is a great tweet-by-tweet breakdown of Vervaeke’s lectures.
For instance, people used to honor “the sacred” more widely via religious practice, sharing a commons, living in community, and living in rhythm with the seasons of the earth. In America, many of our holidays align with the beginning or end of harvest seasons.
Many cultures have celebrated the two yearly equinoxes as holidays. For instance, the Christian Easter is derived from the ancient pagan holiday, Ostara.
The world we are currently living in dislocates us from the natural, cooperative relationships of our own bodies, land, and each other, that human beings have been practicing for millennia.
And so we are forced to be resourceful to find meaning in a world where more and more things are commodified every day, and where corporate and state power continue to extract natural resources and find new ways to exploit the working class.
As the prices of food, housing, and medicine climb, as states around the world become more militarized, and as the climate crisis intensifies, we face an impending crisis-not only of meaning, but of survival.
The Word “Survival” Is Scary 😅
I’ll skip the Webster’s definition of the word survival, and instead meditate on it a bit here.
Survival.
It’s worth acknowledging that many communities and civilizations have already experienced apocalypses of their own.
Thanks to the drunken greed of capitalism, this roster includes, well, citizens in practically every country in the world. Global capitalism has already claimed hundreds of millions of lives, and subjugated the rest of us.
If you’re reading this and you live in America, you probably have some sort of chance to improve your survival chances and abilities as our country descends into greater scarcity and unrest.
The word, survival, though.
What does it mean to you?
Here’s what survival means to me:
Survival means emotional, communal, and material stability.
In that order. Good mental health, solid friends, and a supportive community can get you through a lot.
The emotional stability part (i.e. “good mental health”) is where the survival psychotechnology part comes in. With material resources becoming more expensive and more scarce, psychotechnologies are valuable skills and frameworks that are still within reach. We may not be able to go buy a second home in the woods, but we can still acquire practical skills to prepare for the future.
I list these assets in this order because, ultimately, knowledge of self and inner strength are much more useful than material goods, which are finite, and eventually run out.
As one example, there are a lot of emotionally immature, unhappy rich people out there. As another, there are simply not enough resources to go around for us to each build a top-of-the-line security compound, and to have enough money saved for all possible contingencies for ourselves and family members.
This tweet also applies:
Also, to do the greatest good in your community, self-mastery is required.
I realize that this is all a bit abstract, and that I tend to use a lot of high-falutin’ terms here. My goal is to provide concrete examples when I use these random terms and ideas I’ve acquired over the years.
Here are some concrete examples of useful psychotechnologies for survival:
Developing mental toughness (fight training, weight-lifting, bushcrafting, inner work to build discipline and focus)
Developing practices to regulate your emotions (cortisol kills, a clear mind is a high-functioning one)
Developing leadership and consensus-building abilities (survival is much easier in groups, especially emotionally functional and supportive groups)
I’ll give a “hierarchy of psychotechnologies” in the next section of this post, ranked from most useful to least, based on my own homegrown criteria.
To round out this post, I’ll offer some thoughts on how best to acquire useful psychotechnologies for surviving the future, and how to find Communities of Practice that align with your values.
Survival Is a Communal Act
This is a question that many of us in the West, in America, may have never had to think about. Especially those of us, like myself, that were born into the middle-class, are white, and are privileged in ways of class, race, and gender.
So how best to define survival?
Survival, to me, means having a livable income, from a job that affords me time to exist as a human being, aligned with my own rhythms. It means being time-rich, and spending that time with myself and with my community.
Survival is not only material, though. It’s emotional, spiritual, and communal, even.
You can have friends, a roof over your head, a job, and food to eat, and still feel swallowed by meaninglessness, to the point where it kills you.
Another aspect of survival means not being morbidly depressed for weeks or months at a time. (lol)
It means living in a community where the stores are not closing or raising prices every week. It means not living in a place where friends are being constantly priced out of their apartments and having to move out of the city.
It means feeling safe from street violence and domestic violence.
It means having friendships and relationships that are meaningful, constant, and reciprocal.
In my own life, I’ve found that I can take none of these things for granted - not my job(lay-offs, workplace politics, etc), my housing(rents having been rising since the 2000’s, roommate politics–why choose to live alone), my community, my mental health, and more recently, my physical safety(crime is up! in NYC–I’ve experienced it, but have been lucky so far).
Clearly, I am living in precarious times.
How ‘bout you, anon?
I have every reason to believe things will get materially worse, before they get better.
Perhaps I’m trying to persuade you that, it’s time to accept that things are going to “get worse”, or it’s better to spend an hour or two per week preparing for contingencies that seem more and more likely.
A Hierarchy of Psychotechnologies for Survival
As mentioned above, psychotechnologies are psychological.
If technology is just:
The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives.
The scientific method and material used to achieve a commercial or industrial objective.
Electronic or digital products and systems considered as a group.
Then, yes, all three of these apply.
In this post, I’m focusing on the foundational layer of human experience–that of living, perceiving, and self-regulating one’s own inner world.
You could also call it “mental health hygiene”.
Here’s my proposed hierarchy of psychotechnologies”.
A quick breakdown, from the bottom to the top:
Regulation of Self: Mental toughness, the ability to regulate one’s own emotions, the ability to make good decisions under duress.
Relational: The ability to relate to, and connect with others. Conversational skills, consensus building, dispute resolution–all fall under this category. This level of the pyramid is all about being a functional member in your community.
Building Skills: How to make stuff. From bushcraft such as building a fire, hunting, or construction skills, to computer programming, writing, or creating a profitable small business.
Leadership/Community Building: I realize leadership could fall into the “Relational” category, but I’d argue that true leadership and community building is a skill of its own. Being consistent and present as a community leader is different than being a community member. Not everyone is called to this work, but effective leaders can be cultivated in healthy communities.
Visionary: This is the level of the guru or the shaman. The guru or the shaman is not the everyday, handles-minor-disputes-type. Rather, they exist on the boundaries of the community and do the spiritual work of negotiating the community’s existence with the natural and spiritual worlds.
If we look at the “Hierarchy of Psychotechnologies for Survival”, it kind of looks like Maslow’s hierarchy, no?
I would argue that having a healthy ability to self-regulate is the hidden “Zeroth” base to Maslow’s needs.
The abilities to “be tough”, regulate your own emotions, and make good decisions under stressful situations can help you survive life situations in which food, sleep, and/or safety are scarce.
I call these “self-regulation psychotechnologies”, and these are the foundation upon which all the other survival psychotechnologies rest.
Self-Regulation Psychotechnologies
There are some psychotechnologies that are taught to us as children, especially with regard to emotional self-regulation. There’s a whole wealth of information on Attachment Theory out there, but all you really need to know is that being raised by parents that are emotionally healthy results in not only greater cognitive abilities, but better abilities to relate to other humans, and to regulate your own emotions.
If you had a shit childhood, or otherwise struggle with connecting to others and/or regulating your own emotions, the good news is that these things can be learned via Attachment Therapy and other modalities.
Some psychotechnologies for self-regulation can be practiced on your own, like meditation, prayer, visualization, Somatic Experiencing, and using art to process emotion and connect to your inner self.
Other psychotechnologies for self-regulation can be learned much more effectively with the help of a teacher and a supportive community, like AA. Some of these psychotechnologies include relational skills such as non-violent communication and leadership, as well as mental toughness, and social confidence.
Case Study: Detroit D.U.S.T.
There’s an Instagram account I quite like, Detroit D.U.S.T.
Detroit D.U.S.T. is run by a short, charismatic man named Dale Brown, who comes off as alternately comical and deadly serious.
His account went viral last year with a series of short self-defense video posts like the one below:
Brown seems to enjoy acronyms. The D.U.S.T. part stands for Detroit Urban Survivability Training.
In every video, he speaks his tagline, “Intelligent Options Increase Survivability”.
So why am I talking about a viral Instagram account that sells self-defense training, plus a slew of other products? They sells books, merch, and at one point you could even hire Dale Brown on Cameo.
I mention Detroit D.U.S.T. because they make self-defense training fun and accessible.
If my self-defense training isn’t practical, fun, and accessible, I don’t want it.
It’s true that Brown hams it up for the camera, and social media critics constantly doubt the validity of his self-defense techniques.
Now I’m not saying that you can watch a few Instagram videos and you’re good to go in the streets.
What I am saying is that, if I were going to recommend one thing to you that is actionable and practical as far as learning a survival psychotechnology, I would recommend finding the local self-defense gym that’s right for you, and going weekly.
Like any service provider such as doctors, mechanics, etc, you may need to try a few before you find a good one. Recommendations help.
One distinction that is helpful is that there are “hard” styles and “soft” styles of martial arts/self-defense. Hard styles include boxing or Muay Thai where they do “full sparring”. If you have medical issues and/or don’t like getting punched in the face, I would not recommend.
However, if you want to test yourself, it can be very rewarding. Use your intuition to decide if the gym is a supportive, healthy place, or not.
Soft styles include many Aikido dojos, and general self-defense classes. These gyms are useful to introduce the practitioner to the art of self-defense. As the practitioner progresses, they can choose to spar at higher intensities.
The right self-defense gym helps you build mental toughness, self-defense skills, is good exercise, and plugs you into a supportive community in your neighborhood.
I’ve done martial arts since I was a child. Then wrestling in high school, boxing and Jeet Kune Do right after, and boxing and Aikido off and on since then. I’ve also tried Krav Maga and BJJ. So far I’ve found wrestling and boxing the most useful in developing confidence and self-defense skills, but your mileage may vary.
I like Detroit D.U.S.T. because he appears to be active in his local community. Dale Brown seems to be well aware that self-defense is not just self-defense–it’s a means to stronger communities, and a safer, happier world.
Sure, his videos can be a bit silly, almost to the point of satire. I think what he is doing is useful in raising consciousness about self-defense, and it’s utility.
I would love to see more community-based self-defense training gyms like these, ones that have a sense of media awareness, and don’t take themselves too seriously.
Another example of emerging self-defense communities are the various Socialist Rifle Association chapters that are springing up across the country. If you’re curious about finding a community to learn about self-defense and the use of firearms, they’re another option to look into.
In Closing
We don’t need to be stoics to survive in whatever world is foist upon us in the coming years.
One thing I am not proposing in this post is going into the woods to become a feral human and learning to craft your own arrows and hunt wild boar.
What I am proposing is that we can expect harder times in the near future, and that it will inquire increased toughness and fortitude. We will need to rely on each other. It will take not only the sharing of material resources, but the cultivation of survival psychotechnologies, shared and taught on a peer-to-peer basis, and from community to community.
If you’re interested in thinking about this together, drop me a line!