Hearing lots of talk lately about preppers and the
reality show on the National Geographic Channel called “Doomsday Preppers.” I suppose it’s crass and unfair to mock or criticize
a show I’ve only heard of and never actually watched, but, knowing that the Florida
statutes against crass unfairness are pretty weak, I will surge ahead. And, after all, how seriously am I supposed to
take a show that apparently refers to an upcoming “Doomsday?”
I’d like to know first of all what do the preppers
expect is going to bring about Doomsday next week, or at some other specific
point in the foreseeable future. There
are those, of course, who fret about economic collapse, and we did have an
almost-collapse at the end of the Bush administration and a real collapse in
1929. But neither of those scenarios
brought about “Doomsday.”
Or could it be that preppers are expecting climate
change to do us in? Certainly we have
suffered catastrophes in the face Katrina and Sandy, but each of these was
local in its effects and neither came close to a Doomsday worthy of the name.
I notice that preppers talk about being “off the
grid,” which, I gather, means living without the support of such vital utilities
as water, electricity and HBO. I
actually can envision a catastrophic breakdown of utilities, but again, such
breakdowns in the past have been localized and always temporary. We have never come close to seeing the power grid
for the entire country go dead as a doornail leaving us at the mercy of the
elements for weeks, let along months or years at a time. In fact, to my knowledge, such a thing has
never happened in any country, ever.
So, if Doomsday scenarios based on past
experience seem so unlikely, what is it that motivates the current prepper
movement? I think the main factor is
the American obsession with (and delusion about) individualism, an obsession
which breeds among some citizens a longing to feel they are in control of their
own fate. Of course, we are not in
control of our own fates. The one thing
that has characterized humanity over the past 500,000 years or so is our
super-sociality, that is, our absolute need for cooperative interactions with
others. This need and the complementary
drive to assist compatriots in need are features of human nature that not even
our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, share.
We are nothing if we are not deeply and thoroughly
embedded in the thoughts and actions of our fellow Homo sapiens. So what’s the point of imagining that in some
not-too-distant future we will be thrown back on our own individual resources,
forced to produce our own food and provide our own power and plumbing facilities? In the final analysis, whatever fate awaits
us, it will surely involve our continued negotiation of relationships with our
neighbors, and with those institutions, including government, that seem to
survive no matter what disasters befall us.
Doomsday, in other words, is no more reasonable a
scenario than was the Y2K collapse that was supposed to accompany the turn of
the century. But like the Y2K obsession
that gripped so many Americans back then, the current prepper fantasies are
nothing more than delusional notions about self-reliance and a “you’re-on-your-own”
worldview that ignores the fundamentals of both human nature and human history. For most preppers, I strongly suspect they
also include a bonus idea along the lines of, “I’m smarter than most of my
fellow citizens, and when the Great Collapse comes, they will have to admit
this when they see how I am prepared and they are not.”
After a quick search on the web I came across a
site called Backdoor Survival that included a recent post titled “11 Important Skills For Preppers.”
This posting was revealing to me. I was surprised, for example, that the author,
Gaye Levy, refers to the prepper survival scenario as likely to be
temporary. Under the Perseverance item
(number 4 on her list) she writes that “[Perseverance] will allow you to focus
on the future – and hopefully better times – rather than staying stuck in the
moment when all may not be perfect.”
In other words, Ms. Levy’s notion of Doomsday, is that its effects are likely to be temporary. It really will be a Doomsday or Doomsmonth, not a Doomscentury or Doomseternity.
Also interesting is her reference to “the community.” Under Basic Fix It Skills (8), she writes that
“Plumbing, welding, electrical and general carpentry skills will always be in
demand and will give you a marketable skill that will make you valuable to the
community.”
So now I’m finding it harder than ever to grasp the Doomsday concept. If your basic prepper sees herself as dealing with electricity and welding equipment in the context of a community, what is it that has vanished in the Great Collapse? The mayor? The police department? The school board? But not the commercial distribution system that gives one access to welding equipment and electricity-generating equipment along with the fuel and spare parts to maintain them?
At any rate, here is Ms. Levy’s list of 11 important skills for preppers (minus their elaborations – which can be found on the Backdoor Survival website):
1. Interpersonal Skills
2. Problem Solving
3. Home Arts (e.g., cooking, food preservation, sewing, sanitation)
4. Perseverance
5. Frugality
6. First Aid
7. Gardening
8. Basic Fix-It Skills
9. Defense (“Whether you choose a stun gun, pepper spray, a knife or a firearm, get to know your defensive weapon well so that you can defend what is yours in a safe and sane manner.”)
10. Compassion for Others
11. Know Yourself
I would say that all of these skills would be useful in a
variety of situations, Doomsday-related or not.
And finally, I have to confess that I am impressed
with the cheerfulness with which the author envisions us facing Doomsday, as
evidenced by the following picture which she includes with her posting:
Just cuz it’s Doomsday, doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves
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I liked your analysis of the "preppers" mind set. I have thought about this quite a bit, especially since I worked at the continuation high school where about 90% of the students are unskilled in reading and writing and especially in critical thinking. They were almost unanimously enthral to the "conspiracy" surrounding 9-11, and extended that into other parts of their lives, as well. I believe that one thing almost all of them have in common is a need to see a threat "out there" and to see themselves as victims. The reality is that almost all of these kids have been victims....they are victims of family situations that you and I with our solid middle class upbringing cannot imagine. A few of them are consciously struggling to throw off what brought them to the Continuation high school and see a life where they do have more control and choice. But the prepper mentality lacks this idea of control and choice and almost has a need to see him/her self as a victim. I would ask them why it is that there are no college professors, very few doctors or attorneys represented in these movements-trying to get them to see the correlation between ignorance and conspiracy/prepperism. And of course there is the reality that we have been lied to by the government, and certainly by big corporations continually, so how can we possibly accept anything they say now? Good question....but again, it comes back to critical thinking skills, knowledge and a personal psychology in which you understand that really, you have little control over important things, i.e., someone you love being hit by a drunk driver, but you continue to hold hope and be proactive in those things you do control.
ReplyDeleteAnd, BTW, Paul Krugman refers to the recession we are just barely coming out of as the 2nd Great Depression. Indeed, the collapse of the housing market has been far worse than during the 1930's. It is an unprecedented economic event. And recovery is not leading to economic well being and growth for the vast majority of middle class and poor Americans. Salaries remain flat and lost jobs are being replaced by ones that pay less and offer less security. The underlying problem of the incredible unevenness of the distribution of wealth continues. Krugman and many of his fellow economists put forth a future that holds very little economic reward for our generations children. The chance of them doing "better" economically than we have is not very great.
Yes, recovery is not leading to economic well being and growth for most of us. It seems to me that MoveOn.org or some other such organization should be putting up billboards all over the country publicizing the simple fact that since 1980 incomes for the wealthy have rapidly grown, while the rest of us have benefited not at all.
DeletePart of this is due to the rewriting of the tax codes during the Reagan and Bush Junior yeas. Another part is the increasingly brazen greed of CEOs and their wealthy cohorts. It's interesting that Switzerland recently passed a law penalizing CEOs who pay themselves at unseemly rates. It seems to me that we could at least have a restructured tax code here that similarly penalized with heavy taxation the Gordon Geckos that are using their positions and political clout to hem in the rest of us. I would like to see a law, for example, saying any CEO or management person who gets paid more than nine times what his or her least well paid employee gets paid should have that remuneration taxed at rates that sharply increase as the proportional difference increases.