What Is Solidarity Prepping and Why Does Their Approach To Collapse & Survival Use Polychronic Thinking?

Our foray into Solidarity Prepping is a learning journey. We are trying to equip ourselves to live humanely during the ecological collapse and the collapse of human society. We have discovered already that being in community is the fundamental requirement. Now we must learn what that means in practice.

Based on reports from Kollapscamp and some wider reading, I’ve identified five “elements” that go into the practice of being prepared—as a community—for disruptions in the systems that we usually rely on:

1. Emergency Preparedness: Learning skills, collecting supplies, and making plans.
2. Connection to Nature: Through learning knowledge-based survival skills.
3. Community Networking: Finding and participating in existing local networks.
4. Mutual Aid: Acting in concert for the material benefit of other people.
5. Disaster Relief: Responding to catastrophic events with Mutual Aid.
6. Self-defence & Anti-Fascism: Protecting our community from its enemies.

I added Connection to Nature through learning knowledge-based survival skills because these skills change how we think about our environment; Learning Wilderness Survival skills actually alters the structure of the brain through Neuroplasticity. By continually demanding spatial navigation, emotional regulation, and physical coordination, your brain physically recognises and strengthens neural pathways.

• Hippocampal Growth: Spatial learning and memory, such as navigation, compass use and map reading, are primarily governed by the hippocampus, which has been shown to grow in size or density.
• Stress Inoculation: Surviving in unpredictable conditions in nature trains the prefrontal cortex to override the fear-based impulses of the amygdala. This builds emotional resilience nd structural tolerance to stress.
• Enhanced Pattern Recognition: As you repeatedly train in nature, your brain builds an enormous database of cues (weather patterns, tracking signs, and terrain hazards). This creates faster, automatic cognitive responses in high-stakes situations.
• Sensory Restoration: Time spent in the wilderness physically dials down threat scanning, quietens rumination and switches the brain from a mode of constant modern-day cognitive overload to restored, relaxed attention.

Solidarity Preppers who learn nature connection through knowledge-based survival skills learn Polychronic thinking. Polychronic thinking is crucial in understanding nature, our place in it, and our responsibility to it. Polychronic thinking is a core element of indigenous ways of knowing; it is the exact cognitive framework required to master true wilderness survival.

While Modern Western Monochronic societies force the brain to process tasks sequentially, linearly and by the clock, the wilderness (Nature) operates through fluid, simultaneous and ecological loops.

The deep intersection between polychronic time, indigenous worldview and survival skills manifests through specific cognitive shifts.

1, Simultaneous Task Processing vs Linear Focus In survivalism

• Monochronic: Focuses on one task at a time: We will hike for 2 hours, set up camp, look for firewood and then cook.
• Polychronic (indigenous) approach: Multiple awareness streams run simultaneously: The survivalist, while walking, is assessing the terrain, reading the tracks of animals, listening to alarm calls from birds, feeling the wind on the face for direction, temperature and other qualities, scanning for forage, tinder wood and looking out for the stragglers in the party.

2, Ecological Time vs Clock Time

• Monochronic Approach: Dictated by rigid artificial deadlines: We must reach camp by 5pm
• Polychronic Approach: Dictated by a relationship with the environmental thresholds. Time is defined by natural shifts- angle of the sun, changes in temperature/humidity/ behaviour of insects. Survival depends on adapting to the environment’s timeline, not imposing a schedule on nature.

3, Non-linear causality and “Everywhen”

• Monochronic: Time is a line moving from past to future.
• Polychronic: Time is defined by natural shifts: time is circular, spiralling, and deeply historical. Everywhen is an indigenous concept of time all at once: today/tomorrow/yesterday: now in terms of landscape. In survival, the land’s past affects its now and its future. It is history and prophecy in the same space.

4, Relational awareness over Transactional output.

• Monochronic Approach: Nature is viewed as a series of isolated objects: resources for use: wood=fire, river=water.
• Polychronic Approach: Views Nature as a living web of interconnected relationships. Indigenous knowledge teaches that you do not just survive against Nature; you participate in it. Success relies on understanding the complex relationships between the cousins, how one element interacts with another. Reading the environment and the wildlife in it is the survival skill.

Features of Polychronic thinking in wilderness survival skills are a distinct advantage over linear thinking processes.

• Task Overlapping: For example, jobs are not done sequentially: you can gather tinder while scouting for a good camp, note positions of good firewood and dry kindling, collect more firewood once the fire is going, forage constantly on the move.
• Dynamic Prioritisation: You respond to the conditions around you and the weakest member of your group.
• Mental Flexibility: This prevents the dangerous psychological trap of “tunnel vision”, helping the practitioner remain observant of the natural world around them.
• Polychronic Thinking: Is indigenous thinking. It’s how the hunter/hunted percieves nature and stays alert but relaxed.

Decolonising Cognition

When you learn ancestral or wilderness survival skills, you are actively decolonising your cognitive habits. You shift your brain out of the stressful, hyperfocussed “tunnel vision” of modern scheduling and open it up to the wide-angled, multi-layered situational awareness that kept humanity alive for millennia.

The Brain Is An Antenna, Tuned To The Frequency Of Nature

The concept of the brain as an antenna is a fascinating metaphor that bridges neuroscience, quantum physics, and philosophy. It describes how our minds act as receivers rather than just generators of thought, continuously tuning into the natural world, electromagnetic fields, and the broader universe. In the realms of philosophy, metaphysics, and even modern quantum neuroscience, some researchers explore whether consciousness originates from a non-local source, with the brain acting as an interface or receiver. This perspective suggests that human awareness is tethered to a larger, interconnected web of existence. The metaphor extends to how we direct our focus. The brain can be tuned to different psychological and emotional frequencies. Studies suggest that consistently tuning into Nature helps the brain process information more optimally, protecting against depression and supporting overall well-being.

In Nature, the Human Brain produces Serotonin; research shows they intersect in how our brains process environments, focus, and time: The Serotonin Connection

• Time Perception: The serotonergic system directly modulates internal time perception. Higher serotonin levels tend to accelerate internal processing speed, influencing how you experience events second-by-second.
• Attention and Locus: The gene encoding the serotonin 1A receptor (5-HTR1A) influences your ability to focus and adapt to changes in your environment
• Cultural Adaptation: Research suggests a link between the 5-HTR1A genetic variants, serotonin function, and how individuals adapt to either monochronic (single-task, scheduled) or polychronic (multi-task, field-focused) cultures.

Polychronicity as a Trait

• Cognitive Flexibility: Polychronicity is the stable personality trait of preferring to juggle multiple activities.
• Positive Affect: Engaging in polychronic behavior has been shown to increase positive affect and reduce psychological strain in certain environments.
• Biochemistry: The ability to effectively shift between task-juggling (polychronic) and single-tasking (monochronic) is thought to be stabilized by dopamine and serotonin signaling pathways in the brain.

New-Age Neo-Shamanism: Ritualised approaches to Connection with Nature. Rituals Are Regarded as Monochronic and are often egotistically controlled.

• Sequential Flow: Rites of passage, baptisms, and ceremonies progress step-by-step. Each phase (e.g., opening a sacred space, the main act, and closing) is completed before the next begins.
• Focus on the Present: Because participants focus entirely on the task at hand, they exclude normal daily distractions.
• Punctuality & Agendas: Traditional ceremonies like weddings require guests to arrive on time and follow a strict schedule so symbolic moments can occur without interruption.

Polychronic Rituals: More commonly found among indigenous/ traditional cultures:

• Fluid Timelines: Start and end times are treated as guidelines rather than strict deadlines. The ceremony naturally begins when the key people and community members have arrived and are ready.
• Simultaneous Activities: Rather than progressing through a linear agenda, multiple things happen at once. Cooking, eating, socialising, and ritual proceedings often overlap. These can seem chaotic, and some ceremonies include elements inducing fear in participants.
• Relationship-Focused: The primary goal is building and maintaining social harmony. Interruptions, welcoming latecomers, and accommodating the changing needs of the attendees are embraced rather than viewed as disruptions.
• High Adaptability: If a logistical issue (like a delayed guest or an unexpected event) occurs, the schedule is easily modified to keep the experience positive for everyone involved.

Polychronic time only works in societies where time is fluid and not linearly fixed

Polychronic time cannot be applied to Shamanic Practitioner philosophies that reject learning survivalism. Survival skills which are learned freely, applied with strict foraging rules and love of the earth, all living beings, tolerance of all choices people make about their identities, people who plant more than they pick, and I don’t mean on their own land or garden. Survival practitioners who wait to share their skills until they have been tested over a period of time in the toughest conditions. Understanding failure is an important aspect of learning survival skills. Failure teaches persistence, perseverance and adaptation. Practice and failure help overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect in Survival Skills, which is common and potentially lethal. Prejudices and expectations are obstacles to learning survival skills in deep connection with nature. Survival skills coupled with mindfulness (observation of the breath only at the entrance of the nostrils). Not sat, but done all the time: when doing tasks and learning survival skills. Mindfulness focuses the mind and allows us to observe how breathing is an early warning for the instincts. It’s sometimes difficult to read our instincts: fear & anxiety quicken the breath. Mindfulness allows us to return the breath to slow, calming our anxiety, but heightening our awareness of the environment and what our instincts may be telling us, a calm mind observing can determine if instincts are correct.

A spiritual practice that is free does not hinder the mind with worries about value for money, or affordability

Money and the commercialisation of survivalism and spiritual practice break our relationship with the divinity of nature. Commercialisation is an obstacle to learning; the expectation of value for expenditure gets in the way of understanding what you are learning. S. N, Goenka, who brought Vipassana Meditation to the West from Burma, insisted that Vipassana was offered free, so that it was accessible to all, suggesting that those who could afford it could donate money, and those who couldn’t could serve, cooking for meditators. A spiritual practice that is free does not hinder the mind with worries about value for money or affordability. Commercialisation turns your practice into monochronic space, and time constraints will force important aspects to be disregarded. It takes time to learn engaged mindfulness. It takes time to apply mindfulness to survival skills; it takes time to understand that commercialisation is the application of capitalism to something which originated outside capitalism. Commoditising spirituality, nature and survivalism have been consistently criticised by indigenous people who point out that they don’t do this.

Polychronic Time Illustrated

The illustration below is an attempt to visualise polychronic time, in relation to crossing a landscape, but this is like looking in monochrome, because what is missing is the practitioner’s interactions with nature and people. Polychronic time is non-linear and fluid. Tasks intersect with friendships, relationships, plants and processing. For each person, the experience of polychronic time and psychology is different, and this is dependent on their talents and other distractions which might be overriding their activity. If it takes 4 hours a day to procure food, the rest of the time is cultural time, time alone, ceremony time. The concept of polychronic time & psychology develops in the learning of a single skill like making fire, because when we go foraging for materials we are also finding useful things like food. The prosocial activity of cooperative foraging is that we are foraging for tinder, food, firewood, and kindling all at once in a group. Each person is carrying an item, but everyone is looking for everything and works together on the task; everyone maintains their awareness and is doing mindfulness; the party stops, looks and listens and moves on.

Survival skills need to be learned pro-socially in cooperative groups. The emphasis is that the success of one is dependent on the group working together to support each other to succeed. Each member of the group has a new skill which they learned together and supported each other to learn.

Is Polychronic time spiral time? Yes and no.

Spiral time is too rigid a concept; it doesn’t allow for orphaned spiralled moments shared with an animal, plant or human. These animate and momentary interactions are observable; some people say those marks in time are observable by experienced Aboriginal trackers.

Polychronic Time is chaotic, it is driven by multiple relationships, rather than scedules, timetables and deadlines. The second illustration below is a better representation of how Polychronic time works for a survivalist. Polychronic time requires active engagement with nature.

“Polychronic time, by contrast, is characterised by several events happening simultaneously. In addition, according to Hall’s theory, interpersonal relationships are highly valued in polychronic cultures. Time is less tangible, and emphasis is placed on the involvement of people and the completion of transactions rather than on schedules. Multitasking is valued. Examples of polychronic cultures are Latin American, African, Arab, and Native American cultures. Their perception of time is considered to be more connected to “natural rhythms,” and to “the earth” and “the seasons.” This makes sense when we consider that natural events can occur spontaneously, sporadically, or concurrently.

Polychronic cultures view time as being more flexible. Because life isn’t entirely predictable, scheduling and being precise are seen as simply not that important. In addition, relationships with people are valued more than staying on schedule. More value is placed on “being” than on “doing.” Different cultural perceptions of time can lead to conflict, especially in the business world.” https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/everything-time-monochronism-polychronism-orientation-6902

In reality, polychronic time is more likely to appear disordered,like in this image, because of the timelines of social relationships between the practitioners, other people, plants and animals.

Birdsong, subtle climatic shifts and weather play an important part in understanding the landscape and what is going on at any one moment. Our perception changes as our connection to nature deepens. Anyone who says nature connection is sitting under a tree and asking it questions is offering a homo-centric view of nature and our place in it and clearly does not seek to deepen any connection with nature for themselves or their paying followers. This is deeply unfair, especially if their Guru is going on a tirade against anyone suggesting people develop a deep intimate connection to nature

Polychronic rituals are what we in the West would regard as chaotic. My familial experience has been Asian Sufism. Sufi rituals like Zikr and Dervish meetings are commonly full of interruptions, late arrivals, small children wandering among the congregation, multiple things all going on at once, for the uninitiated these ceremonies seen chaotic and unled. They are indeed unled, everyone knows and understands the order of ceremony, they are family devotional events, relationships are renewed, new babies are passed around the extended family and welcomed into the community Sufi ceremonies are 1000s of years old, they are mature, they reflect the egalitarian culture of Sufism. The Sufi Dervish displays which are laid on for tourists in Konya and other parts of Turkey.

Experienced survivalists operate on polychronic time. Because it is a more efficient way to gather (forage). Foraging isnt just for food. 80% of the plants I have contact and deep relationships with are not used for food.