On the issue of "poor vs. rich suitors" -- a topic which has come up before on CathInfo, I would like to add this:
This description (taken from another thread, regarding the "grasshoppers" who drift through life as if everything will always be hunky-dory) applies in many ways to CERTAIN specimens of "millennials" -- those who not only don't have a job, but they haven't acquired much discipline and/or useful skills either. I'm not accusing anyone in particular; as the saying goes: "If the shoe fits, wear it".
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=36839&min=0&num=5Read this description. If this is you, NO you shouldn't be getting married. That poor peasant in the middle ages at least had a large measure of self-sufficiency for his day. He knew how to grow crops, take care of chickens, and probably how to process them into meat. He got a certain amount of exercise, probably because he had no choice. And if he didn't have the discipline to work, he would starve and/or be thrown into prison by the local lord, for failure to pay his taxes.
For such a one, there is nothing holding him back from marriage. But what about the people described this way?
And because you did not prepare, you have desperately few options to do anything other than obey. A year earlier, when your friends were learning how to grow their own garden vegetables and save seeds, you spent your free time clubbing and watching TV sitcoms. Two years earlier, when your friends decided to get fit and practice some long-distance walking so they could carry a backpack, you discovered the Domino's 2-for-1 pizza deal and began "saving money" by gorging yourself on obesity-inducing fake food. And three years ago, when your friends were spending their weekends learning CPR, emergency medicine skills, handgun self-defense skills, wilderness survival skills or herbal wildcrafting skills, you spent your time playing on your Xbox, the domain where your screen name "BADASSMOFO" announced to the world just how amazing you truly are.
You now face the uncertainty of the near future with the same terrified sense of a domestic poodle dropped into a Louisiana swamp. You have no idea how to survive in the real world, without your ATM, your iPhone, your internet access and your Doritos. You don't own a knife, you're afraid of guns and you despise the mere thought of committing any act of violence whatsoever, even in defense of your own life or property.
My point: If most people would consider you "immature"; if you have no marketable skills, if you have wasted most of your life up till now playing video games and watching TV, how can you hope to support a family? Unless you plan to be homeless and dig through dumpsters, which isn't even legal in many places today...
Blue collar or day laborers is one thing. But what if you have no skills or ability to earn money? What if you're not even familiar with how to do many of those "manual labor jobs"? Unfortunately those kind of people do exist.
I guess what I'm saying is, there IS a minimum income you have to earn to run a household in 2015. Minimum wage probably won't get you there. The minimum you have to earn might not be $50,000, but a minimum certainly exists.
And just because "no one is guaranteed anything" doesn't mean that it's OK to not have a chance in heck of getting a job :)
Here is the full description, for those who are interested (many things in this full description don't apply to "unmarriageable millennials".)
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If you scored under 20 points on this Preparedness Pop Quiz, you're probably not going to make it.
Even worse, it's probably already too late for you to do anything about it.
In essence, you are clueless. As part of the non-prepared, you've been living in a dream world populated by cultural delusions. You've been watching cable TV and thinking you're seeing real news. You've been buying factory foods at the grocery store and thinking you're eating real food. You've been paying taxes, and working a job, and voting for candidates at the voting booths, all while thinking you're living in a real democracy run by the will of the People rather than the criminal intent of the corrupt elite. You have absolutely no clue of real American history, how politics really works and why all the people at the very top are the most criminally insane sociopaths ever produced by the human race.
And all the while, you've completely fallen for the delusion that everything your life has come to depend on will reliably exist, day after day, because it has always been that way in your experience: Water will always come out of the tap in your kitchen; cash will always be available at the local ATM; police will always respond when you call 911; fuel will always be available at your local gas station; your debit card will always work... and so on.
What you fail to understand is that you've been living in an artificial construct... an interconnected web of electronics, financial transactions, social contracts, industrial output, food logistics and other artificial layers that have created for you the illusion that everything you need will always be available, day after day, without interruption. You do not grasp the cultural chaos that's coming... the racial tension... the economic collapse... the ecosystem collapse and food shortages... the climate radicalization that will ultimately lead to mass starvation and mass death.
The day will soon come that many of the things you have come to depend on will experience severe disruptions, outages and in some cases even collapse. You will not be warned about that day from your "Matrix media" news sources like CNN. There will be no official acknowledgement of any problems at all... even as the disruptions begin to take hold and the riots begin to flood into the streets.
You will be lied to by your government and your local news station, both of which will insist they have everything under control (they don't) and that you have nothing to worry about (you actually do). You will be told to stay put even though you should probably bug out. You will be ordered to obey the commands of government even though you should probably think for yourself. You will be stripped of any means of self-defense even in the moment when you need self-defense the most.
And because you did not prepare, you have desperately few options to do anything other than obey. A year earlier, when your friends were learning how to grow their own garden vegetables and save seeds, you spent your free time clubbing and watching TV sitcoms. Two years earlier, when your friends decided to get fit and practice some long-distance walking so they could carry a backpack, you discovered the Domino's 2-for-1 pizza deal and began "saving money" by gorging yourself on obesity-inducing fake food. And three years ago, when your friends were spending their weekends learning CPR, emergency medicine skills, handgun self-defense skills, wilderness survival skills or herbal wildcrafting skills, you spent your time playing on your Xbox, the domain where your screen name "BADASSMOFO" announced to the world just how amazing you truly are.
But now, as the proverbial s### is about to hit the fan, instead of having real-world skills, some level of physical fitness, a pantry full of long-term storable foods and a collection of heirloom seeds, you have a high-level character on World of Warcraft, a case of type-2 diabetes, a massive overhanging beltline, a refrigerator full of processed junk food and a couple of bottles of insulin which will quickly run out once the pharmacies are overrun by looters (or burned to the ground as we saw in Baltimore).
Instead of betting on skills and preparedness, you bet on the empty delusion that society's current practices are entirely sustainable. You are now about to lose that bet, and the cost of losing it is dire. For starters, you now have very little time left to prepare for what's coming. The skills and resources you need to survive the societal chaos that's coming take time to put in place, but you spent your time watching TV and trying to impress your millennial friends rather than acquiring real-world skills that might save yourself (and maybe even a few friends, too).
You now face the uncertainty of the near future with the same terrified sense of a domestic poodle dropped into a Louisiana swamp. You have no idea how to survive in the real world, without your ATM, your iPhone, your internet access and your Doritos. You don't own a knife, you're afraid of guns and you despise the mere thought of committing any act of violence whatsoever, even in defense of your own life or property.
You, my friends, are the "low hanging fruit" of the criminal gangs who will confiscate everything you own as they sweep through your neighborhoods, looting and pillaging to their heart's delight. You have no way to stop them, of course. That silly pepper spray canister you bought in 1998 has no pressure left in it, and you don't know how to aim it anyway. By the time the bad guys have already reached your "pepper spray range," it's already too late. They're in your house, stealing your Jєωelry, shooting your dog and having their way with your family members. You can't stop them because you don't know how. You're "anti-gun" and "anti-violence" after all. You believe in a civilized society. You fell for the delusion that the government would always protect you.
So you try to dial 911, but the signal is busy. 911 is on overload, didn't you know? The police have announced they're only responding to murders now, and even that response time has stretched out to three hours. So you've got three hours with zero defense, in a house full of armed gang bangers who aren't even afraid of the cops, much less defenseless, unprepared citizens like you. If you're lucky, you might simply get beaten and robbed. If you're unlucky -- and they don't mind wasting the ammo -- they'll use you for target practice just to shut you up and stop your incessant pathetic screaming.
Or maybe you're lucky and the gangs don't find your place. So instead of dealing with armed intruders, you only have to deal with a cut-off water supply, no electricity, no heat, no air conditioning, no local groceries, no functioning gas stations and no 911 response. The ATMs are down, the land lines are dead, the cell towers are out of commission and you can't get internet access to work. This is actually a "good" scenario compared to what's happening to other people in other parts of the country. Do you have the skills and state of mind to survive it?
In either case, you have no way out because you don't have a vehicle with a full tank of gas. You can't read a map and a compass -- for your entire adult life, you've navigated at the command of voice-driven GPS -- and you have no idea how to leave your city on foot. You've never even been hiking beyond a gentle walk in nature followed by a night's stay in a hotel. You don't know how to pitch a tent, how to build a makeshift shelter, or how to start a fire without using a lighter. You don't even own a lighter anyway, because of course you don't smoke either.
You've screwed yourself out of options, essentially. And you didn't even know it.
But don't get mad at me for pointing this out. Get mad at yourself for letting yourself become so freaking pathetic and vulnerable in a world run by predators and criminals.