It’s been a while since our last update. So much has been going on in the world that it’s hard to keep on top of it all, let alone remain optimistic. But here we are.
Ligaya Garden has always been about empowering people, sharing with them the skills and knowledge that we need to get through tough times and live in a manner that is more amenable to life with this planet.
With all the chaos of late, lots of folks have been asking me about prepping. Let me be straight, we are not preppers in the TV, reactionary, hide in a bunker kind of preppers. I won’t generally use that label because of the selfish, negative connotations. But in a broader sense of the word, we are, and if you check in on our website or visit us in person, so are you.
So, I thought I’d share some insights into preparedness that I’ve gleaned both recently and over the years.
#1 Learn from the super rich
Q:Are the super wealthy stocking up and building bunkers?
A:Yes, some of them are very publicly so. This is all tied in with the big egos that they have and the need to show us how rich and protected they are.
But others have been taking a different tact. They have been quietly and indirectly buying up land in rural areas. Not way off on the horizon but near or within established communities, and this is where our lesson for later lies.
Anonymously, through shell layers of shell companies. they have been purchasing good farm land with water and forests. They don’t want to draw attention to themselves, and this is where our second lesson lies.
They, or their representatives, have been joining local farmer’s coops, school associations, community groups, councils…everywhere there is community interaction. This goes against how we usually perceive these folks but they’re not doing out of a need to connect with their fellow humans. They are planning to exploit relationships and resources in the future. I don’t believe for a minute that they see the people in their new communities as equals, rather as labour. The mindset that got made them super-wealthy is one of exploitation, and I think that that will not leave them quickly. I really hope that when some of them experience the joy of living in a community, it will change them, but that hope is small.
Q: But what are those with less doing?
A: In the middle, many are just pretending the troubles around aren’t happening, won’t affect them. Others are buying stuff. Good old stuff.
It is one of the great ironies that I see – endless videos about what to buy for an emergency, top supplies for armegeddon…all that kind of stuff. Capitalism has seen an opportunity to exploit the very problem that it has caused by selling more stuff. Tents, bug-out bags, ration packs, weapons…all being flogged for enormous profis. Is this the answer? Of course not.
I feel sorry for some of the preppers who have learned to make big bucks off of peoples fear. Not even fear, some people are buying things to help others, community members and organisations, some are stockpiling what they think is enough to share. But it’s all still just buying stuff. Then they’re sharing that they’ve bought it. Telling people they have big stockpiles of food and water, medical supplies, and whatever. Telling people who they don’t know and who probably won’t prepare for themselves. This, of course, makes them targets in tough times. Worse, it will mean that at some time, they will have to harden their hearts and turn people away. A hard heart is a bad thing to develop at any time and, in a crisis, leads only to trouble.
So what were the lessons mentioned before? They are two of many, but I think they are key. They are ideas worked out in big, well-paid focus groups and think tanks (often paid for by out tax dollars). But, on the other end of the scale, we ourselves came up with similar, though less exploitative, ideas many years ago, and it is that they have informed many of our choices at Ligaya Garden.
Lesson #1:
The first is about keeping a low profile. Yes, we’re well known in some areas of public life, but we try not to portray ourselves as above or better than anyone else. Our whols schtick has been that anyone can do what we do. The gardening on a pension, herbal remedies with kitchen equipment – all empowering at the most basic level. More of that later. You could say that we have been levelling the playing field for everyone.
Lesson 2: Second, rather than exploit people, we realised that a big community full of people with the skills to survive tough times can be a mutually supportive thing.
If there is one herbalist in a town, how much safer is that town if there are 5, how much safer too if that town has 100 people who are capable of identifying plants and making home remedies? Nobody has to be an expert, but everyone has to help with their own skills.
It also takes some of the stress of a potential disaster or emergency. Rather than thinking in the way that neoliberslism wants us to – that we are all individuals who must struggle with each other to survive, we take the opposite tact.
If you take the normal prepping approach, you not only need to stock X days/weeks/months of food (at enormous personal expense) but you have to learn a very wide set of skills and cram in a large amount of knowledge. That, too, is expensive. Not only that, thinking that way puts a lot of pressure on individuals to learn makes them want to be ‘experts’ and bring along a lot of ego when they believe they are.
Having a broad, inspired community of people with many existing skills and of people who are willing to learn and share together is far better, less pricey, less expensive, and less ego boosting. It also builds in redundancy.
If you’re finding this information useful, share it with your community
Imagine if only one person in a community knows how to bake a cake. If that person gets sick, moves away, or passes on, then that community is cake-less until someone learns from scratch or someone with the skills can be convinced to move into the community. Now imagine that 12 people know how to bake a cake. Not only are there more cakes (hooray!) and more variety of cakes (horray as well) but if soomething happens to one of the cake bakers, there’s no sudden lack of cakes (though thsy my have had one special recipe that will be missed). The other aspect to think of is that with a plethora of bakers, there is less stress put on any one person and also there are many more opportunities for others to learn cake baking (yum, a whole community of cake bakers..I could live there!).
You might notice that I’ve not mentioned trade or bartering or purchasing. Thas’t a whole n’nother kettle of herring and is the the path that got us into this mess in the first place. So while we’re looking into the future, why not imagine one where everything is just given, where generosity isn’t even considered special, just built into the weave of everyday life. There’s no harm in thinking that way, give it a try. We probably won’t achieve that state in this cycle of lives, but isn’t it something to aspire to.
Of course, this is all theory. Or is it? There are some simple, practical steps that most of us can take to ease the shock of disaster while we get our bearings and get our shit together. This is where I see the usual preps as being useful. This’ll be continued in the next post in a couple of days.
