Hedging 2020 - Staying healthy - Favors banked in diverse, global social graph - Cash - Retirement, insurance portfolio - 2-3 in-country refuge places - Foothold in country #2 - Crypto; keys backed up abroad - Bug-out bag - Mad-Max toolbox - Junkyard skills - Med triage skills
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The problem with bad times isn’t that low-energy/path of least resistance diesnt work. It in fact works really well, and way better than more combative stances. The problem is even that minimum energy/resistance path is pretty demanding. Flow like water uphill over rocks.
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A fictional character who comes close to my ideal mode through good/bad times is Abelard Lindsey in Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix. He’s a consummate flow-like-water exit/escape artist. Picks no fights he doesn’t have to. Isn’t selfish, but is pragmatically aware of his own limits.
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I suspect I have a “correct play” poker sensibility though I don’t play poker. Pick the right table and play correctly even if it means you sometimes lose and an incorrect player wins by luck. This mindset is hard to bring to open-world infinite-game conditions.
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Curiously I think many strong preppers don’t have strong poker sensibilities in the sense that they’re disappointed if the future they prepped most for doesn’t happen. They’re emotionally invested in the apocalypse that proves them right even if it means they lost.
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The future you most prefer to live in needn’t be the one you prepare the most for. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst etc. This is hard because identity follows effort. If you spend hours a day honing fighting skills it can make you an unhappy misfit in a peaceful world.
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The inner game of prepping, I think is separating your identity development path from your effort path. Otherwise you end up victim of a metaverse level sunk cost fallacy. Just because you’ve logged 10k hours of zombie-killing prep doesn’t make the zombie apocalypse a good future
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Surprising how many otherwise wise people fail to achieve this separation. Do not invest identity in proportion to distribution of prepping effort across scenarios. Prepping is what you do, not who you are. But you’ll default to them being the same if you don’t look out.
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For eg. if poetry is your identity path but you can only spend 5 minutes/week on it in the gaps of 100 hours of zombie killing, invest all your identity narrative in those 5 minutes. That’s what makes life living for you. Secure that pilot light through the valley of darkness.
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If it looks like zombie world is here to stay, get good enough at zombie killing to expand those 5 minutes to 5 hours. And then work to find the poetry in zombie world and make it yours. Start work on a poetry collection titled “Undead Thoughts” etc.
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End of conversation
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