23-March-2020
The Preppers must be laughing their heads off right now, particularly at TV screens where some poor sod is complaining about the shops having ran out of daily essentials. Due the to panic sparked by the COVID-19, most of us have only just started to prepare, like rushing to the local shops and fighting over the last roll of toilet paper. Whereas the Preppers, they are sitting tight and cosy in their bunkers, surrounded by the comfort that is gained by the years of supplies they have gathered prior. It is hard to wipe the smirk off when having been labelled the village idiot all along to being suddenly elevated as the chosen ones.
It is important to recognise that prepping is a vocation/serious hobby. Just as a gardener would buy plants and build a garden to work and admire, the preppers MO is to survive, even if the rest of society didn’t. There are much to be admired about the preppers, how they spent a lot of time and resources for that one event, how they are very focused on protecting themselves and their family, how they don’t trust the governments and therefore relying on their sole selves only. It must also be a lonely existence too, having zero faith and trust in the rest of humanity.
At heart, the real issue is that prepping cost a lot of resources, which most people don’t have. Yours truly is struggling to pay off the mortgage, let alone being able to afford his own a bunker in the bushlands. Having years of tin food means money is locked in and there is no money left for school fees. A die hard prepper would tell you, that is the price to pay in order to survive but the cost is simply unaffordable to the average joe.
Governments are like us too, as they also have conflicting priorities. They can’t prep and ready the millions of hospital beds needed, with doctors and nurses twiddling their thumbs for that day to come. There isn’t money to stockpile another billion masks or essential supplies. In short, like us individuals with limited means and finances, government and us alike will have to make do with the limited resources we have.
Of course, this is cold comfort for those in desperate need. After all, we have been paying taxes for so many years and you wonder where did the money went. Why have the government not been better prepared, as they should have known better. Additionally, with stories after stories of previous gross mismanagement and ineptitude, you have to wonder whether your faith has been misplaced with those folks with power.
Given most of us don’t really have much of an alternative, we are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Between having faith in a system that does not implicitly guarantee our individual survival (i.e. there might not be a hospital bed left) and the little that we could do to last a bit longer (i.e. staying at home until food runs out), your only realistic option left is to have hope in humanity and society pulling through together. Sadly, judging by the numerous morons (a la Bondi Beach goers who ignored the rules,) who treat this crisis as a joke, to those who brought everything just before you did, it is quite depressing to realise, the faith in humanity isn’t exactly airtight either.
That said, whilst the media did show case many instances of idiots hell bent on making your life progressively more miserable, there are many untold and countless individuals doing the right thing. Your front line health care professionals are working tirelessly to treat those who are sick. Your research workers are doing their utmost to fast track a cure. Your local charities are doing what they can to protect the vulnerable. If you look just enough, you’d find there are many acts of kindness all around and perhaps you’ve done some yourself too, by obeying the rules of distancing and by not hoarding, or you braved work and stocked up shelves, plus many others. Only you would know and karma will reward you for your efforts some day. Anyway, humanity can and will and defeat the virus eventually. However, the irony is of course, there is no cure for idiots, no matter how many millennia we have tried. Idiots, much like the many viruses or pestilences, will always be around and waiting for that moment to ruin your day. Even if you did despise those idiots, sadly for better or worse, our fates are entwined.
Here’s the thing, since pre-history, humans (or hominids) have banded and worked together to ensure the group survives. There will always be people who do more and those who free load. If anything, the idiots’ only purpose is to serve and to remind us of what not to become. Collectively, if we aim to be the lowest common denominator – to do the least – then humanity would have been extinct long ago. Obviously, if you look at the millennia of human achievement and progress, we must have somehow worked together and came through. In short, humans have always found a way forward, despite all manners of challenges.
In modern society and in times of crisis like today, this is no different. Yes it will take some time and in the meanwhile, pains are acutely felt but there will be a better future for us all, as long as we act as an intelligent collective (with appropriate distancing of course). In essence, we are each other’s insurance policy for survival. As long as we don’t all become idiots, we have a future – it is that simple. The choice is not about individualism vs collectivism, civil liberties vs the state, or whether you want to hang out because you have no fear and no understanding of the consequences. Let yours truly make it clear for you, the choice is about whether or not you are that idiot who doomed humanity. All it takes is that one (extra) idiot, with blatant disregard for themselves and others, to be that tipping point that sets of a chain reaction of no return.
Finally, prepping should not just mean living isolated and having enough tinned foods. Prepping should mean everyone from all corners of the earth, working together to safeguard our collective future. Whilst we might have been on the backfoot and caught unprepared during the COVID-19 crisis, let this be a lesson of hope, that when the current crisis is finally over, we can regroup and start do more for humanity, for what we have done so far is not enough. The solution is obvious, we show strength in numbers (with the recommended distancing)!
PS – please do show some compassion for the idiots, as their condition, whilst seemingly by choice, is in reality a lifelong condition, manifested by years of cranial defects and absenteeism. They can’t help but to be who they are.
Struggle Perpetual 