Reactions to word of the coming cataclysms and Earth Transformation are always mixed, even within the same individual. Few view the thought of their comfortable living arrangements disappearing with joy, even if they consider their current life a burden. Dinner on the table and a roof over their heads during the rainy season is no small thing, and contemplating the alternatives - huddled shivering and wet under a tree or scrounging for insect larva in a rotting log - is seldom comforting. But as if often the case, the outcome is romanticized so that these discomforts are put to the rear, and the advantages of an upheaval brought forward. Psychologists are aware that the more remote a situation, the less intense the persons response. Thus push-push or pull-pull conflicts can develop, with a perpetual dither between the two choices.
Extreme upheavals, where one imagines that the mundane job, the nagging wife, the annoying neighbor, and the lack of opportunity to change ones lifestyle are not only possible but probable, offer a chance to cast all these annoyances and burdens aside. The discomforts that the upheaval would bring are at a distance, thus less intense, but the disgruntlements of everyday life are up close and personal, and very intense. Thus, the upheaval is seen as advantageous, overall. In reality, the clean slate that the cataclysms will bring will carry forward, for most humans, the same baggage they carried going into the pole shift. This baggage is attached to the human themselves, and thus in all likelihood the same relationships will develop, the same commitments promised, the same avoidance of responsibility, the same conflicts with leadership, the same sexual inhibitions - all the old problems will establish themselves in a new setting.
Where a clean slate will make a difference is not in personal settings but in societal settings, as here the direction of human lives is driven quite outside of each humans personal agenda. A man may have chosen his wife and job, to a great extent, and the commitments and obligations he has allowed to encumber him, but where this has been virtually dictated by the community he lives in, these bonds will be broken during the coming upheaval. If he and his wife would divorce were it not for the alimony issue, the utter lack of a paycheck or perhaps the death of the wife changes that equation. If he would spend his time wood-working and building furniture, his favorite hobby, were it not for the time demands of the job that pays the mortgage, this requirement goes out the door when the employer no longer is functioning, the paychecks stopped, and the mortgage a bad dream as the house is destroyed and the banker in any case never heard from!