Weakness and Weaponry

Class-

I don't want to dissuade you or anyone else from making, but I feel like it's high time to point out the obvious irony at play:

When your class was introduced to my work and ideas you presented me with a number of challenging questions about community, self-reliance, and survivalists.

I recall some discussion about the slippery slope of self-reliance, the crazy gun nut survivalists, and the misplaced idealism that leads an individual to thinking that a stockpile of small munitions fire and a couple of AR-15s - or a stake and whip - will aid your survival.

While these tools may be useful for defense and self-preservation in a short term crisis (such as a riot), they can really only take you (and the human race) so far. They also threaten to undermine your survival as the act of creating (and using) such tools of destruction is incredibly seductive.

This seductive power is evidenced by the fact that many of you have now fallen into the trap of creating weaponry. It's too easy. It's also a reflection of one's desperate desire for self-preservation upon recognition of your own physical frailty. While this was one intended consequence of the self-assessment, I think the end result is a non-starter.

Self preservation by force does not equal self-reliance. Eventually your defensive skills will become your greatest asset, and when you get hungry you'll look to rely on those skills to fill your belly. The problem here of course is that the ultimate translation of those skills will move you to violence or the will to control others via the threat of violence.

There will always be someone with a bigger gun, longer whip, or more powerful crossbow. Hopefully, civility will not erode such that you will have to meet that person in a conflict. In the meantime, how practical a survival tool is your whip, or molotov cocktail, or bomb?

Focus on creation, preservation, and hope. What can you build today that will help us avoid the scenario I described above? Your exhibition objects will tell stories about who you are at the very core of your being. What story will you tell?