2021-019 | SITUATIONAL AWARENESS & PHONES

OUTSMARTING THE STREET SMART: First thing you will learn in situational awareness is to ditch the phones while you are in public places. Public places are streets, sidewalks, parks, playgrounds, markets, arenas, terminals, malls, department stores, restaurants, entertainment centers, government buildings, subways, skywalks and the like where people converge. Where there is a crowd OR just you alone! It could also mean commuting in a bus, a jitney, a tricycle, a motorcycle-for-hire, a train, a passenger boat and the like where your personal safety and property are vulnerable.

 

First seen in Facebook

November 29, 2019

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I HAVE NEVER SEEN A generation that is so totally dependent on the mobile phone as we are experiencing now. We could understand its use in providing faster communications but, making us a slave in almost all our waking hours of each day of our lives, is complete idiocy! It completely isolates us from our immediate surroundings, from people and community, from our sense of time and priorities, and from our own primeval origins.

 

I have seen several CCTV footages of different victims being gunned down while using a mobile phone, completely unaware of their assailants brandishing a handgun and aiming pointblank. On a lighter side, during family reunions – this is so common, each member becomes isolated from each and every one of them completely breaks off from warm familial contacts into someone, suddenly and strangely, becoming cold and aloof. To each his own piece of the WiFi. 

How useful is a mobile phone for people nowadays? The modern phone is not confined anymore to sending or reading an SMS, dialling a friend, and play embedded games. You can now interact in real-time on Facebook, Twitter and Messenger group chats; use Waze and Google Map while driving; and play online games against another person time zones away. For some, the phone are forever wired to their ears, Bluetooth or not. It had become a personal assistant.

Your world is now confined to that gadget in that palm of your hand. Almost everything you need can be accessed through the swipe of a finger on touch-sensitive glass. Totally dependent on it. You now lived like a goldfish in a glass bowl. A bubble created by you. Your situational awareness degrades and even your response to a situation takes a back seat. 

Your brain could only process one thought or one action at a time. Your attention is confined to your phone and the wonders it gave you. In normal times without phones, your attention expands from 180 degrees to 360º. In this case it is confined to a mere 10º, if both hands are on it; 30º-45º, if you are lost in your thoughts listening to music (close your eyes and it is zero!); and 60º-90º, if you are talking to someone. 

There is one use though that phones could complement very well your situational awareness: Documentation. Recording moving and still images and conversations. But I still wish if you could do that without holding it forever. Maybe, putting circuits in our bodies would solve that because we really need both hands free and empty to fend off aggression!

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WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE BLOG is not just about the Outdoors and Bushcraft. It also encompasses Urban Survival, because providing information on Safety and Security is its paramount obligation to an individual living and travelling in a constantly-changing world. Situational Awareness is its bedrock value to yank and individual out from depending too much on technology.   

Through tutorship, experience, folk knowledge and good old common sense, this writer was able to collect useful information which he is currently documenting in a training syllabus titled, URBAN SUBURBAN SURVIVAL BASICS. He shares some of this information and knowledge in his training sessions; in his social-media account; and in this blog.

Photo Nr 1 from Sanjit Das/Bloomberg/The Washington Post.

Photo Nr 2 from The Irish Times.