Prepper

Memento Mori (Remember you will die) doesn’t ask us to dwell on death but on the contrary to live in the moment, to savour the moment, to appreciate the beauty and the lightness of the moment.

From watching documentaries about preppers I get the impression that they don’t just prepare for civil war, the breakdown of society, or the end of days but they live it. They live it now. They become it. They are the definition of manifestation. They could just prepare for the eventualities they envisage and then get on with life in the same way that most people view their will or their life insurance.  

My experience of conspiracy theorists is the same. I often agree with many of their theories. Many of the theories attributed to this group appear not to be conspiracies at all but seem patently true to me. But dear Lord do they love to bang on about them.

I don’t want to hear them anymore. I feel myself being depleted by this conspiracy theory gossip. They thrive on cynicism and the need to be right.

They’re like the other momento mori guy who constantly tells you he’s going to die, and on his deathbed proudly proclaims, ‘I told you all along I was dieing. Nobody listened.’

There is a certain embarrassment to optimism, to dreaming, to high expectations. The crowd are there to jeer when you fall short on your ambitions.

But the preppers, the conspiracy theorists, the doom-mongers never fall short. They’re always there with their vague or implied evidence. Always there with an I-told-you-so. With there quietly shifting predictions, their end of days manana.

We are likely to achieve better outcomes if we believe in better outcomes. But most of us choose not to believe that things will turn of well, and we certainly don’t say that we expect things to turn out well. There’s the sense of tempting fate, setting expectations too high, and the fear of being ridiculed if things don’t turn out well. So, we downplay our hopes. We put a lid on our ambitions. We catastrophise. We run negative loops in our mind. We congregate with others that run negative loops.

We manage expectations. I certainly do. If I was on a dating website I would do reverse-catfishing. I would post a busted-up picture and downplay my personality and my achievements. This, in the hope that when they meet me, they will be pleasantly surprised. But of course, we don’t meet because I look like shit and rarely leave the house.

You even hear sportsmen temper their successes. I don’t get too high when I win or too low when I lose. When they are on a good run they point out that they know it can’t go on forever. Or popstars who point out the limited shelf-life of the average popstar. Oh I’ve been doing well at this for five years now and they say the average span of a pop career is something like three, so I know I’m living on borrowed time. A little flex, a little humility. It’s more than just preparation for the inevitable downturn, they want you to know that they know. They want you to know that there are not too full of themselves, that they are grounded, that they are humble. I always smile when someone describes themselves as humble. There’s the implication that they really have no right to be. It’s a fucking struggle being humble when you’re this great.

I used to quietly hate on the rich, the ambitious, the boastful. I’m not saying be a boorish prick, but why not speak openly of your hopes and dreams, your ambitions. Why not paint Rembrandt’s in your mind. Now I respect them. Maybe it’s because now I’m one of them.