Since we’re as close as we’ve been in the past 50 years to the possibility of not only WW III, but the nuclear war we’ve all feared since Hiroshima and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the time seems urgent for all Americans to get out of our normalcy bias and start prepping, and for current preppers to kick it up a notch or two. Or three.
This article has been edited many times and has been in and out of my “Do Not Submit” folder at least seven times. While many SurvivalBlog articles are preaching to the choir of us like-minded ones who already understand the prudence of prepping, some of my thoughts and comments over the past few years have been preaching to the duet in the little-used Sunday School room tucked away in the church basement between the furnace and the storage room. I can only hope it finds a wider audience in these most perilous of times in May, 2022 as we stand on the probable brink of WW III.
Tribalism
As I’ve studied and thought about tribalism over the years, I finally concluded that tribalism is biggest cause of Mankind’s woes in the world today and throughout history.
The effect of tribalism is that the more groups (“tribes”) we align ourselves with, the more we subconsciously conform our opinions to those groups in order to maintain our good standing within the tribe. In mankind’s early days, we’d gladly help toss virgins into volcanoes to appease the lava gods even if we thought it was pure bravo sierra. Going along with the tribe was far more important to our survival than verbalizing the truth that virgins can’t stop volcanoes from erupting. Throughout Mankind’s history, tribe has trumped truth.
Our brains have advanced very little since cavemen/Adam. We’re not any smarter, we just have more technology that has accumulated piece by piece building upon what previous generations had discovered. Today’s technological improvements all began with the ancients learning how to make and harness the power of fire, the same fire without which our society could never have progressed to this point and which all our current technologies are dependent upon whether directly or indirectly.
We’re basically Neanderthals with technology and Walmart. Unfortunately, our brains are still hard-wired for tribalism, subconsciously and falsely telling us we can only survive as part of a group. We get into trouble with that thinking when we believe our opponent’s tribe can do no good, our tribe can do no bad, and we refuse to listen to any negative comments about our tribes even when the evidence is overwhelming. This tribalism is what “leaders” take advantage of in order to manipulate us into doing things we otherwise wouldn’t normally do.
We the People, Divided – The US today is more divided than we’ve ever been thanks mostly 24/7 “news,” which far too few realize is a biased and censored propaganda machine. The Internet contributes to the division by allowing us to pick and choose even more tribes to associate with, and provides a platform for beating up on our opponents more than we’ve ever been able to do in history. This great polarization in our country today is a major cause of our so-called leaders’ ability to drive us, both liberals and conservatives, over the cliff like a bunch of stampeding bison, to our own detriment. As we stand at the brink of WW III, it’s imperative to clear our minds and be prepared for what lies ahead with our eyes wide open. Prepping has never been more important in our generation than it is today in May of 2022.
Ironically, this harmful tribalism will be the trigger that causes the need to revert back to the beneficial tribalism that will ensure our survival after TEOTWAWKI is upon us. For the first time in my life, I believe it can possibly happen in the not-so-distant future.
History
I’ve enjoyed reading history throughout my life, mostly military and political history, and the events of colonial America up to the industrial age when life was simpler, the nation more unified, and people lived a lifestyle very different from our own. I’ve also studied the events behind the things we “learn” in school, which as often as not leave out the important details. I’ve studied the workings of politicians who are only rarely ever interested in the welfare of those who elected them to office, and the lengths the wealthy and powerful will go to increase their wealth, power, and influence. But history is written by the victors, both military victors and societal-change victors, so the truth is generally hidden or manipulated to fit their agendas and for the most part, We the People basically just don’t care.
Some of the major world-changing events in my father’s lifetime happened overnight like the Great Depression, while others such as WW II began more slowly. With WW II, the masses were aware of current events with most Americans hoping and praying they’d remain news stories taking place in far-off lands and not something that would affect them at home. The Powers That Be (PTB) made sure they’d eventually hit us at home and the average family was caught totally unprepared. As with the Great Depression, they had no food, money, or tangibles stored up. Normalcy bias was their biggest enemy just as it is for us today.
Don’t let a good crisis go to waste — Most of us would agree that since the onset of the covid “opportunity” politicians have changed the world more in the past two years than in almost any other time period in our lifetimes, mostly to our personal detriment.
When covid first broke out and China started locking down the citizenry, I was certain it would spread much more quickly here since the PTB would never lock us down in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. How wrong I was. I stood in amazement at how quickly the masses were scared into submission, gladly giving up their “freedom” to controlling governments at all levels for the illusion of safety.
Wokeism, LGBTQXYZ, 1491, BLM riots, gender being a choice, horrendous things being taught to our children in the public schools, etc., are further evidence of the waterfall we’re headed towards.
Checking Our Premises
It’s safe to say we when things just don’t make sense to us, we only rarely check our premises. A premise says that if A is true, then B must also be true. We’re confused at those times when A doesn’t equal B.
Walking on water — When I say I can walk on water, nearly everybody scoffs. Their premise is that liquid cannot support a man’s weight. The fact is true but the premise is false since they’re only considering water as a liquid. When considering that water can also exist as a solid, it’s obvious we can walk on water when a pond freezes over. We call it ice but it’s still 100% water. Looking at the statement using a true premise, it now makes sense. Anytime we say “it just doesn’t make sense,” we need to check our premises until we find the premise under which it does make sense. If we do that with an open mind and in the words of Thomas Jefferson “unafraid to follow the truth wherever it leads,” we can generally discover the correct premise. Many times however, our tribalism doesn’t allow us to accept it.
Illegal aliens — We gripe continuously that politicians aren’t doing anything so solve the illegal immigrant problem. It just doesn’t make sense that they can’t fix it like they promised in their campaign speeches. When we look at it using the correct premise, that politicians don’t want to fix the “problem,” then the truth is readily apparent. Texas agriculture alone is a $30 billion per year industry, much of the labor done by illegals who are paid above board using fake green cards. If the problem is easily fixed by adding a magnetic strip to green cards, then it becomes obvious that politicians don’t want it fixed.
Leaving military supplies in Afghanistan — We can’t understand why the US government left billions of dollars in military supplies in Afghanistan when we left. We have the mightiest military that’s ever existed so it doesn’t make sense why, after 20 years of fighting a bunch of goat herders with BB guns, we were unable to pull off a victory in Afghanistan. Our incorrect premise is that politicians want to win those wars and want to bring equipment home. The correct premise? The PTB didn’t want to win those wars or bring any equipment home. The third-largest lobbyist group in Washington DC represents defense contractors who provide all the armaments and ammunition for those wars. They’re in business to make money, two trillion dollars off Afghanistan alone, so they need wars to drag on as long as possible and to leave equipment behind so they can sell new equipment for the next war. Another incorrect premise is that our politicians serve We the People, not special interests who donate billions of dollars to their campaigns and provide them with cushy sinecures after they leave Congress. Have you noticed that when one war ends we find a way to get into the next one as quickly as possible?
Are we checking our premises when things don’t make sense? Generally not.
Ukraine Sanctions
Most worrisome of all right now isn’t the war in Ukraine but the sanctions imposed on Russia by western nations. Nearly every news story blames upcoming inflation and shortages on “the war in Ukraine,” when in fact, they’re brought on by sanctions, not war. The blowback from these sanctions will soon manifest itself even more once products already in supply chains are diminished. This blowback will soon affect all of mankind. Sanctions, not war, are to blame. The US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq for lesser reasons and yet, luckily for all of us, there were no sanctions from anyone.
Russia at least had good reasons for attacking Ukraine and yet they’ve been hit with the worst sanctions in history. Whether anyone agrees about the reasons for the Afghanistan/Iraq/Ukraine wars isn’t what’s relevant. What’s relevant is that wars don’t cause sanctions, governments impose sanctions. Relatively few of us peons have stopped to think about how far-reaching those will turn out to be, or the possibility there may be other reasons for the sanctions.
The covid scamdemic — Most commenters on SurvivalBlog agree that covid was a “scamdemic.” The response by governments all over the world was inappropriate and most of it just didn’t make sense to a lot of us. After checking our premises we quickly realized it was just another big opportunity for politicians to never let a good crisis go to waste. This time they wanted to see exactly how far we could be pushed and what freedom-quashing acts they could pull off. They were amazingly successful. The masses ignorantly lined up to have their children, who had almost zero chance of dying from covid, vaccinated with an experimental vaccine which nobody knows what the long-term effects will be. Since it makes absolutely no sense to do that, some believe this is further evidence of the agenda of the PTB who are trying to bring about the Big Reset.
The PTB’s ultimate goals — I’ve never dug too deeply into the details of the Soros/Gates/Bildeberger types of conspiracy theories, mostly because of the high probability they’re true based on what I know of history and the PTB. Regardless of what the masses believe, the fact remains that the rich and powerful PTB have always controlled things here on Planet Earth, much more so than our elected officials. Any concepts we have of Freedom, Liberty, and We the People are just illusions they need us to believe if they’re going to keep us sheep in line, unwittingly helping to carry out their agendas. Instead of facts to support our feelings about Freedom, Liberty, and We the People, our beliefs are based on emotions which are by definition irrational. We want to believe them because they feel so good, so we believe them. Who wouldn’t? As Orwell, Marx, and others have pointed out, if you want to control the masses a good place to start is by changing the definitions of words. Today we can’t even agree on what constitutes a male and a female because the definitions have been so corrupted by people with an agenda.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part2.)