Let’s try this again
I got a lovely comment on a previous post asking if I was not a bit fatalistic in expecting coming hard times. Here is my response.
I’m not an economist or a politician or an energy expert or currency trader or stock analyst or any other thing that might give me some insight into how the wide world operates. I am, however, a woman who has to run a household and feed a family on a limited income. Certain things are a given around here and I think they apply to the bigger picture.
If each and every week I spent more than I earned I would soon be in big trouble. If I tried to get out of that trouble by borrowing money or putting my bills on credit cards, I would soon be bankrupt.
If I had promised to support several elderly relatives and pay for the health care for them as well, then found they all needed care at once, I would be in trouble.
If I needed a job but all the jobs had been outsourced, I would be in trouble.
If I had only one tank of oil and it needed to last me the rest of my life and I found myself with a near empty tank and I had not done anything about getting alternative energy or finding more oil, it would be a problem. If the only people who had the oil I needed didn’t like me much. I would be getting mighty concerned right about now.
If my neighbors were heavily armed and hated each other and were always threatening to kill each other or me I would be thinking that I had a problem.
If I knew that lots of times power outages or snow storms kept me from getting groceries, I would not feel safe with only a three-day supply of food.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the 1811 New Madrid earthquake. It was and 8.5. Only a minimal population density kept the fatalities low. The same quake today could well kill many thousands. Things happen.
I don’t consider myself a fatalist. I’m actually a pretty happy, optimistic person. I don’t think the world as we know will disappear but I do think it will change. I think it will be smaller and slower and we will all be poorer in stuff but richer in time and relationships. I think we might be healthier and happier when we get used to the idea of living with less. Does that make me a fatalist or a realist with a good attitude?
My son and DIL will be home next week and posting might be a bit sporadic. I usually post early in the morning and if we stay up playing music and yakking half the night I might sleep until 6;30 AM!!!!!! How decadent!
December 17, 2010 at 7:41 pm
My answer to the people like that is this. “Do you have home, health and car insurance?”
Prepping is insurance. That is all it is. Insurance for worse times. So it is something that you might need to think about. Insurance…………
December 17, 2010 at 8:26 pm
spot on- look around- changes they are a comin’- would be just silly not to heed and make your plans to keep up- actually I see it as hopeful to be aware and active rather than fatalistic
December 17, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Excellent response. Right on. And worth the wait. Enjoy your time with the kids. Sometimes it doesn’t come often enough. Abundant Blessings.
December 17, 2010 at 9:49 pm
When queried in a similar way about fatalism and the coming changes, I always wonder who was really helped by how we (humans) chose to live the last 100 years. Was it good for our planet, our future (our present), our spirits? My hope is that as the changes happen that we suspect are coming, we take the good that we learned over those 100 years about all sorts of things and make sure it outweighs the consequences of having learned it the way we did. So I don’t yet know if I’m a fatalist or not, because I don’t yet know if how we lived and what we did was worth what we learned. I do know living the way we have over the last 100 years, and especially the last 40 has not been good for most of the people and ecosystems involved–is there anything fatalistic about seeing that change?
December 18, 2010 at 6:09 am
This is a great piece of writing. One is not a pesimist to believe hardtimes are on the way. One simply needs to be looking at the big picture in a realistic way. Love that postitive attitude.
I’ve posted a link to this on my blog as I’m sure my readers will enjoy this also.
December 18, 2010 at 6:43 am
clear reasons for being prepared. Years ago, people thought NOT being prepared was just crazy! lol
A simpler life style is the key I think. Once you slow down and start taking care of your self, it all makes more sense.
December 18, 2010 at 10:29 am
Ask the Mormans if they are fatalistic.
December 18, 2010 at 11:02 am
This is best worded response to such a question that I have ever heard. Do you mind if I copy the text to show to people? I will certainly list the source — I just am not fully out of the closet prep-wise, and am often uncertain how to answer such probing questions.
December 18, 2010 at 12:21 pm
I’m not preparing for the end of the world, I’m just preparing for life.
Things happen every day that could be prepared for: job loss, health problems/disability, inflation, locking your dumb self out of the house or car, a 20 car pileup on the highway that stops traffic dead, winter storm knocks the power out, and a million other things that happen all the time. Without preparation, you will probably live through all of them, though it may cost you money, grief, effort, your home, your retirement. For example if you lose your job and you don’t have any stores, you might have your home foreclosed on and have to burden a family member to take you in. And this is hardly an odd scenario – it’s happening all the time. I don’t even know that many people, and I still know three people for whom foreclosure is, I hate to say it, a probability (not merely possibility). Two will likely have to move in with their parents long after they became adults and left home. The third, no idea what she’ll do, she doesn’t have any family she can turn to. This is not fatalism, this is just reality. It’s not happening because they wished it or because they weren’t positive enough or even because they even thought it might happen (if they had, maybe they would have prepared better?).
Only recently in our oil-glut years have we had the luxury, as a species, to not plan for our survival. (And even then, it’s only the so-called Western world that got that luxury at all). Preparing is not pessimism, it’s the norm. Look back even 150 years ago and tell me how a family would have survived a winter if they hadn’t put up food during the harvest? Or cut and split and seasoned enough firewood to get through the winter? It’s easy to be complacent and say that is all in the past, we don’t have to worry about it anymore since now you can just run to the grocery store or call your oil delivery company – yet, even today, people do get snowbound and freeze to death, people get their cars stuck while looking for Christmas trees and go days without food (one couple I read about ate CRAYONS during their ordeal). What is the drawback of having some power bars, water, gloves and a blanket (not to mention a shovel and sand) in your car? Even if it doesn’t save your very life, it could alleviate or eliminate a 3 day ordeal… or, if nothing else, make things more comfortable if you’re stuck in a traffic jam between exits on the highway and your 5 year old says she’s STARVING.
December 18, 2010 at 10:31 pm
I dont think it’s fatalistic to plan. We live in a volcano/earthquake zone so for us, it’s a realistic expectation,even if we dont factor for peak oil. I am becoming increasingly worried about today’s kids. All their skills and interests are based on electronics, things that will be of no use in a real world. I love my computer, but it’s not the only thing I can do. For our kids and so many others, it pretty much is, despite my best efforts.
December 19, 2010 at 7:46 am
I hope the worst thing that ever happens is that we are snowed in; but, the realist in me says it’s going to be a little worse than that! Either way – I’m prepared.
December 19, 2010 at 11:12 am
Two years ago my dh and I both had great jobs. Mine came with a substantial annual raise & bonus. I still have my job, but the raises … no, and the bonuses … not so much. DH spent the last year delivering pizzas part-time. He recently found a better job, but it’s still part-time. It has been a HARD 2 years; I don’t know what we would have done without the very well-stocked pantry, chickens, garden, and other preparations we’d made for hard times. They’ve allowed us to feed our family and hold onto our house. Some in my family questioned my sanity years ago, but they don’t anymore.
Thank you for the work you do, Kathy. It is so very important.
Glad Yule to all of you! May you be warm and safe through the cold months.
December 19, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I like Sharon Astyk’s “theory of anyway” (I think that’s what she calls it) – how most preparedness activities are things we probably would want to do “anyway,” even if the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it isn’t quite near at hand after all. The self-sufficient lifestyle is good for the earth, good for the pocketbook, good for families and communities, and good for the spirits and the soul. Far from being pessimistic, I find that I have never been as optimistic or fulfilled as I am now that I have started down this path.
January 22, 2011 at 9:41 pm
I just found your blog, I have always been interested in being more “prepared”. I am enjoying going thru your site, and liked this response you posted.