04-02-2022, 05:58 PM
PITA POV Rant Warning!!!! 
The whole "prepper" think always confused me.
1. Why wouldn't you want supplies around of stuff you need? Do you like going to the store everyday?
2. Knowing how to do stuff is a default setting or should be. How can you be an adult with any dignity when you require someone to do everything for you?
3. Knowing your neighbors used to be the norm. Looking out for one another in the neighborhood was they way it worked.
4. If you look at modern human history (around 200,000 years or so), humans have always been preppers. That's how humans survive. We are not terrific at much else except tool use.
In my lifetime, I remember everyone having a garden. Some were better at it than others but everyone traded. Lot's of people went hunting and fishing. Heck, mushroom time was a big deal. Lot's of people canned. The canned goods were even exchanged as gifts sometimes. Everyone on my street knew each other. Not that everybody was sane or pleasant, but they all knew who was who. The kids could go up to the houses and ask for help in an emergency. An individual could feel some sense of self competence even from a young age.
The psychological gap between a normal, everyday situation and a crisis was small. The conversation of the day did not make out every bump in the road as an apocalypse. Grandma and Grandpa who lived through the depression were always telling stories so you knew what the possibilities were. The concept was not unfamiliar.
Today, I do most of those things above but I'm made to feel like a nutter. A weirdo. I'm Alex Jones' cousin for wanting a freezer full of meat. An entire industry has grown up around prepping. Instead of just doing what your ancestors have done for a thousand generations, now you can purchase your way out of incompetence while remaining fully incompetent. I say that because it's all in the head and heart. Your survival depends on how you think and feel, not how many pallets of freeze dried mango's you have in your basement.
Today if the internet goes out or there is not a Starbucks nearby, it's the end times. The flu can shut down civilization. The weak wear their confusion and inability as a badge of honor. That mindset is very unhealthy and unsustainable. It is even bad for folks who are more independent because the hordes will be all over them.
The whole "prepper" think always confused me.
1. Why wouldn't you want supplies around of stuff you need? Do you like going to the store everyday?
2. Knowing how to do stuff is a default setting or should be. How can you be an adult with any dignity when you require someone to do everything for you?
3. Knowing your neighbors used to be the norm. Looking out for one another in the neighborhood was they way it worked.
4. If you look at modern human history (around 200,000 years or so), humans have always been preppers. That's how humans survive. We are not terrific at much else except tool use.
In my lifetime, I remember everyone having a garden. Some were better at it than others but everyone traded. Lot's of people went hunting and fishing. Heck, mushroom time was a big deal. Lot's of people canned. The canned goods were even exchanged as gifts sometimes. Everyone on my street knew each other. Not that everybody was sane or pleasant, but they all knew who was who. The kids could go up to the houses and ask for help in an emergency. An individual could feel some sense of self competence even from a young age.
The psychological gap between a normal, everyday situation and a crisis was small. The conversation of the day did not make out every bump in the road as an apocalypse. Grandma and Grandpa who lived through the depression were always telling stories so you knew what the possibilities were. The concept was not unfamiliar.
Today, I do most of those things above but I'm made to feel like a nutter. A weirdo. I'm Alex Jones' cousin for wanting a freezer full of meat. An entire industry has grown up around prepping. Instead of just doing what your ancestors have done for a thousand generations, now you can purchase your way out of incompetence while remaining fully incompetent. I say that because it's all in the head and heart. Your survival depends on how you think and feel, not how many pallets of freeze dried mango's you have in your basement.
Today if the internet goes out or there is not a Starbucks nearby, it's the end times. The flu can shut down civilization. The weak wear their confusion and inability as a badge of honor. That mindset is very unhealthy and unsustainable. It is even bad for folks who are more independent because the hordes will be all over them.