I’m 43 years old and I remember the days when everyone was joked about so no one was offended. Like on the movie Airplane? Everyone just laughed and moved on. Now it’s so mean spirited and people must be destroyed if their opinion is different. They screech about diversity as long as it’s not diversity of thought. The biggest fear of a narcissist (and worse) is being exposed so any dissenting thought needs to be silenced. They also use manipulative tactics the main ones being using compassion and gaslighting. It can be so subtle people don’t even realize its happening. If someone seems to be making themselves indispensable in your life, sit up and take notice and that’s just one example of many. The best thing to do is be as self sufficient as possible learning as many skills as you can. learn to build things yourself. Stock up on as much water as possible. I live in rural Florida so when we lose power we also lose water. When a hurricane is coming we fill every bin we can find with water for the animals and bathroom. If food is scarce you can always scrape up something but you need water. I’ve found that equal parts Greek yogurt and self rising flour make for edible bagels. We know the rapture is coming but we don’t know when. We do know that things are getting uglier and uglier now. There’s no such thing as being too prepared!
I would go to your group. If they or you haven’t been crazy acting before now it should be fine. Meeting face to face is different than the anonymity of the net. It has been shown that people act differently when there is no chance of actually meeting the person in real life. It is sad. I predict you will have a nice time.
I think having a plan for “what if” is probably a really smart thing to be doing right now. Somehow I feel that it’s not going to get better before it gets much worse. Canning isn’t hard- I’d learn that for sure. Have the equipment and you can do it whenever you may need to. A Ball blue book of recipes and you’d be good to go in case. I’d have a go bag with packs of yarn for your favorite sock and wash rag patterns. Independence is never a bad thing. MRE’s might not hurt- remember you can always eat it if you don’t need them for an emergency situation in a few years.
I can see something like that happening today, too. It just hasn’t yet.
To that I would add that we all should have plans for electrical outages. They can last a long time under certain circumstances. Candles, batteries, back up chargers, think it through. A camping stove, lanterns.
That’s what I love about knitting. Got light? Knit.
There are so many reasons why we need to have the ability to sustain ourselves in the event of an emergency. Here in northern California the utility company has been sued for causing the devastating fires last year. So now they shut off the power when we get high winds. Sometimes for days. Oh, and they’re raising our rates to pay for maintenance of electrical lines in hazardous areas.
I, too, despair at our society’s lack of ability or desire to just get along.
As for prepping, I’m 58 and have several medical issues (I’m on disability, in fact) and my husband is 72. We live 5 miles from the Gulf of Mexico on the Texas Gulf Coast in a suburb of Houston. Hurricane Rita proved to all and sunder that evacuating the Houston Metropolitan area is impossible. So we hunker down. I spend the spring and summer canning and dehydrating everything I can get my hands on. We keep dog food and about 500 gallons of water stockpiled. We have a propane grill that I can cook on should we lose power and my homemade “MREs” mean that we will have nutritionally balanced, non chemical laden to sustain us for at least a month. We do not, however, stockpile arms or ammunition. I have a niece with a husband is in worse medical shape than I am and a 13 year old son. They are so poor they can’t even see the poverty line so even if evacuation were possible, they couldn’t afford to leave. Two years ago, we started prepping for them to evacuate to our house.
Prepping isn’t just for world craziness. Sometimes, it’s just good old common sense.
What a great thread this is! You all have restored my faith in humankind.
I agree that we need to watch a LOT LESS of the current events if we want to remain happy. That’s why I love playing with my fiber. It isn’t politically offensive or upsetting.
We can be the antidote to all the hate and ugliness in our worlds, by scattering kindness every day.
Are you talking about something that has occurred here in OurUnRaveled? If so, please use the “flag” option so these can be handled by Mr & Mrs @Admin and the moderators.
If this occurred elsewhere, also let us know - so it can be handled as well.
Unfortunately, weapons might prove to be very necessary in the not so distant future. I haven’t done that yet… but it might happen.
I’ve found it all depends on where you look, there are nice guys and jerks around every corner. Today, nearly everyone in the world is connected and has a megaphone, in the past if you were the town jerk, everyone just avoided you or you hung out with a couple other loud friends and people just knew not to talk to you. Today, those people are finding the few other people in the world that think like them, getting behind their megaphones and screaming so it’s harder to ignore.
I own some other businesses that involve quite a bit of contact with the public, maybe 1 or 2 out of every 100 interactions is someone not very nice. But those 1 or 2 hurt, they stick with you because they cause you to question yourself. The 99 make you think you’re doing alright, taking care of people when they need it and generally being kind to those who return the kindness. But the 1 makes you wonder what you’re doing wrong, why would they be mean, what could you do better to not be treated like that.
Just in creating this forum I’ve had a similar experience, the VAST majority have been kindhearted wonderful people, but a few have been rude, mean, a couple just downright nasty. I’ve put about 6+ hours a day into this for almost 4 weeks straight in addition to working a fulltime job and doing my best to raise a family and maintain my other businesses. Those handful of terrible interactions made me want to turn the servers off and just disappear.
I try to focus and remember the 99, they are the ones that want and need the help. That “1”? Well, if they don’t want to be kind and work together, they aren’t the droids I’m looking for.
So yes, the world is in turmoil, more than in the past? Who knows, maybe it’s just always in a state of turmoil and we see it more now because everyone has their megaphone. My family is in a relative state of preparedness, but not living in a bunker, we always keep a bit of extra food on hand because who knows when a natural disaster, bad storm, earthquake or something else can mess things up. With just in time deliveries a store could be empty in 1-2 days in an emergency, I don’t think it’s crazy to keep a bit extra on hand so you could withstand an interruption. I would hope people aren’t living in fear of collapse every day, I don’t think we’re there, I don’t know if we’re closer or further than any other time in history, it’s just so hard to gauge.
Anyway, just my $.02, surround yourself with love, and that’s what you’ll feel, surround yourself with hate and likewise, that’s what you’ll feel. I hope people in this group can surround themselves with love and kindness so they know they aren’t alone.
Please don’t let this thread go off the rails into finger pointing and trashing about politics, I think it’s generally more about how people treat each other than anything else.
@Admin, please don’t give the nasty one or two that kind of power, to discourage you from being here for all of us. We NEED your strength, wisdom, and level head. Please don’t let the nasties take that away from us.
If I were a betting woman I’d wager November 4, 2020.
I agree about the megaphone mentality. My non anthropologist or sociologist brain tends to see it as a byproduct of the web. It is this unimaginably vast repository of information and a forum of phenomenal potential for positive change. Unfortunately, it’s also a potential forum for some pretty nasty whack-a-doodle type folks to spread their bovine excrement vitriol far and wide.
I think they really get off on the shock value of it all. It’s like they’re junkies and always need a bigger hit to get the next high.
But that’s just my opinion.
I just stumbled on this and it was refreshing to read:
https://madmanknitting.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/why-i-deleted-my-ravelry-account/?unapproved=14936&moderation-hash=d5b910ae52b979824b6816dde04be817#comment-14936
It seems to be another example of people who aren’t necessarily conservative who are determined to think for themselves. They are thoughtful and articulate. I really want to be his friend (and I think he would be mine) even though our age, politics, gender, sexual orientation and perhaps our religion are totally different. He isn’t taking a political side but I think he’s saying for goodness sake - we all need to have conversations. I love how he used the term “bridge building”.
I totally agree with that observation, AFrayedKnot. Like any addiction, it takes a stronger and stronger jolt to produce the same endorphins. Far too many folks are addicted to the thrill of anonymous verbal violence. Best recourse is an effective Ignore button.
If God is for you, who can be against you? Just plow through.
I ran across a site today where someone thought that Barbara Walker’s book of mosaic patterns should be taken off the market because some of the patterns looked a bit like swastikas…and that made some uncomfortable. oooOOOooo…
People see what they’re focused on. Once, long ago and far away, I shared with the Speech Therapy teacher for whom I was an aide, an original knitted rug picturing a sheep grazing. She featured this rug in her classroom on the back of a chair until a student’s mother objected to it because the sheep’s nose looked to her like a male sex organ. Really?
Thank you for sharing his blog. The whole thing is so entertaining, I just spent the last couple of hours reading it. I know what Ill be reading tonight!
Not here, thank goodness, just a feeling in my bones of something I see. This site is my bliss.