Anne FrankEvery­one loves a scape­goat.

Through­out his­to­ry when­ev­er some­thing ter­ri­ble hap­pens either for rea­sons too com­plex for the com­mon per­son to grasp or just the cul­mi­na­tion of many oth­er events peo­ple as a whole try to seek out some­one, some group of peo­ple, to blame for the prob­lem. Rarely do they see them­selves as a cause (if not the root cause) of the prob­lem. The fault is not in our stars but in our­selves.

Very often the cul­prit is deter­mined to be peo­ple based on their reli­gion, their eth­nic­i­ty, their occu­pa­tion, even their per­ceived wealth. This is not to say that yes, some­times peo­ple of a cer­tain group are direct­ly involved in par­tic­u­lar events than oth­ers (e.g. 9/11 wasn’t car­ried out by Eski­mos or devout Wic­ca).  But much more often it is a group or class of peo­ple total­ly unre­lat­ed to the events (often them­selves suf­fer­ing from the same afflic­tion as their per­se­cu­tors) who the wrath of the col­lec­tive via mob rule comes down on like a land­slide.

Events dri­ve the process. A nat­ur­al dis­as­ter like a flood or storm or earth­quake is dif­fi­cult to pin on a spe­cif­ic clas­si­fi­ca­tion of peo­ple (unless one falls back on extreme reli­gious doc­trine to say it is Heav­en­ly pun­ish­ment). But the now-called “ma- made” dis­as­ters are tai­lor made for such scape­goat­ing. An eco­nom­ic col­lapse, a ter­ror­ist attack, a WMD attack, an out­break or plague, etc. feed right into the hands of those look­ing for some­one to blame.

Some­times a group of peo­ple have already been cho­sen as the source of prob­lems and cer­tain peo­ple are just wait­ing for some event to come along to put their blame and ret­ri­bu­tion plan into action. Oth­ers, nev­er hav­ing con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty of blam­ing some­one when things were rel­a­tive­ly good, can be eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed into believ­ing it is this or that group of peo­ple that are the cause once events go sour.

In a pro­longed “man-made” SHTF event that leads to some lev­el of WROL after the ini­tial shock of events set­tles in a search for those to blame will undoubt­ed­ly  start. Cur­rent events clear­ly show cer­tain peo­ple are already being set­up in the eyes of the world as being the cause for the world’s major prob­lems. This too feeds into dis­crim­i­na­tion and racism already fes­ter­ing in many parts of the world, includ­ing the U.S. It wouldn’t take much to nudge the world over that thin line into full blown ret­ri­bu­tion.

I hap­pen to believe there is a very high chance of such events hap­pen­ing in the not too dis­tant future (don’t like to make time frame pre­dic­tions).  If such should hap­pen, would you be will­ing to stand up for what is right? Will you give aid to those being per­se­cut­ed, attacked, maybe even hunt­ed down lit­er­al­ly?

The sto­ry of Anne Frank and her fam­i­ly in World War 2 is the most com­mon­ly ref­er­enced exam­ple of this (though not the only one; his­to­ry before and since con­tains too many oth­er exam­ples). Start­ing in the sum­mer of 1942 she and her fam­i­ly were hid­den from the Nazis by their friends and neigh­bors. For two years they lived in seclu­sion until they fam­i­ly was betrayed, cap­tured by the Nazis, and tak­en to con­cen­tra­tion camps where most of her fam­i­ly, includ­ing Anne and her sis­ter, died in 1945.

  • Would you offer such help to a per­son or fam­i­ly like that?
  • Would you pro­vide them with food and water?
  • Would you get them med­ical care?
  • Would you pro­vide real defense for them?
  • Would you help hide their iden­ti­ty?
  • Would you take them, or at least their chil­dren, to your BOL or some­place else of rel­a­tive safe­ty?
  • Would you resist the temp­ta­tion of a reward or recog­ni­tion for turn­ing them in?
  • Would you take the risk of pub­lic ridicule, maybe ostra­cized, for stand­ing to their defense?
  • Would you stand up and help them if they were attacked in the street? In their home?

Help­ing to pro­vide for and shel­ter our­selves and our fam­i­lies dur­ing and after an SHTF/WROL event doesn’t change our human­i­ty. Each of us has to make the deter­mi­na­tion our­selves, the risk to our own safe­ty and that of our fam­i­ly, etc. It isn’t an easy ques­tion to wres­tle with.

But what is the good of sur­viv­ing if the price is to offer up your neigh­bor as a sac­ri­fice for that sur­vival? Or the inno­cent stranger walk­ing by?

I offer no easy answer. Just food for thought.

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