Introduction
When we look back on childhood, we don’t tend to remember the basic stuff we did every day. We tend to remember the exceptions that broke the normal rhythm. That’s why I remember Fire Drills all the way back to First Grade. I can picture them.
The most memorable emergency preparedness for anyone growing up in the Fifties and early Sixties was crouching under the desk at school to avoid the atomic bomb the bad guys wanted to drop on us. Preparedness often comes with a dose of brainwashing.
Risks are subjective because by definition the bad thing hasn’t happened yet. What’s a bad thing anyway? Making fire such a bad thing has only made it worse.
What we see as a threat and how likely it is to enter our actual timespace zone is one the primary definitions of who we are. It also becomes one of the primary definitions of what a community is.
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I believe very strongly in Preparedness. I simulate the difficult things that I feel could happen. I notice how I feel in my body when I’m doing that and I also notice the ideas that come up. I write them down.
I have been doing this with special frequency and effort since the world wide wait began early this year. What we have been waiting for, supposedly, is a vaccine. But actually, and we all know this, we have been waiting for the inevitable clash of forces that will emerge even more powerfully in early November than they already have so far.
To me, this obvious flash point is why we are not in general Preparedness mode now. We need to see ourselves in Emergency Preparedness mode. The big difference is that steps that usually do not need to be taken because the risk is negligible need to be carefully reconsidered now. Absolutely anything could happen in the United States and other parts of the world fairly soon.
The EvolVR Virtual Community
I am not considering Emergency Preparedness in the abstract. I am considering for the specific case of a three-year old community is based in Virtual Reality, which also exists in an active Discord server and other platforms that connect people.
I am an active member, but I am not promoting the community here. I am promoting Emergency Preparedness. I hope that this on-going planning process will stimulate other thoughts and plans for other communities.
How many members does the EvolVR community have? The boundaries are fuzzy. There is not a registration form or a secret handshake. Thousands of people have been to EvolVR events. Thousands of people have logged into the Discord server. Lots of them come back and keep coming back.
When do you become a member of the community?
When you decide you are one, in this case, so far. A self-defining membership does not fully resolve uncertainty the way a formal initiation does. People can have different ideas about what membership even means.
The founder of EvolVR, Rev. Jeremy Nickel, has kept definitions a little fuzzy because he wants as many people as possible to feel at home. Slowly, different people found it. Then, suddenly we were all in Covid-World and people needed connection and community even more and found it in EvolVR. Growth picked up, a lot.
EvolVR’s growth, at the moment, can only be a reflection of the position of virtual reality in the culture. People who join EvolVR aren’t just looking for connection, they are willing to believe that virtual environments can provide it.
Newcomers are amazed, especially because VR is promoted as entertainment for consumers, not as a form of distance communication that creates social presence of such strength that flow states emerge in conversations easily.
Outside of the restraints of quarantine and relationship baggage in the real world, openness, vulnerability and support happen naturally.
In addition, the single most frequent event in EvolVR is group meditation, in VR. This format is a new hybrid type of meditation that is both individual, since bodies are not co-located, and social, since everyone’s attention is focused on a single source together.
The sense of shared experience is extremely powerful and the check-ins afterward are the future of mental health.
Structure of Virtual Emergency Preparedness for EvolVR
The plan begins from the community’s values. Threats that are significant because they could affect what the community values most need to be itemized and named.
If connection and the feeling of being part of something are what most define EvolVR, threats of disruption to the infrastructure that supports it is one source of risk.
If caring about each other is what happens naturally in the community, threats of harm or death is another source of risk.
People in the community will read and reflect on a document that will look something like:
Most Crucial Things to Prepare for:
- Infrastructure breakdown, curtailing connection
- Someone in the community badly hurt or dead
- Someone in the community in dire economic straits
- [not too many more]
There can be gatherings in VR, discussions on Discord. Strategies will be developed; e.g., Call Trees and SMS Messaging are two ways to prepare for an Internet breakdown.
With a little direction, small task forces will be identified during September and early October, such as a Call Tree task force. Members will be contributing to the community through their efforts but more directly, they will deepen their relationships by working on a project with a few others.
No one knows what emergencies we will face together in the next stretch of time, if any. The most important benefits of Emergency Preparedness have nothing to do with emergencies actually happening. The most important benefits are experienced right away in the form of reduced anxiety, a sense of agency, and more friends.
