Avoiding Tunnel Vision

*GUEST EDITORIAL: A good friend of many years responded yesterday to an offer we made a while back concerning a guest editorial. We believe that Stephen McGehee’s views today are both timely and wise. Thank you Stephen:

My wife and I recently sat down and watched a DVD titled “Obsession-Radical Islam’s War Against the West” obsessionthemovie.com. After we finished watching the video, we spent some time discussing the Islamic threat and the other threats to our current stability. We realized that it is very easy to become fixated on a single high profile threat and lose track of the other threats. We had started to slip into tunnel vision-focusing on one thing to the exclusion of other things that could be just as important.

If you are reading Prudent Home, then you already have a good grasp of the wide range of threats to the way we are accustomed to living. The high potential for economic meltdown is what attracts the most attention today. A few weeks ago, the rising price and lower availability of oil held the spotlight. Sandwiched in between was the threat of Russia’s rising military might. Somewhere along the way was news of threats to our food supply.

We need to make a very conscious effort to avoid tunnel vision and the vulnerability it expose us to. It is perfectly fine to focus on a topic in order to carefully study that topic, but focusing to the point of excluding awareness of other threats is a serious mistake. Be aware of your total situation – not just the latest “threat of the day”.