The issue of "lostness" is all in the head. You know where you are. Just don't know quite where the ground underfoot is relative to where you'd like be. So technically, unless you are stuffed in a duffle bag and dumped someplace, or something similiar, humans aren't lost.

Just misplaced. And that doesn't sound that threatening, now does it?

Actually, cellphones are pretty dumb computers.

So, rather than saying that cells make people dumb, maybe overcomplacent might be a better term?

We are heading at the same point. We are just taking different paths. You mention group think amoung kids. Taking away thier phones and thier musics and all the trappings of that life puts them off balance. Even the symbolic isolation can be powerful. I've found when I have I have to deal with kids, if you can get them outside of thier comfort zone, just a little, they are more likely to learn and think for themselves.

And if they panic a hair at the idea of being behind the ultimate firewall, good. It has made the simulation more realistic, and more memorable. If they think "well, worst comes to worse, there is the phone", they will stop when thier hands get sore while using the hand drill to make fire. Take the illusion of safety away, and you'll eventually get smoke, if not a spark, out of that drill.

Without the crutch, they've got two choices: learn how to be comfortable or be miserable. People like being comfortable. I won't force them to learn. But if they choose to come over on thier own, with the understanding that price of ending your misery is learning how to get yourself out of this situation, they will remember it longer, in my opinion. Just like I won't make them eat, but when they get hungry, they'll catch some grasshoppers like the others did and ask me what needs to be done before they eat them. And I'll explain to them about pulling the heads off, and the discription of a tapeworm will out squimish thier reluctance to basically turn Jimminy Cricket inside out. And reduce thier appitite, so the grasshopers are more filling.

Yes, I learned to swim by being thrown off a dock into a pond. And no, this has nothing to do with why no one asks me to babysit. That has to do with me considering "Enter Sandman" a lullaby.

You are making huge assumptions about people that carry cell phones into the bush. There is a big difference between an educated, responsible person carrying a cell phone, and an idiot with nothing but a cell phone.

http://www.equipped.org/onyrown.htm#without_it

I would assume that you agree that Doug Ritter is an educated and responsible individual, and it appears that a cell phone is part of his "don't leave home without it" gear. He acknowledges its limitations, but I don't think anyone on this forum is saying there aren't limitations.

The idiot that relies on nothing but the cell phone would probably have gone out with nothing in the days before cell phones. People are either smart enough to prepare or they're not. It isn't like they sit down to learn skills and gather equipment, and then say, "Hey I have a cell phone I'm wasting my time." An irresponsible ignoramus with a cell phone, or without, is an irresponsible ignoramus. Not taking advantage of a technology that could be a valuable tool and save lives, because some people are dumb enough to carry nothing but that tool, doesn't make any sense. It falls under the same logic as "people with guns commit crimes, therefore gun owners are all criminals, and guns should be outlawed." The cell phone doesn't make somebody a careless and complacent boob, but their mindset does. You prepare or you don't.

I never said that everyone should carry a PLB either. That is a leap.

BTW People have been saying that the kids today are screwed up for generations, and possibly for all of human history. That generation of kids grows up like every prior generation, and then goes on to say it about the next. IIRC you are into role playing games and Ren Fairs. I played a lot of RPGs growing up and had several of my friends parents forbid their participation lest they become delusional devil worshippers. That made me one of those screwed up kids that they probably talked about. I have yet to sell my soul, and the extent to which I am delusional is debatable, but I have yet to crawl into the storm drains and stab someone while yelling about orcs. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> (I'm sure you remember the Tom Hanks TV movie where his character did something similar and was institutionalized all because he played D&D. Every RPG player I knew hated that movie.)

Please understand, I do respect your point of view. There are plenty of people that head into the woods wearing cotton pants, a t-shirt, and carrying nothing but car keys and a cell phone. I just don't think the cell phone made them that way.

Dave,

Thank your for your service with BSA!

I have been there with the Webelos on overnight camping with a hike in the morning. It will be great for you to expose them to the idea of being prepared for emergencies. Just don't expect them to carry through with anything you tell them. They normally can't buy many of the things you are talking about, they are little kids.

The best you can hope for is to make them all carry whistles and learn to stop if they are lost and blow the whistle three times. If it is not a snack or soda the boys tend to not carry things.

massacre,
That is basically what I am trying to say. I guess I should finish reading the thread before I reply. It would have saved me a lot of typing.

In my original post I never said that a cell phone should be used as a crutch or relied upon as the sole piece of emergency gear.

Yep... one thing I think we are all in agreement on is that going into the bush with only a cell phone for survival is going woefully unprepared.

Gad,
Non lockbacks too dangerious? How did we survive in the scouts 30+ years ago when NO ONE carried a lockback - we had the old "5 blade" boyscout knives, in carbon steel. You learned - if there is pressure on the blade, it doesn't fold, don't pull back on it

Sigh

And my troop never bothered with offical Totting chip cards - when the Scoutmaster/JASM/Sr Patrol Leader said "He's ready" - you were ready , but then again, most of us had a pocket knife we carried every day BEFORE we got to the boy scout level.

That reminds me - time to teach my 9 YO daughter how to sharpen a knife - and to get her a pocket knife for her next birthday. By 10 YO, it was MY chore to keep all the smaller kitchen knives razor sharp, and by 12 or so, ALL the kinves...

Never felt so naked as the month I spent a few back on Grand Jury - no PSK, no knife, no nothing. Gad, we were bleeping helpless (did slip a few badaides in my wallet)

Yep, I see where yer coming from. I carried non-lockers a long time. Times have sure changed, the more modern the world gets, the more dependent people get on things modern. Being safety concious is a good thing though, always remember that.

I do think kids are sheltered too much in American society as a whole as compared to when I was a kid, but all of the new dangers out there dictate that it be done.

You can always make a mistake and pull back on the blade or use your thumb on the blade by mistake. Why take that chance with a child? Why don't you go read what Doug Ritter has to say about non-locking folders?

You're right, MOST of the idiots who carry just a phone probably had nothing 20 years ago. But I've seen people have a bout of the dumbs and leave behind a kit becuase they have a cell phone, people who never would have left it behind if they didn't. Not just a survival kit, but also car kits.

I also think things have been taken out of context, and I might not have explained myself as well as I would have liked. I understood (correctly) Jim's post to refeer to the scouts having cell phones during survival training. I can't stress how strongly I am opposed to that- it is like having a graphing calculator at a 6th grade math test. When they have completed thier training, which would be paralleled by land navigation and other training, I would have been unhappy to see the phones but so long as they were off I could deal with it. But not while learning, no way, same as a hand held shortwave transmitter, GPS or a case of highway flares. If you earned the badges, fine, I can see all of these someplace like the more remote parts of Philmont or if hiking in Alaska. But not while learning.

Part of why I might not have made myself as understandable is I hate and despise cellphones. I don't own one. If I have to have one for a job, the company is either paying for it or it is going to be the cheapest plan possible. I'm not fond of phones to begin with and one that follows you is just too much for me. That might be why I came on strong and lost my point.

As for each generations saying that the one after it is worse, it can be proven. College entrance requirements have dropped for fifty years, and primary and secondary education "way points" have degraded as well.A few years ago, I had the opertunity to take a test that my high school, which has always been ag and tech focused, gave to before you could graduate. In 1927 they required math that (at that time) I hadn't seen in 3 years of calculus with side trips into stats, trig, and discrete. Even with a book of math tables, I could not do it. The average high school graduate can't find the US on a world map, nor can they tell you the names of the countries the US borders on- I can forgive missing Russia becuase there is just enough water that there really is a tiny strip of international waters, but come on, Mexico and Canada should be right on the tip of the tounge. But the discussion of why and what is wrong is a little off topic. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Modern? The Romans made what we would now call liner or framelock folders, with a brass cross spring. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The more things change, the more they stay the same.