Life is unwieldy, Pack it in.
Get it? It is a pun…
Oh, all right, I’ll explain it.
‘Life is unwieldy’ – meaning it can be overwhelming or hard to handle.
‘Pack it in’ – (here is the pun) can mean to give up, to let everything go, to not care any more… OR it can mean to travel into a wilderness with only what you have on your back.
The catch phrase started from watching someone coming out of a Youth Hostel with everything they had in the world on their back. I mean everything. Their pack was twice the size they were. It was the most ungainly and, well, unwieldy thing I had ever seen.
There is a saying, pack out what you pack in. Or leave only footprints, take only photographs. Meaning clean up after yourself, dammit!
So, why the name, “SurvivalGene?”
What I consider a Survival Gene is the ability to survive. Sounds moronically simple, doesn’t it? Let me rephrase it, then. The ability to survive in unusual circumstances. Is that better? But what is unusual? An unusual circumstance for you may be the norm for me, and vice versa. What about saying the Survival Gene is the ability to survive abnormal situations.
I’m starting to sound like a philosophy prof..
Many may equate the Survival Gene with Survivalism. I do not believe this is entirely accurate, partially because of the media connotations of the Survivalist movement. When I first started SurvivalGene as a website, I did not believe that we were on the brink of WWIII, had an economy that is to the point that lawlessness becomes the rule, or that we were threatened by our current government into rash acts. Even with the actions of some few against the USA, there are just too many people for the world to suddenly collapse into chaos. These are all conditions that people labeled as Survivalists seem to have in the forefront of their interactions with the rest of society.
Because of extreme attitudes and actions of those who are currently in charge of the USA, I am not sure I am so optimistic as I once was.
I do believe that you need to be prepared for most anything you may come across, and know when you cannot deal with something by yourself.
I believe that we all have the Survival Gene, or else we would not be around.