A timely book I’m reading is ‘’The Knowledge; How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm.’’ by Lewis Dartnell. (2014). It’s about just what the title says.
Here’s the darkest paragraph.
In this sense, the ‘’best’’ way for the world to end would be at the hands of a fast-spreading pandemic. The perfect viral storm is a contagion that combines aggressive virulence, a long incubation period, and near 100 percent mortality. This way, the agent of the apocalypse is extremely infectious between individuals, takes a little while for the sickness to kick in — so that it maximizes the pool of subsequent hosts that are infected, but results in certain death in the end. We have become a truly urban species since 2008 — more than half of the global population lives in cities rather than rural areas and this crammed density of people, along with fervent intercontinental travel, provides the perfect conditions for the rapid transmission of contagions. If a plague like the Black Death, which wiped out a third of the European population and probably a similar proportion across Asia from 1347 to 1351 were to strike today, our technological civilization would be much less resilient.
Most of this book is as practical as possible — where to find food, how to tell whether you should eat it, how to take advantage of the basics when you are pushed back to the level of the plow, the lever, the wheel, the energy of water and how to use it. He recommends going back to the rural land where the chances of finding workable wood stoves, windmills, and wells for water are much better. But he also admits that if one needs a fort, an abandoned prison is as good for keeping enemies out as it once was at keeping them in. This wry awareness is a pleasure to read, even in spite of the subjects. There are omissions: no mention of computers.
‘ . . . radioactivity . . . can be a source of peaceful power, but also allows you to determine the age of our planet, offering a glimpse down the dizzying hole of deep time. In earth sciences we’ve missed out on the theory of plate tectonics, for example: the mind-blowing concept that the vast continents are scudding across the surface of the planet like leaves on a windy pond, occasionally crunching into one another to crumple up entire mountain ranges. These profound realizations that the world has not always been as it is now, and is bewilderingly old, are required to understand the theory of evolution by small changes from one generation to the next. All of these represent kernels of knowledge that a recovering society would need to re-explore and unpack for themselves. . .
This wondering but basic view of knowledge takes me back to the book called simply ‘Making’ by Tim Ingold. (2013) I do not think it is an accident that both of these books come from a context of English thought by those who remained when the others went off to do empire-building. These people are content to deeply explore where they already were. ‘Making’ is about hands-on creating basic things from flint-knapping, weaving baskets, casting metal. in some ways the title should not be ‘making’ but rather ‘participating’ because it is about an attitude towards materials that is like having empathy for other humans — being part of them. Developed in a small seminar or workshop with students, Ingold gathers up ways to become part of the sensuous existence around us, to feel in our muscles the tensions, temperatures and potentials of materials.
For instance, when flint-knapping, one senses the potential fracture lines that can cleave stone easily. When a rap with a blade hits that line and divides the substance, one feels it viscerally. When basketweaving — feeling the resistance in the willow wands— the countervailing tensions of the weave — it is a participation that tells one’s muscles where and how much to put one’s force next.
Likewise, what Dartnell is proposing is the understanding of science through participation in the forces that create the world, not that one needs to go get electrocuted, but that one needs to stand still and really open up to understand lightning. ordinary objects, soap and pots, canvas sails and charcoal bits, acid vs. alkali, all elements neglected in an urban life. Simple ways to clean water or create an electrical current are the beginnings of thoughtful technology to restore culture in a direct and living way.
Both Ingold and Dartnell emphasize the need for others to swap ideas and report information. Neither of them is ‘psychological’ or emotional, so they don’t talk about the cellular brain and body mechanisms of learning, but speak of remembering, trusting, sharing that build the brain towards brilliant and muscular science. They don’t discuss it from a distance, they just participate in it.
Here’s another source article that even points out the advantages during the lockdown.
‘Jugaad is an old Indian concept of improvisation under resource constraints. It means developing solutions that work by overcoming and/or bypassing constraints or rules imposed by social norms or by legal compliances. Jugaad also means seeking opportunity in adversity, doing more with less; thinking and acting flexibly, and following the heart.’
In an unconnected twitter tweet a man discovered that it was possible for him to cook and do it well, to follow recipes and later to innovate, to use ingredients he had never considered. Now his hands know his food as well as his mouth does. He is joyful.
I was thinking about transportation in a deserted city without a car and it was obvious that skateboarding was the way to go, even better than a bicycle that needs tires. If obstacles prevent rolling along, one can take the skateboard under the arm and walk. After months on a skateboard, the world must be a different place than it is from a closed car, but it is dependent on a surface that’s not likely to exist in the country. Nevertheless it is a powerful and direct way to participate in the world. One seeks the opportunities, the fittingness. That’s participation. It’s the way to survive after the pandemic.
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