Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Heat Nor Gloom of Night
I’ll start off by quoting the unofficial motto of the US Postal Service. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” The quote is from an ancient Persian text dating back to 500 BC. It’s chiseled into the stone entablature of the impressive Greco-Roman central post office in New York. The massive building itself reaches deep into the collective consciousness and conveys a powerful message of permanence and reliability.
Societies establish institutions and cultivate narratives like this to direct the collective purpose and promote competency. These institutions tend to work reasonably well in the beginning because they solve old problems and create new opportunities. The initial cost of forming them is modest relative to the gains. Governments, financial structures, military establishments, corporations, and religions all have these characteristics in common. Successful examples tend to expand and fill the available space around them. At their zenith they can be quite impressive.
This week Texas has experienced statewide disruptions in electricity, natural gas, and water infrastructure due to unusually cold and snowy weather. The region is structurally unprepared for this kind of event because it happens so infrequently. When the electricity goes down the water pumps stop working. When power plants can’t access sufficient water they can’t function properly. Supply chain disruptions create a domino effect and intertwined systems pull each other down. Meanwhile, ordinary consumer supply chains break as roads become impassable, delivery trucks snarl up in highway accidents, and fuel supply shortages emerge. Last minute panic buying overlaps with these events and store shelves are quickly emptied. All of this is completely predictable and plays out repeatedly in each new crisis situation.
It comes as no surprise that opposing elements along the political and cultural spectrum have completely different interpretations of the same events. The Right asserts that socialist central planning, “green” energy, and the current president’s radical agenda are directly responsible for the disruptions in Texas. Only our good friends coal, oil, and natural gas can be relied upon to keep America warm and dry.
The Left insists that the storm is a direct result of climate change and the burning of fossil fuels. In addition, Texas has its own independent power grid that is intentionally segregated from the rest of North America in order to avoid federal regulations.
Neither of these narratives is entirely accurate. Both cherry pick their facts and ignore the way many factors combine in peculiar ways. Neither is interested in conceding that things sometimes just go badly wrong no matter what and society simply has to get through a rough patch in a less than perfect manner.
This guy in Houston spent a lot of time kvetching about how he learned his lesson during the big snow storm. “Never trust the government. They’re just corrupt bureaucrats who lie to you.” I rolled my eyes because he also explained how he had not done many of the incredibly simple things in his own home that would have made a huge difference. He had access to a generator, but never used it and didn’t have the instructions. He had water barrels, but never installed them. He had food from the garden saved in the freezer, but no way to keep it from perishing without electricity. He had an emergency radio, but the batteries were dead. And each of these problems was “caused by the government.”
Houston suffered from record breaking floods during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and experienced widespread power failures and problems with the municipal water supply. Before and after Harvey there were other significant events that should have also been a lesson in the need for household preparedness. This guy is clearly a middle class homeowner with the resources to get ahead of the curve, but he simply chose not to. And he’s very much in the majority.
This family, in contrast, made this video a year ago to demonstrate how they were preparing for a winter emergency in advance of any actual event. They turned off the power to their entire home and tested their plan and supplies in good times in order to be ready for the real deal. They made it a little adventure and worked together with the kids to make the experience fun as well as practical and educational. None of this was especially hard or particularly expensive. Mostly it’s a state of mind and a matter of priorities. These are the people I gravitate towards. If I had to choose these would be much better neighbors than the guy complaining about government incompetence. Whether or not the government drops the ball is beside the point if you yourself haven’t first taken responsibility for getting your own house in order.
Here’s Jack Spirko from the Survival Podcast in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. I don’t always agree with Jack’s specific views on everything, but I respect his dedication to living a resilient life that conforms to his beliefs. He walks the walk which makes his political rants more palatable. Don’t trust the government? Wean yourself off the teat. And here he is in a warm house with a mug of hot coffee calmly describing his situation during the freak winter storm and power cut. He never planned for this kind of snow and freezing temperatures in Texas, but his general level of preparedness was serving him well.
Here in California we’ve experienced repeated rounds of massive forest fires, electricity and natural gas cuts, and all the political and economic drama surrounding the Covid pandemic. Outsiders, not least of all Texans, love to celebrate our failings. But when things go south and crazy stuff happens it’s incredibly difficult for any region to manage the immediate crisis. What we’re seeing isn’t a few isolated anomalies, but a harbinger of future trends. Set aside all the blah, blah, blah about whatever. None of that matters when the lights go out. Things either work or they don’t.
I suspect what we’re witnessing is the end of an era. The institutions that were created generations ago are old and creaking under the strain of a fractured culture. What may have started as a collection of conveniences has become a set of critical dependancies. All human institutions eventually succumb to the usual forces of apathy, benign neglect, greed, corruption, internal squabbles, external rivalries, and ultimately depletion.
I’d prefer to push responsibility down toward the local level where households, neighborhoods, and towns can use their own resources to best advantage to address their own vulnerabilities with their specific natural strengths. This would have to be accompanied by the right to try things that don’t necessarily conform to the existing rules and procedures. But that’s actually the least likely trajectory. Institutions love to solve the problems of complexity and top heavy structures by creating more complexity and additional administrative layers with ever diminishing returns. Governments, corporations, armies, and religions… Same same.
Meanwhile I’m finding creative ways to build resilience without engaging with the authorities much. It’s not a rejection of competent institutions as much as an acknowledgement that the old ones are wobbly and new ones haven’t arrived yet.
