Part of Something

The past couple of days sitting on the porch and watching the world go by has got me to thinking about myths and societal goals.

We are pretty empty here. Somehow in the past thirty or so years, the myth in the US has somehow been reduced to living large in economic terms , a stagnant belief in American exceptionalism, and an strong conviction that "It can't possibly happen to us". In a way, preppers seem to know this.

Not that we are smarter, or better looking, or more spiritual. Instead, I think that we merely have sensed this lack of a common purpose that defines a working society and our gut instincts tell us that things are going to go tragically wrong. So prepping is a means for us to bridge the gap into where we are going next. In our prepping, we all realize that when things have gotten to where they are heading, we won't be back in the good old days of plenty, instead, we will be in a different place entirely.

While I was woolgathering on the back porch for the last couple of days, I tried to imagine the directions that we would move as a society. None of them looked all that tasty. None of them came to fruit in my lifetime as they all required a bunch of societal changes that wouldn't go down easy. All of them required the bulk of the American population to grow into being adults and that is not going to go over very well.

Prepping necessarily involves a focus on stuff. Dried beans, ammo, firestarters, fuel and the like are firmly in the "stuff" category. I would tell you all to keep plowing ahead on that facet of the project. You also need to start figuring out a new way of doing things and a new set of societal myths. Because we ain't going back.