There's this wonderful quote - and I think it applies very much to our times - at least, to people that are doing relatively well - and it has an impact on our topic here.
> Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times ( G. Michael Hopf, from his post-apocalyptic novel The End )
I look at some of my family members, and I think it applies very much.
There is no war ( here, at least, fingers crossed, it stays that way ), no famine, there's a roof over our heads, food on our table, etc. - life should be good, no ?
But then, people start making a fuss about minor defects in their food, the latest feature in their gadget, crumbs on the counter, a misplaced dirty dish, or - what someone else does or doesn't keep - it becomes.. important to them to have everything perfect.
Children start turning down perfectly good food, and even when it's exactly what they normally eat and like, they manage to find minor imperfections real or imagined, and refuse to eat it. They are going hungry because they are over-fed and have it too easy.
Just think of it.
In hard times - in times of war, famine, disaster - people, including children, were grateful for any good shelter, they ate whatever they could get their hands on - good food, bad food, uncooked food, spoiled food, non-food..
Here and now, people over-rely on being able to buy everything, so they recalibrate their entire thinking to "this can be discarded, this can be replaced, no need to bother, no need to think", and the mind, ever calibrated to look for problems, finds some where there are, effectively, none. At least, this is the case for some people - less insightful and introspective ones, I'd say.
This has a multi-pronged impact, the way I see it.
First, the "problems over nothing" are impacting some people very badly - and Keepers, as the profile suggests, are likely to be more sensitive to conflict, conflict and artificial chaos is disastrous to a keen and process-oriented mind. I know this is the case for me.
Second, it occurs to me, Keepers, at least some of them - the crafty, tinkering kind - might be operating under the "hard times" imperatives at all times, which is normal and reasonable and good for Keepers concerned, it's the way to stay sharp, it's no different from prepping or homesteading ( when done properly and intentionally ) - and this clashes with the happy-go-discardy mindset - combined with people wanting to enforce their aesthetic preferences on others. Again, I can relate to this personally.
Third, hard times are coming again, according to this principle, and to everything I see that is going on around us.
Not sure how right I am about this - this is mostly food for thought - but as usual, chances are there's something here.