The world is going insane before our very eyes, yet I feel at ease with things. I don't feel pressured to do one thing or another. I'm in charge of my life, and I alone decide what I will or will not do. Hence, I'm unvaccinated, and confident that this will remain the case.
This is not due to some random luck on my part, but the result of a strategy that I formalized back in 2016 when I fully realized that I was on an unsustainable path. I had to get out of debt. I had to sell my house and get away from the banking system as much as possible. I sensed a storm on the horizon, and a need to have financial flexibility to sustain whatever ugliness was on its way.
I had no idea what the nature of the storm would be. However, I knew that it would be centered around the big cities of the world. The sort of insanity I foresaw was to be rooted in an excess belief in bureaucratic power to shape society. Hence, a relatively poor country at the periphery of civilized society seemed to me the ideal outpost.
I was already living in Portugal at the time, and it has proven itself worthy of my trust. It's a good place to be during times of uncertainty. People are polite and helpful. There are small stores everywhere, and towns and cities have strong connections to the surrounding countryside. Everybody knows somebody with a farm.
There's also a tradition of gentle anarchy. People are not too particular about government rules and regulations, and this mentality extends all the way into the police force and bureaucracy itself. The only rule that everybody abides by is the golden rule, save the odd crook here and there.
My optimism is in part due to the fact that my strategy seems to be coming into its own. So far, I've been right about Portugal as a peripheral state, and the virtues of having financial flexibility. I'm not dependent on a boss or the state. I can move quickly if need be, and I can decide for myself what to do. But there's no urgency. The overall feel of things is that rules and regulations are being rolled back. Even the police has stopped following state issued recommendations.
However, this doesn't mean that things can't get ugly. The war of attrition is by no means over. Things are getting worse in places like Italy and Germany. A ruthless system of segregation is being implemented in which only the vaccinated are allowed to earn a salary or go into stores. This may still be pushed in Portugal as well.
Should Italian and German style apartheid be implemented in Portugal, there will still be options open to me and my family. We have sufficient savings to last us many years, and we have direct access to farms in the area. We can have groceries delivered directly to our door. We even have enough money to buy a small farm for ourselves. However, this may never become necessary, because there's a good chance that increased segregation in Italy and Germany will result in less segregation in Portugal.
Portugal is already experiencing an influx of internally displaced refugees from the rest of Europe. These people don't identify themselves as refugees. They call themselves expats. However, they come to Portugal for more reasons than cheap wine and sunny weather. They come here to escape fascism. Hence, there's increasing internal pressure on Portugal to relax rules and regulations.
Being both peripheral to the EU and the center of an old empire, Portugal is a country that's likely to find its own path going forward. But it's too early to say anything for certain. We need to stay vigilant. If things get worse, we might have to do something. That might mean moving into the hinterland of Portugal, or go somewhere even more peripheral, like Cape Verde. But none of this worries me. I'm perfectly positioned and confident that we'll get through this without getting stabbed by needles.
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