Rebuilding Civilization

brianv said:
"If our human civilization did crumble, wouldn't that just prove that the ideas and principles it was built upon were flawed and doomed to failure? After all, if those ideas and principles were strong and sound, then civilization wouldn't have crumbled in the first place."
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Not necessarily. There is always the possibility that the ideas and principles were fine but the practice of those ideas and principles were flawed.
 
killgar said:
Just for the hell of it, here are a few philisophical thoughts of mine on this subject-

If our human civilization did crumble, wouldn't that just prove that the ideas and principles it was built upon were flawed and doomed to failure? After all, if those ideas and principles were strong and sound, then civilization wouldn't have crumbled in the first place.

So, if you attempt to rebuild human civilization using the same methods, ideas, and principles that the old failed civilization was built on, wouldn't you just be setting up the new civilization for inevitable failure as well?
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Trying this for the third and last time. I think I've got this all figured out now.

Not necessarily. The ideals and principles can be fine but the practices of those ideals and principles can be flawed.

The Foxfire books are excellent!
 
I'd start out with something medical to try to ensure modern medicine can go on in one form or another.
Then engineering - plumbing, water, irrigation
then math and science
then the spiritual aspects.
The real question is what books.
Did I cover what's needed :) ? Or should books on fighting Mad Max warlords wearing assless chaps be a priority :)?

Seriously, maybe for medicine, the Merck Manual.
 
As somebody said before: it's not about what books but about what kind of people we are talking about. To rebuild civilization you'll need let's call it a "critical mass" of people with different skills, but with the same set of values; otherwise you will only have a mob, pulling in different directions, looking everyone for himself, with no sense of purpose.
 
Beyond the more nuts and bolts type books, we'd benefit from books that would help to restore the best of our literary and critical thinking skills. We should keep alive works from folks like Carl Sagan, Joseph Campbell, Dawkins, Salinger, Capote, Phillip K. Dick, Chekhov, Nabakov, Kafka, Sam Shepard, Orwell, etc. This would help us re-grow what little wisdom we had.

I'm not sure that having one particular "type" of people with the same set of values would promote long term viability. A common goal, like survival, is obviously beneficial...but diversity can be a thing of beauty.
 
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As for America, the rebuild would have to be a diverse group. It would not likely have much credibility if it didn't match the diversity of the group it was to supersede. Especially if it professed the American ideal. Some of our progression has been for the better of us all.
 
Alvaro Candanedo said:
As somebody said before: it's not about what books but about what kind of people we are talking about. To rebuild civilization you'll need let's call it a "critical mass" of people with different skills, but with the same set of values; otherwise you will only have a mob, pulling in different directions, looking everyone for himself, with no sense of purpose.
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Exactly, hence my previous post.

The "go to" manuals are essential of course but more than that, a sense of cohesion, belonging and greater purpose for a group to establish itself culturally/geographically, etc..
 
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An Author by the name of Kurt Saxon covered this subject in detail. His premise was that such a civilization would probably revert back to cottage industries. Blacksmiths, farmers, weavers, etc. As such he compiled a lot of knowledge from probably the 1700s through the early 1900s. In this way it is similar to the Foxfire books. He put out the Survivor series and Granddad's Wonderful Book of Chemistry. There is also a Technology Source Book that has great ideas for third world nations. I believe you can get a set of CD's that contain the whole library. You would have to print out the information you needed before that big bang and make sure it didn't dissappear like a lot of other knowledge. Life expectancy would go down while time for survival would go up. No more 12th, 8th maybe 6th grade educations. People would need to learn a trade as soon as they could. No more fancy antibiotics or vaccines. Tincture of Iodine and Mercuricrome would be state of the art. We've depleted a lot of the easily obtainable resources that fueled expansion over the last three centuries, the next time around would be more difficult.
 
The Foxfire series sure brings back memories.

My grandparents had a bunch of those books. I can remember seeing them in the bookshelf that they hand built. They built everything and ran a 100 acre farm. Grandpa could tear down engines, grow crops, tend to all sorts of animals from chickens to cattle to hogs to quail to beekeeping to catfish ponds, build structures, bail hay, churn butter, raise his own tobacco, did his own plumbing........he and grandma could do just about anything.

What they didn't learn growing up on their respective family farms I bet they learned from those Foxfire books.

Regards.
 
I quite agree with all the technical literature that is mentioned above.

I may offend with my ruminations and I don't mean to. I have often thought of this: This topic's scenario presents itself as both an opportunity and a super risky endeavor.

Is it human nature to be greedy, power hungry, distrustful and insecure, dishonest, or corrupt? The reason I ask this is because it seems to me that in our modern world,which is dominated by western culture, it often happens that whenever an any organization is formed, no matter how altruistic its mission, it eventually falls prey to the above-mentioned pitfalls. Just as an example, if there is anyone here that knows or is a pastor, I'm sure that they can share at least one instance where this has happened. It starts out great, then insidiously at first, a slow downward spiral develops.

I wonder where the roots of this lie. Does it have to do with our Abrahamic roots? I mean the Bible sure is a violent read, however those self same pitfalls were deliniated quite clearly to Moses. There are other cultures where this doesn't seem to be as prevalent. The San bushmen of the Kalahari, indigenous Australians, Tibetans/Nepalis/Bhutanis - Buddhists? Would it not serve the long-term greater good to create a new chapter to our spiritual works by adding or amalgamating all the good from those cultures that don't seem to fall victim to our quite common weaknesses. Am I wrong? There is definitely a whole lot romanticizing, assumption and lack of research in my quasi-theory. Just to lighten this a bit, a couple of movies come to mind; The Postman, The Village.

Thoughts?
 
Marcelo Cantu said:
I wonder where the roots of this lie. Does it have to do with our Abrahamic roots? I mean the Bible sure is a violent read, however those self same pitfalls were deliniated quite clearly to Moses. There are other cultures where this doesn't seem to be as prevalent. The San bushmen of the Kalahari, indigenous Australians, Tibetans/Nepalis/Bhutanis - Buddhists? Would it not serve the long-term greater good to create a new chapter to our spiritual works by adding or amalgamating all the good from those cultures that don't seem to fall victim to our quite common weaknesses. Am I wrong? There is definitely a whole lot romanticizing, assumption and lack of research in my quasi-theory.
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It does not have to do with Abrahamic roots, not even with the roots of Abrahamic roots. In cuneiform and hieroglyphic, among the ancient Aryan Medes and Persian, and among their close cousins on the Indian subcontinent, we see the same. East Asia saw the rise of China, Korea, and Japan, and Central Asia's Turks and Mongols.

"I want what you've got!"
"Come and get it!"

Study the baboon and the chimpanzee, raiding their own kind in what might as well be called war. Among chimps we see the roots of genocide.
 
Marcelo Cantu said:
I wonder where the roots of this lie. Does it have to do with our Abrahamic roots? I mean the Bible sure is a violent read, however those self same pitfalls were deliniated quite clearly to Moses. There are other cultures where this doesn't seem to be as prevalent. The San bushmen of the Kalahari, indigenous Australians, Tibetans/Nepalis/Bhutanis - Buddhists? Would it not serve the long-term greater good to create a new chapter to our spiritual works by adding or amalgamating all the good from those cultures that don't seem to fall victim to our quite common weaknesses. Am I wrong? There is definitely a whole lot romanticizing, assumption and lack of research in my quasi-theory.
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It does not have to do with Abrahamic roots, not even with the roots of Abrahamic roots. In cuneiform and hieroglyphic, among the ancient Aryan Medes and Persian, and among their close cousins on the Indian subcontinent, we see the same. East Asia saw the rise of China, Korea, and Japan, and Central Asia's Turks and Mongols.

"I want what you've got!"
"Come and get it!"

Study the baboon and the chimpanzee, raiding their own kind in what might as well be called war. Among chimps we see the roots of genocide.
 
I would save some of the masterpieces of Classical literature, both in the original Greek and Latin, and also in decent translations: Homer, Plato, Vergil, Cicero, etc. I would also save with them some dictionaries, lexicons, and grammar books so that these tongues are not lost.

This body of literature is a large part of the foundation of Western culture; the world we live in now is, in part, the product of having learned this stuff. Classical lit. has survived the end of civilization a couple of times already, so why not once more?


Full disclosure: I am a Classical philologist and teacher by training and profession, so I am a bit biased!
 
I think a lot of anything to do with this discussion depends on how far back civilization would be sent,personally I can't picture it being set back more than 100 years or so which would start us somewhere around the mechanical revolution to start with.That said,Esav is correct with the Foxfire series being a must have,I also have another one that I use a couple times a year for reference,it's a Readers Digest book called Back to basics,it covers about anything from clearing land,building a house,cultivating the land,raising livestock,butchering,you get the idea,if it's something that you need to know,it's in there.
 
Marcelo Cantu said:
I wonder where the roots of this lie. Does it have to do with our Abrahamic roots? I mean the Bible sure is a violent read, however those self same pitfalls were deliniated quite clearly to Moses. There are other cultures where this doesn't seem to be as prevalent. The San bushmen of the Kalahari, indigenous Australians, Tibetans/Nepalis/Bhutanis - Buddhists? Would it not serve the long-term greater good to create a new chapter to our spiritual works by adding or amalgamating all the good from those cultures that don't seem to fall victim to our quite common weaknesses. Am I wrong? There is definitely a whole lot romanticizing, assumption and lack of research in my quasi-theory. Just to lighten this a bit, a couple of movies come to mind; The Postman, The Village.

Thoughts?
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I can't speak to the cultural psychology of chimps, but it certainly seems plausible that our beliefs influence our actions on a cultural scale. We should be thoughtful regarding what and how we believe, because in this area more than any other we truly reap what we sow. If we're to rebuild a society I'd hope that we'd rebuild more wisely than we built.
 
The Way Things Work. I think it is now several volumes and has been re-printed many times. It's just what the title says, a description and diagram of all sorts of things we use on a daily basis. I'd also have my pocket copy of the Constitution, Wilderness Medicine, a book on edible/medicinal wild plants, a organic gardening text, and a few Army survival manuals.
 
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