iit's Up to You

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/desktop/l...79-994ad81173e0

Front page headline in today's LA Times summarizes a report detailing the stresses on first responders during a 2018 fire. The gist of the article:

"Residents must take responsibility for their own preparedness ande safety, especially when multiple blazes break out."

Folks on ETS are well aware of this, but many out there are not, so it would seem....

It's been a long growing trend that an astonishing number of people take for granted their circumstance, and every day put increasing faith in the state to take care of them should things stray from that status quo. Unfortunately this means if things get really out of shape, they may be surprised to find that despite the best efforts of first responders, they are on their own and ill prepared for it.

There's a certain amount of responsibility on the individual in a society and it's all too often forgotten.

It's perhaps an unforeseen side effect of our times of relative prosperity. It's entirely natural for one generation to want the next to have a better life than they had, but too often that shields them from the realities in which the majority of the world still exists -- with all of the pros and cons that entails. It doesn't have to be that way of course, but it takes a conscious effort and constant vigilance so that the next generation can still have it better without losing sight that civilization as they know it can amount to little more than a veneer and there is still due diligence to be done.

There was a quote about a society being only nine missed meals from anarchy or something along those lines.