Does Prepping Need To Be More Generative, Spiritual, and Positive?

Part 3 In response to Prof. Jem Bndell

In a word: NO, and here’s why: While shifting survivalist prepping away from catastrophic panic and toward generative, spiritual, and positive frameworks could build psychological resilience, it also introduces specific psychological, tactical, and ethical dangers. Subverting realistic survival planning with toxic positivity or esoteric concepts risks compromising actual safety.

The primary dangers of this philosophical shift include:

1. Spiritual Bypassing and Emotional Dissociation

When prepping focuses heavily on remaining “positive” and “spiritual,” individuals often fall into the trap of spiritual bypassing.

• The Risk: Instead of confronting the genuine, messy, and terrifying realities of systemic collapse or natural disasters, people turn to spiritual concepts to avoid painful emotions.
• The Consequence: Suppressing fear, grief, or anger as “low-vibe” or “unspiritual” leads to emotional dissociation and prevents true psychological grounding. Fear is an evolutionary signal to act; ignoring it can cause critical delays in physical safety planning.

2. Over-Optimism and Practical Unpreparedness

Injecting extreme positivity into survivalism can breed exaggerated optimism and reality distortion.

• The Risk: Traditional prepping requires granular, unglamorous risk assessments (e.g., sewage backup, supply chain failures, caloric math). Overfocusing on a “generative mindset” can lead individuals to abandon long-term financial or logistical planning, assuming that “the universe will provide”.
• The Consequence: Manifestation-based or highly idealized prepping often lacks structural substance, leaving individuals with a false sense of security but zero practical assets when a concrete crisis hits.

3. Spiritual Narcissism and Tribal Isolation

Shifting survival to a spiritual plane can create intellectual and social hierarchies within prepping groups.

• The Risk: Preppers who view themselves as spiritually or energetically “evolved” may develop spiritual narcissism or superiority. They may begin to label community members who are stressed, pragmatic, or purely secular as “spiritually disruptive” or “low-frequency”.
• The Consequence: This creates elite echo chambers. True community survival relies on cross-functional, highly diverse local networks. Isolating or looking down on those who don’t share a specific spiritual framework undermines the very community cohesion needed during a crisis.

4. Vulnerability to Deceptive Ideologies and Scams

Blending wellness, spirituality, and doomsday panic creates a fertile environment for predatory actors.

• The Risk: Historically, the intersection of wellness (“positivity”) and prepping (“survival”) has made individuals highly susceptible to cult-like dynamics, alternative-health multi-level marketing, and spiritual manipulation.
• The Consequence: Individuals may spend thousands on unproven holistic healing tools or follow charismatic, unvetted “spiritual leaders” who offer cosmic immunity instead of realistic emergency management.

5. Sanitization of Skills and Development of Learners

• Some Shamanic Practitioners have already claimed to make Core Shamanism Safe: “Nature Spirituality Grifters” would make the skills as simple as possible so they can rapidly master more “accessible” skills.
• The perceived need to “fast-track” Connection To Nature: Connecting to the web of life is, for some “Shamanic Practitioners,” urgent for people to “evolve“.
• Sanitization Will Create Underskilled, Substandard Practitioners Unfit For Anything: Underskilled people claiming “spiritual authority and eldership” who have never spent any significant time in nature will start dictating what skills people learn and what constitutes initiation, over survival competence.

6. Spirituality has its place for those who want it

I’m on the management team that runs a 10-day arts and music camp, where we have a composting toilet that processes the waste of 180 people annually, which I helped design and build. I run the systems, which provide hot water for the camp showers and kitchen. I’m also one of the site’s first aiders. I teach bushcraft at this camp. I’m involved with people who do or teach these things:

• Circle Dances
• Dances of Universal Peace
• Ceremonies and Neo Tribal Traditions
• Meditation
• Yoga
• Belief in Aliens, etc:
• Shamanic Practitioners

Survivalism and preparedness do not need a whole load of nonsense and psychobabble

I would, however, welcome Shamanic Practitioners, and anyone who thinks they are spiritual and genuinely wants to learn how to connect to nature through skills learned prosocially in nature.

The brain releases serotonin in nature. When we learn ancestral skills in nature, the brain releases Dopamine. Learning prosocially releases oxytocin. These are the brain chemicals associated with spiritual experiences.

Survivalism is a gateway to a deeper connection to nature and a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Survival skills, a central aspect of preparedness, involve objectively understanding the natural world around us and being comfortable in it. Preparedness is about being ready and able to cope with what’s coming down the pipeline. I’m not talking about surviving a nuclear war or a Zombie Apocalypse. I am primarily interested in preparedness for ecological collapse and my part in slowing it down, however minuscule. The Solidarity preppers I know are planting trees, doing guerrilla gardening, and restoring nature. Most have a history of NVDA and direct action and have lived in the trees. Prepping and survivalism doesn’t need any more grifters talking shit.