One of the things that helped me develop was something that was not available for my children. Because of changes in employment and safety laws. At the age of 15 I was working during the holidays in a freezing works, or meat packing plant if you live in North America. The town I grew up in — a suburb of Auckland — had two such plants on its northern edge and one of the elders in my church was in management there. I was offered a job and I took it.

For the next two summers there I worked.

At that point NZ was moving into recession and the works were being closed.

It was there I learned to hate the Trotskyite and Soviet Communists, for they ran the union and ensured we lost a weeks wage. I learned how to talk with and get on with people who had no intellectual interests — because I worked with them. And I learned how to work covered with blood and lanolin.

Such experiences ensure that you have resilience, and that you learn to park your ego outside your workplace. .The current generation of millennial petals, who demand that the world fits around their ideology, would have been shanked on the chain, as ell workers there had knives and knew how to use them. I survived by hanging with the pentecostal prayer group. (I also learned that those men had a deeper faith than mine).

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In this time, those of the narrative, those who work in the academy and their useful idiots in the news or entertainment industry (I now have difficulty telling them apart) are fragile. They do not have the ability to cope when things become tough, and when they need to change.

The lack of want changes a man. Struggle, fear and the sleepless nights are the crucible of resourcefulness and creativity. The result is not just resourcefulness, but caution and prudence. It is the instinctive understanding of risk that comes from failure, what economists call moral hazard¹, that is at the heart of prudence. Pamper a man long enough and he loses this.

It is most obvious with our carny folk. Young people go into the circus hoping to become stars, but most spend their youth waiting tables, doing odd jobs and never doing more than some small parts in small productions. Some kick around as extras, making a decent living, but working hard. These are usually very sensible people because they know how hard it is to maintain their spot and they appreciate how quickly it can go away. It’s not an accident that these are the most right-wing people in Hollywood.

Then we have the stars who are magically plucked from the gutter and made rich, glamorous and famous. It’s rare for a mega star to have had a long apprenticeship or have struggled in bit parts for a long time. They tend to hit it big early in their career. Whatever sense they had is quickly squeezed out of them and they become spoiled toddlers, complaining about the unfairness of the world.

The cathedral is fragile. There is no need for us to go to the movies, or watch sports… or at least pay for such. We can cut the cord with sky TV. You can wait for the movie to be on netflix… or pirate bay. You don’t need to buy that newspaper. The mass media is dying.

And it is being driven by a real recession, driven in part by the property bubble in NZ, which means that people do not have disposable income… and those who do are being careful about debt.

If you have had hard times, you have the ability to cut down and live in a more simple way. But if you have always lived within the cathedral and by the narrative, you don’t have that ability. You have to learn it anew.

I wrote a little fast this morning: as times get hard our priorities should be providing for our family, then the church brotherhood, and then others. Those who can work should work. You should minimize debt and live well within your income. This is where a spouse can save more than she would earn outside of the home. The nominal property value is only of use when dealing with the banks and rating agencies — have as small a mortgage as possible, and if the rates are too high, move to where they are lower. As far as possible, be where there are no crowds. Choose to live in a boring, mono-cultural area. Worship where the gospel is preached and where diversity is not seen as a strength.

And pray that God will spare the nations, for the enemy wants war.