THE END 2
Few of us ignore the narrative in our
head. We think we worked hard to get our
grey matter tuned up and no one is going to tell us any differently. We won’t get into how shallow and misinformed
that is, but suffice it to say “garbage in, garbage out”. If you aren’t constantly challenging your own
assumptions, you can be sure of two things.
One, your assumptions are usually wrong.
And two, someone will be more than happy to come along and profit off of
your ignorance. One thing most of us can
be sure of, thirdly, is that everything we think we know about the Apocalypse
is as wrong as a wrong assumption can be.
We can’t even agree on how things are going to Black Swan us over the
abyss, and as some events are unknown unknowns, the only known is that it is
unknowable. Yet we all go along
listening to the narrative in our head, assuming we know that each event has X,
Y, or Z probability of happening and plan accordingly. Then, having vested ourselves in said plan,
we stick to it like 3M ( one of the few good products companies out there, you
can usually count on 3M goods to perform- and by the way, for the obtuse, they
make glue ). Okay, granted, it isn’t as
if there is another choice in the matter.
What else are we supposed to do?
My main quibble is that folks pick their plans based on convenience
rather than true probabilities.
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How many of you live in big
cities? I know, right? A metric butt ton of you. Most of you.
Okay, that is where your job is, and if you are lucky/smart, that is
where you have worked it so you are living affordably. Perhaps your home is paid off. Life is trade-offs. No one has it perfect. My point is, do you now discount any
apocalypse scenarios that work against you living there? Be honest.
At the very worse, you have to bug out and since you are smarter than
everyone else and can respond with gazelle like swiftness ( you know, like when
you took off as Ebola was spreading to more large metro areas ) you see this as
no problem. Or, you are on a
homestead. You grow all your own
food. Hey, I envy you ( to an extent. I think I’m getting too old to think about
that level of energy investment right now ).
But you’ve discounted the possibility that you can’t pay off your
mortgage, right? To you, the banks
either crumple overnight, your loan disappearing with the Internet Cloud, or
the economy limps along forever without imploding, affording you both a working
currency and employment. To what extent
are you forming the apocalypse to suite your circumstances? Looking at the history of civilization
collapse, never does one thing go wrong.
Everything falls apart at the same time and every disaster possible is
unleashed. More on that next time.
END
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Wow, you struck a cord with me. On a personal level I was prepared in case I got hurt on the job. When it happened, I was in great financial shape for year 1. Year two things started to get tight. Year three was struggle. Year 4 was nearly impossible. My situation improved after year 4, so I got lucky. Luck was just about all I had left by then. Taught me a major lesson about plans in general.
ReplyDeleteThe perfectly Coifed one is correct. As preppers we challenge the common cultural assumption that things are going to get better or be the same into the future. BUT we often get hung up on assumptions of our own. That WE will be wise enough to see the specific black swan coming, that OUR plan will work for that black swan (and hey, it probably would- if that was the only black swan coming). Which is why so many prepper sites recommend a 'cover the basics' strategy - Security (GUNS! guns to sell you here), Food (Freez-dried ice cream to sell you here!), Water (Get your 3 use filter here!) and maybe some other things like fire making (get your camping gear here!) Some of the better ones touch on getting out of debt (buy your dave ramses plan here!) or dealing with the authorities (how to become a useless martyr here!).
ReplyDeleteAnd most of them focus on a handful of disasters and responses at most.
I like the Archdruid and Lord Bisons blogs because they both challenge my assumptions and each others assumptions are diametricly opposed (except that things will get worse).
Of course maybe things could get better- that too could be a loss of sorts for us in the prepper community. Maybe some sort of telepathy gets devised. Or cybernetic enhancement, or fertility reducing plague, or clean free zero point power plans get released on the internet that only requires a ballpoint pen and extension cord to make. Or sudden mind control causing sanity and honor amongst the worlds leaders. Anything drasticly GOOD like the above would mean that we preppers would likely suffer an 'opportunity cost' loss, because we are positioned too conservatively.
OR something unavoidably, un-mitigably bad- like all volcanos (including super volcanos) triggering at once for a century straight of eruption, etc. that NO human can survive- extinction. (though some prepper sites have the 'Get your Jesus Here! ads to go with that.).
As 'Preppers' or 'Survivalists' we have chosen to pay the cost of the trade off for a couple months extra food water and ammo.
But our assumptions that we have spent 'enough' for what we assume will happen, so that we assume we can and will survive- that's layers of assumptions, which means we _will_ be wrong on one count or another. Challenge your assumptions. Take the steps necessary to understand when your assumptions do go wrong, and what to do then.
Merry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteExpect a package Dec.26-29
YKW
MM
we get all our information from other human beings who think their "opinions" should be carved into stone tablets and brought down the mountain! 99% of the time they are wrong and quick to come up with an excuse so we will continue to pay attention next time! God if he exists at all obviously left this part of the Universe long ago and is concerning himself with something entertaining somewhere else. We have become the equivalent of a "rerun". Not fun to watch anymore. No new plot lines or interesting characters. Same old thing. Kill each other and act superior while doing it. blah, blah, blah.......
ReplyDelete8 years ago we moved from a crowded 'burb to a dense forest with very few people but we are still too close to society, I realize now. 90% of our food comes from within 10 miles of us, but I wish more came from my own property. Incidents in the past year indicate this is not the place we should be. I long for isolation, woods, wild animals, air, less people. Intentionally or not, people are the problem, and I have no use for most of them, and even less for the parasites of the gov't. We're locked, cocked, and fully stocked in code orange 24/7.
ReplyDeletePlease excuse me not answering comments lately. Time constraints. I'll try to improve ASAP.
ReplyDeleteNot a problem James.
DeleteYour brilliance shines on !