Crisis is a Decision Point. Did you Pass the Test?
Most of you are (or should be) adequately prepped and ready for the next ‘crisis’. Yet some of you are not truly prepared for the “next big thing”. Did you learn the lessons from Covid?
Where were you on October 4th, 2023? It seems like an innocuous date, but on the afternoon of October 4th, there was a national test of the Emergency Broadcast System or EMS System. Usually, those systems are only done at a county or state level. Shouldn’t really be any big deal, yet Twitter and a lot of the Telegram channels that I follow, even around homesteading, were abuzz with fears of “this is going to activate something”, and “got to turn your phone off, you got to put it in a Faraday cage. This is gonna activate something through five G!” (Zombies!). And on and on and on. Even the people who were not typically affected by that type of hysteria still got dragged into it and were responding to it.
Nobody really asks the obvious question. Why is the government suddenly testing a national alert system? The more reasonable explanation would be that it’s preparing for some war footing or maybe another lockdown, which are much more likely than “This thing is gonna activate zombies!”
(the latest war in Israel started just a few days later, but that would be a conspiracy theory)
What is at the core of this? It’s testing your faith. Your faith in what? Unfortunately, it’s testing your faith in the system, in the government, and in the empire. Ouch. Now, some of you are saying, “I don’t have faith in any of those things! That’s not what I have faith in. I have faith in my religion.”
Flashback – March 2020
Okay, let’s flash back to March 2020, when our world changed. On March 13th – Friday the 13th – in 2020, we were sent home from work. That weekend, my friend Dave and I were at the gun store and we were talking about some of the things that could happen, and one of the guys from one of the small towns around Kansas City said that he worked for the water department and that the city government told him that they were activating an emergency and that he was going to have to be locked in on-site for the next two weeks to ensure that they didn’t have any risk to the water supply. All of a sudden, this was really serious stuff.
I shared this news on a local email group that we had. It was called the North Village. This had mostly homesteaders, and then a lot of people that have moved out from town and were wannabe homesteaders. I shared this on that email list and I got verbally abused and they said, “You’re creating panic. You’re freaking out. You’re creating fear all around us.” (that was before the cries of “disinformation!”, but it was a similar crowd). And then somebody on that board that worked for the county said, “No, he’s right. We’ve all been given this warning that lockdowns are coming starting next week.” And then of course, on Monday, March 16th, there was the nationally “suggested” lockdown. (“Two weeks to slow the spread!” – or was it “stop the spread”?)
Now this is the key: Just like many of you, I was well prepped, I still had a job, I could work from home, and it shouldn’t have affected me at all. I should have just sat at home and been content with what I had, but I wasn’t. I went to the store. Two reasons why: 1) is because they told me I couldn’t. And 2) I wanted to see just how bad this really was. The shelves were already bare. There was no milk. The canned veggie and soup aisle was completely picked through. Nobody had really touched the meat very much yet, and nobody had touched the fresh vegetables. Of course, there was a run on toilet paper and the toilet paper was essentially gone.
This episode ties in with Thriving the Future Podcast – Ep. 102 – Fight the Fear
Wars and Rumors of Wars
We are also likely in the beginning of a World War. And now there is talk of Civil War. This one will not be so clear on who are the “good guys” and the “bad guys”. It will be 4th Generation Warfare, with multiple factions instead of nation states. (See “The War of the Flea”). Those factions will constantly shift, making it even less clear. Add in 5th Generation Warfare, the constant war of propaganda, where those factions, and perhaps your own government (!), could be legitimately accused of conducting information warfare on you.
Crisis is a Decision Point
Once again, what is at the core of this? Remember back when we were talking with Cyprian in Thriving the Future Podcast – Episode 74. Crisis is a decision point. The word crisis in Greek means “decision”.
We are all running from crisis. We don’t want to experience a crisis. We want today to be like the day before. But without sounding Machiavellian, our leaders want crisis because it allows them to do things that they couldn’t do other under other circumstances. 9/11 allowed the Patriot Act. Covid was worse. Do you really think that the government will never use those tools again? They now have a formula that works. It likely worked even better than expected.
Let’s take a step back for a moment. If society and the government implemented even a fraction of what they’re talking about with climate and transhumanism, it would dramatically change America and your life.
Rival Religions
We live in an age where we are seeing the rise of rival religions. Now that may sound crazy, but transhumanism is a religion. Some parts of climate activism are a religion.
Covid was rolled out like a religion. It was rolled out with evangelists; it was rolled out with rewards. It was rolled out with an inquisition, both from a vaccine mandate and from Karens going around and shutting stuff down.
In 2020 in Lawrence, Kansas, a northeast Kansas college town, they reportedly had 100 to 200 calls to the health department a week reporting businesses for allowing people in their store without wearing masks. That is an inquisition.
You are likely thinking, “Well, that’s all really depressing. I thought that this article was about Fighting the Fear”. So let’s switch gears here. What do you need to do? Let’s go back to 2020. Cyprian, who at that time was still going by Vin Armani, said, “you need to get to acceptance as soon as possible”.
Some of the things that we take for granted, the faith in the system, the faith in the government, and even what we’ve seen over the last 40 years was a bubble. Our great grandparents who were in the Depression and before didn’t have all this stuff. They didn’t have unions, they didn’t have retirement, they didn’t have the boat, the camper, all that stuff. That was the result of a post-World War II bubble and we’re at the end of the bubble. We’ve used up the goodwill and we’ve run up a bunch of debt. We’ve used up a lot of free energy. It’s a little bit harder to get some of the energy now, and it’s time to pay the piper to some extent, add in those other things we just talked about. And you’re at a crisis decision point.
Let’s Talk About Solutions
Go back to the things we’ve been talking about on Thriving the Future and the Thriving community: learn skills and design your intentional life.
Focus on your Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern.
Let’s get real. That thing that is happening in Texas that is the Outrage-of-the-day on social media: Does it really impact me?
If I don’t live in Texas, chances are it doesn’t impact me at all.
Does it even concern me?
Probably not.
That is your Circle of Concern.
What about war? Yes, war can affect the economy and indirectly affect you. Is it something I can directly do something about myself? That is defining and limiting my Circle of Control.
If the answer is “No”, then Do I know someone involved? Are they a family member, friend, a co-worker, a neighbor? – That is the Circle of Influence.
If I don’t know the person and don’t have any influence with them as a family member, friend, or acquaintance, the answer is almost surely “No”.
So why waste emotional energy on it?
#BuildtheArk
Build the Ark – both from a physical standpoint and also from a spiritual standpoint. You want to do that before the rain starts falling.
And go back to what Shudra says:
- Plant trees
- Cultivate gardens
- Tend livestock.
This is not just a catchphrase that we use as a tongue in cheek joke.
What does it really take to plant a tree? Hope.
Hope that I’ll still be here five to seven years from now when it bears fruit or nuts. Maybe it’s the biggest thing I’ll do today. That’s not a small thing to say. If I thought I was going lose my house or I was going through a divorce, I wouldn’t bother to plant a tree on this property if I thought I was going to lose it. Planting a tree is hope. Plus, if you’re smart, you’ll plant a tree that can provide for you. Fruit and nuts. I just harvested a handful of hazelnuts from hazelnut bushes that I planted seven years ago. I was about to give up on them. And this season I only have a handful of hazelnuts. Six years ago, I planted two chestnut trees. Last year I got one burr and one nut. This year I have two burrs and I haven’t opened them up to see how many nuts there are, but they are pretty small, so there’s probably only one nut in each one of those. It gets exponential. I planted two apple trees six years ago. Last year I got two apples. This year I have five-gallon buckets of apples. A garden grows my own food. Plus, it’s the place where I go to unwind even when I have 10 or 15 minutes for lunch. Since I still work from home, I go out to the garden and it’s a complete reset.
Tending Livestock: you’ve got to have some sort of protein source. If you are not going to harvest the meat, at least get some chickens and you will have eggs. Plant trees, cultivate gardens tend livestock.
Conclusion
This year (and lately, any year) will be crazy. It’s the DimAge.
I hope this helped you. Be realistic about what is going on. Fight the fear, Build the Ark, prep as much as possible, but also prepare spiritually and mentally and help others to do the same. Then you’ll truly be Thriving.
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