Roadmap to Resilience - Part 2 - Responsibility for Your World

Seldom do people make decisions in isolation, they seek information, knowledge and opinion of trusted sources to inform what their options. We’re learning that counter to the neo-classical economic thought, humans make decisions on emotion and later use logic to justify it. We used to believe that decisions were made at the margins, incremental and always with our own best interest at heart. We are wildly difficult to predict. 

The roadmap’s part one informed that society functions on the back of 10 sectors of critical infrastructure (CI), that emergency management (EM) as a public function intends to support society during disruptions and that a preparedness gap exists between hazard induced needs and the government’s capacity / capability. Embracing these ideas is key to moving along the pathway to resilience, followed in this part by the acceptance of responsibility for outcomes and ourselves. We posit that once responsibility has been adopted and improvement is underway, we can consider the types of preparedness we choose to adopt. 

First, as argued by the stoics and modern philosophers, there is little we actually control, but that is precisely enough. We have absolute control over two areas, what we say and do. Everything else that occurs in the world is a function of what others say and do, over which we have nominal influence, but management of how we choose to respond. This frame is the key to successful preparedness, we’re not trying to change the world, bring in new policies or governance systems, the goal is to become more prepared to navigate that which we do not control, through controlling what we can. 

Personal responsibility for your outcomes means you acknowledge that whether or not external assistance may exist, it is ultimately you who are responsible for how your life proceeds. Win or lose, it is your fault. This is not an argument for isolationism, far from it as we will address in parts 4 and 5, but that you first must accept that if you are to lead through chaos, you must first accept the leadership role. If you choose to not assume command and control of your life, then you are a dependent of someone else - family, community or the government. You will be counting on an external force to provide for your basic needs when calamity strikes, and if they fail to do so, you will suffer. The choice is binary, looking at the incredible person in the mirror, are you willing to lead your life, by accepting responsibility for your outcomes? If the answer is yes, listen to this episode.