Survival and the Paranoid

"One suggestion; you should have the newsletter folded
the opposite way. The large title attracts the attention of the mail people and
people's family. I don't want everyone to know that I'm stocking up and thinking
they can come to me for help. So please have THE SURVIVOR folded backside
out". . .

. . . "I'm also wondering if it is possible to have a
subscription to your publication, THE SURVIVOR, and/or back issues, sent to us
in plain envelopes, First Class, if necessary, inasmuch as we live in a very
conservative community, receiving your publication in a plain envelope would
prevent alarming our local postmaster!". . .

The above two writers may not be clinically paranoid but they
demonstrate the simple inconvenience of paranoia. Both are so afraid of their
own neighbors that they will miss out on THE SURVIVOR. No big thing in itself.
But what else are they missing out on just because they do not dare let their
neighbors in on their preparations?

The term "paranoid" is used constantly but hardly
understood. The clinical definition of paranoid is one with delusions of
grandeur coupled with feelings of persecution. (A lesbian is a mannish
depressive with delusions of gender--pass it on.) A paranoid believes he has
gotten to the hidden truths of matters most important to him. He also believes
that such knowledge makes him dangerous to those actually running things.

Believing there are enemies all around, fantasizing about
plots and such, gives him a feeling of importance, of being in the know. But
that feeling of importance is counteracted by the terror of the realization that
one's enemies will step on him like a bug once he learns enough to be really
dangerous to them.

Paranoids cannot accept our social decline as a result of
climatic change, surplus population, reduced resources, mental defectives and
other natural influences which have been knocking out civilizations throughout
history. No, paranoids see a plot behind the whole thing.

Some group, easily identifiable to the initiated and aware,
is manipulating civilization. Our collapse is imminent. THEY are destroying
everything THEY cannot control when the time comes. Then, THEY will step in, run
up THEIR flag and assume complete control. THEY will then destroy all those who
anticipated THEIR fiendishness.

Of course, these Agent of Darkness have sympathizers in every
neighborhood. THEY are also entrenched in the Justice Department with links to
every local police station and dog pound in the United States.

So the idea of surviving civilization's collapse is actually
incomprehensible to the paranoid. He may play at survival but THEY will win in
the end. Of course, it all depends on security.

To the paranoid, his only chance lies in secrecy. If a few
hundred of the right type can survive, in spite of all the traitors planted in
their midst, good will eventually triumph.

The above does not fit every paranoid but too many hold to
this general pattern.

When I began THE SURVIVOR, an old man wrote to me about his
homemade security system, his advanced age and his ability to survive whatever
adversity might strike. I thought he was such a fantastic old man I wanted to
share him with others as an example of self-reliance in old age.

I printed his letter and address, thinking he would like to
correspond with elders in like circumstances, or young folk needing a Granddad
figure. As soon as he got the issue with his letter in it, he sent me a
screaming note about how I had exposed him to the world, lowered his property
values and generally put him in jeopardy.

I answered saying that no one else within over a hundred
miles of his town took THE SURVIVOR. If his homemade security system was
offensive to a realtor or a potential buyer, it could be taken out with no loss
of property value. Nothing I said mattered. He was going to sue if I did not
take his address out of THE SURVIVOR.

I told him his address would be out of the next printing, he
had no case and he ought to get his head read. This might have calmed him down
except some reader had to go and send him a letter. This started him off again
and we had another go-round.

Nowadays I would just have thrown his letters away, canceled
his subscription and forgotten him. But then I was concerned. I felt I had
caused him anguish and wanted to make amends.

However, once you have gotten on the wrong side of a
paranoid, there is no making amends. I am now a part of the plot.

Anyway, my point is that paranoia is not funny. It is also a
serious drawback to anyone's attempts to survive or to better himself on any
level of endeavor.

Paranoia is simply exaggerated and useless fear. Normally,
everyone is afraid at times. Normal fear leads to normal caution. But when fear
becomes obsessive caution, distrust and universal suspicion, it becomes
paranoia.

For instance, say you decide to become a tightrope walker. If
you are clumsy and awkward and hung over and strung out and normal, you will
fear falling because of a lack of ability. If you really want to be a tightrope
walker, you will go over your shortcomings and eliminate them, thereby fitting
yourself to become what you want to be.

But if you are paranoid, you will disregard any of your own
short-comings. You will reason instead, that the Circus World is controlled by
people who will feel threatened by any success you might achieve. Lest you
become a star in their private world, they will hire someone to shoot you off
that high wire.

So the paranoid is actually a self-imagined winner, beaten
before he starts. If he isn't actually mentally ill, he has an overactive
imagination, putting non-existent obstacles in his own path. Instead of
developing his abilities, taking his lumps and successes as they come, he
relieves himself of the challenge by stacking the deck against himself. He is
really just a cop-out artist.

Usually he has MBD (Survivor Vol. 1, p. 64) which keeps him
in a state of arrested development. He is like a child who imagines himself the
hero of his fantasies but sees his parents and elders as blocks to any successes
he might achieve. An adult with this problem has lofty fantasies but replaces
his elders with various authority and power figures who might feel threatened by
his achievements. So he does not really try to improve his circumstances. In his
fantasies he feels little guilt about being a loser. After all, if he were not
so magnificent and superior, would the forces of International Crud be united
against him?

Every paranoid, however, has sane moments the same as I do.
He realizes that whatever is really keeping him back, he is far behind and he is
not very happy. Maybe something got in his way during childhood which made him
stop testing the system. That is the key to it all; testing the system to see
what one can get away with.

All children do, and if their elders understand and do not
over-punish, the child will have a good idea what he can get away with and how
far to go in finding his limitations. But if a child has overly strict parents,
or MBD, punishment might be so severe, or seem to be, that testing the system is
not worth the effort or it may even seem downright dangerous. So the guy reaches
adulthood, either not trying anything, as an individual, or becoming such a
Secret Squirrel no one will ever know what he is doing.

This would be alright except the paranoid often tries to
impose his own fears on others who share his stated goals. This can be a drag,
especially in my case.

Years ago I saw books hinting at do-it-yourself mayhem. They
promised a lot more than they delivered but suggested that any stronger stuff
would be suppressed. Well, I had dabbled in paranoid gutter politics for years
and did not believe such material could be suppressed. I set out to write,
publish and sell the most outrageous, potentially destructive manual ever
created on this planet. If interested parties had the power to suppress
knowledge, they would suppress the work you know as THE POOR MAN'S JAMES BOND.

Well, first I was talked to by the D.A.'s man and our local
FBI agent. Interesting. Then I was subpoenaed to a Senate hearing in Washington,
D. C. They paid my plane fare both ways, put me up in a hotel room with TV and
let me rave at a panel of bemused Senators. I had ever so much fun and got a lot
of laughs.

There was not one request that I stop publishing the
material; there was no threat to my person, my freedom or to my economic
security.

I have sold about 40,000 copies of the work over the past
five years with no interference from anyone. Yet, I still get orders for the
PMJB which are wrapped in aluminum foil so Federal Agents cannot read them by
X-Ray. Some orders are so coded to protect the identity of the one wanting it,
that the book comes back marked, "Addressee Unknown". Paranoia!

Common sense might suggest that since it is legal for me to
write it, publish it and sell it, a customer can legally own it. Despite the
fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has every been hassled for owning
the PMJB, paranoids around the country consider ordering it the last thing they
will be allowed to do before being led away.

No matter. What really bugs me about paranoids is their
attitude toward THE SURVIVOR. THE SURVIVOR is not an underground publication. It
is not political; it does not advocate any sort of criminality or extreme social
activism. Nor is it pornography. THE SURVIVOR is a family publication. Plain
envelope indeed!!

Anyone really interested in Survival will have to drop all
his paranoid fantasies. The ones who inspired this editorial are too afraid of
their neighbors to have an effective chance at surviving.

Survivalists must examine each fear and eliminate it. There
are enough real things to fear without being hung up on imaginary fears.

Every fear is an unconfronted weakness. I am no longer afraid
of the calamities which face the general populace. I faced my fears and
eliminated their cause.

At one time I thought my mail might be monitored. Instead of
frustrating the monitors by going out of business, I called my postmaster and
had a long talk about it, wherein it was explained to me how mail was monitored
and why mine was not.

I think everyone gets flashes of paranoia where he entertains
irrational fears. But rather than give in to such fears and work out elaborate
habit patterns to reinforce them, one should go straight to the source and
control it.

Such an action not only eliminates a fear but makes it harder
for new fears to settle in. Practice makes boldness and the Survivalist must be
bold