Theories of Prepping

I suppose that I will need to go over the idea of prepping again.  In the bark past when I wrote under the dark lord's "Blogger" appliance I was all over that.  But times have changed and so have I, so I will need to sit down and ponder.

When I was a prepper in the past, I had a different set of goals and responsibilities.  Times have changed and so have I.  The kids are grown and on their own.  The break that I foresaw came and went (2008) and the powers that be made heroic efforts to fix the break that worked for a while for a select few.

But times are different now.  The fixes that were put in are starting to come apart now.  I got lax on prepping because those fixes did work well enough.  But now I have to figure out what level of prepping is appropriate for someone my age and situation.  I have no desire to enter the almost-paranoid world of the hard-core prepping/survivalist flavor.  It seems to me that can become as emotionally and physically crippling as hanging on desperately to the belief that there will be another save by the powers that be.

I think that the first thing that can be addressed is the basic and quite simple act of figuring out the current status of your needs and wants. This might be simple, but let's not for a moment mistake simple for easy.  Much of your "needs" are actually wants and teasing those two apart can be a painful process.  If anyone says that their physical affluence doesn't effect their mental state is for the most part fooling themselves.

Prepping done sensibly matches real world conditions to personal goals and needs. Again, this sounds easy, but is astonishingly difficult.  The first part of this painful process is an inventory of what you have and the corresponding maintenance costs of those "things".  Once you have this, you can start the process of prioritizing.

Now here is the key to the matter, the painful truth as it were.  Whatever you own also owns you.

Marie Kondo is something to watch.  I can't for a moment think that her and I would ever be close friends, but I think we could reach a detente and even enjoy each other's company for brief periods.  In a sense, prepping can be a way of tidying up your life.  The only thing that you and I would differ on is my inclusion of need to her prescription of "does it bring you joy".  Let's be real here, a prepper may well have to include something that he doesn't really care about but it serves a need.

But even St. Marie must be taken with a several grains of salt.  She has to be taken seriously in terms of approach, but she also is peddling something deadly to a prepper, the idea that you can control your life.  I am thinking that the best that a prepper can do is simplify his life enough and have enough flexibility built into his outlook that he can weather changes to the world around him.  What Marie Kondo does is merely one part of the equation.  Her focus is on the control of the physical environment around you and the maintenance of the same.  I think that the emphasis should be on the control of the desires and wants and letting the physical environment reflect that.

But one should listen to Marie, doing the right thing for a different reason.  Maybe her simple mantra of "does it bring me joy" is the key.  Maybe the Mike's focus on the nature and seat of consciousness is at place here.  Much to ponder, more to purge.