It’s been a couple weeks since I wrote a blog post and mostly I’ve been feeling like why add to the online glut of online opinion pieces, when I could be outside working in my garden or working on other things. I’ve also stepped away from following so much news and social media content.
What’s particularly unhelpful in my life is social media content that’s hyping lists of things to buy now, before something dire happens and it’s not available. There’s quite a bit of social media homesteading/prepper content where that constant drama and fearmongering has become their daily bread and butter. Those content creators rail about criticisms that they’re fearmongering and stand firm about their righteousness, as their apocalyptic clickbait titles suck in viewers… and revenue for them. Fear and drama sell.
The news media has followed that formula in their coverage for decades too and it’s true, that “if it bleeds, it leads.” On Monday there was a total solar eclipse over a swath of the United States. I live in an area that had a partial eclipse, but two of my children and the grandkids live in areas where there was a total eclipse. I normally follow big astronomical happenings and find them fascinating, but between the right-wing doomsday type crazy that erupted weeks before this solar eclipse and left-wing crazy with fearmongering about closing schools to protect children from looking at the eclipse with bare eyes and then the all-around fearmongering about threats of large crowds/terrorism, well, I didn’t feel anything but annoyed. I turned on FOX News that day too and their coverage was insultingly phony- trying to generate enthusiasm and ending up acting like this was some earth-shattering event that would change the world. It was over-the-top on faked excitement.
The thing is pop culture and most of America have reacted accordingly to these media-generated events and now since the advent of social media, millions of Americans react and follow their favorite social media content creators in the same way. Heck, I’m susceptible too, especially when it comes to content creators promoting kitchen gadgets, gardening stuff and I limit my consumption of needlework & crafting videos, because I will be tempted to purchase more supplies – that I definitely don’t need.
Where I draw the line though is people talking like they are God’s messenger promoting their fearmongering. It’s not helping people to constantly hype the sky-is-falling to scare people into action and there’s a lot of that on social media. I personally don’t believe God wants us to live in fear and even in a crisis, I prefer to surround myself with calm, cheerful and upbeat people rather than the sky-is-falling type people. Most people function better with positive leadership.
The other tried and true manipulation is to talk about “people like us” vs. “them,” to con viewers into believing they are the good people. It’s not being good to work at dividing people. I know lots of good people who hold totally different views than mine – they have different political and religious beliefs, but that doesn’t make them part of some “them” group, because they’re Americans and entitled to believe whatever the heck they choose to believe. If a major SHTF event happens, we likely will be around the people who happen to be where we are when the event happens. If you’re surrounded by your hand-picked group, well, wonderful, but most people will be dealing with the people who are around them when the event happens. We likely will have to deal with all sorts of people to survive.
There are definitely many big things happening – wars spreading, climate/weather events, economic turmoil, political and social turmoil too, but I don’t see how creating constant drama about “the collapse is happening” or “beware of April 8th” or any of the other online conspiracy drama helps anyone become better prepared for adversity. It’s more constructive to figure out ways to manage cheerfully, even through adversity, than it is to try to borrow trouble every day. By nature I’ve always had a preparedness mindset and I try to avoid problems, by planning ahead for “what ifs.” Often I fail or something I hadn’t thought about happens. There have been plenty of times when I’ve had to ask other people for help.
True story: My son recently visited a friend. My son told me that one day his friend was at work and the power went out in his friend’s apartment, so he texted him and asked where he keeps his emergency lighting supplies. His friend didn’t have any emergency lighting supplies. I ordered a box of 4 more LED battery-powered lanterns on amazon and I told my son to take two of those for his friend when he visits again. That’s a very small thing to help someone.
Many people have done small things that helped me out a great deal and I’ve been very grateful for that. We can all pay it forward, as we can. Robert Heinlein’s 1951 novel, Between Planets, popularized that phrase, “pay it forward,” but the concept is probably as old as there have been groups of people. Trying to help people, where we can and with a cheerful heart seems a better approach than this constant drama that has been spreading, especially within the online homestead/prepping communities
It’s best to take people as you find them and then work to find some common ground. America used to have a culture of preparedness. Certainly a good bit of that was Cold War fearmongering, but there was also the Boy Scout/Girl Scout type preparedness, where kids were taught that being prepared was part of being a good citizen. The scouting preparedness was about acquiring skills. America could definitely benefit from a people who learn more skills and practice good citizenship, but we can leave the hiding under our desks in fear behind.
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