Non-Irrational Prepping

Do you know the old story about sitting down at a Poker Game and looking around at all the other players and figuring out who the chump. If you can't figure out who the chump was - then it is you.

First things first, I am still a prepper.  But, in a sense, I am like my college buddies.  They identified themselves as Mormons, but they were "Jack Mormons".  Hell, I would suppose that, using the original intent of the word, you could even consider me a Jack Mormon.

So, here I am, a "Jack Prepper".

The reason that this screed is being written is because I began to watch a clip by Chris Martenson about how the next twenty years will be unlike the last twenty.  Well Duh.  But I watched only about five minutes before I decided that it was just a sales pitch.  Now, don't get me wrong, Chris says some damn fine things and he is by no means wrong.  It is just that I am not his target demographic.

Watch the video.  It probably has some excellent points about the world that will be replacing this one.  But I shut down at 4:04.  At this point these words were spoken:

The Economy, which is the lens that the crash course looks at everything.

Everything that we wish to see technologically, all of our jobs, and hopes, and dreams depend upon a functioning economy

The picture in the PowerPoint at this time showed an iPhone, a Tesla, a high-speed train, and a smiling, well dressed older blonde lady being pushed into an MRI by a smiling, beautiful tech.  In other words, the dream.
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He segued into what the problems with the economy and showed us horror pictures cherry picked from the worst of Detroit (Black People) and Greece(pesky low-rent, not Aryan).  It was at this point I turned off.

Here is why I can never be a true prepper.  Because a true prepper like Dr. Martenson (I just noticed that he is appending Ph.D. to his name, I assume that just haven't noticed this before) views the world through a different lens.  Dr. Martenson is selling a program that allows people to think that they will retain the goodness of the current setup when the walls come tumbling down.

My view is different than this.  The sanitary white folks will have a lot farther to fall than everyone else.  The hopes and dreams and whiz-bang will become the fever dreams of the past.  A set of fables and myths that will wilt and change over time.  Mr. Martenson is selling the pure smack of prepping.  The idea that if you plan things right, you can keep all that you have and be in a position to sneer at the unwashed.  The Ant and the Grasshopper.

Perhaps.

But the best way to view this kind of things is in the rear mirror.

 "Those who have not known the Ancien Régime will never be able to know what the sweetness of living is" ("ceux qui n'ont pas connu l'Ancien Régime ne pourront jamais savoir ce qu'était la douceur de vivre"). 

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, prince de Bénévent