Community resilience and individual resilience are intertwined.

The 'cowboy attitude' of every man for himself with a gun in each hand is more fiction than reality, mainly because it simply doesn't work out very well. For those who have read western (cowboy type) novels, there have been references to a gang of outlaws 'treeing' a town, but guess what? It's never happened. And the reason it has never happened is because the regular people refused to allow it.

Society exists because the individual can't do everything himself. He can't stand guard, sow/care for/harvest and preserve the crops, hunt for meat, treat the water, etc all by himself.

Even in our 'wild' west during the westward migration (such as the days of travel over the Oregon/Calif Trail), the people helped each other. Oxen and wagons would get stuck in mud, another family would hitch their oxen to the stuck wagon and with the two teams and men pushing, they would get the wagon out. Parents died of cholera and accidents, and other people picked up their children and took them along with them.

It is individual self-preservation that recognizes our inability to do it all ourselves. It has always been a matter of working together or failing, or dying, or dying out.

"United we stand, divided we fall" is more than just clever words. It's actually the bottom line.

Sue