Aftermath

In the beginning, there was a void. And into this void was born the Earth. The Earth was a dead world, with sulfuric oceans and punishing solar rays. Freezing with its molten moon, burning with its furious sun. This was the first world.

Then the breath of Earth grew thick. And she birthed a great many species. These lived and died. They changed and spread from the sea to the land. From the land to the air. They grew fabulously large, and amazingly small. They spread deep into the ground. And they live in the air. They grew to live together to the benefit of all. And eventually they each became extinct, gifting their place to another. This was the second world.

Next in our unrepentantly anthropocentric creation story comes humanity. This species had gifts like all the species. Like the spider has silk and the cat has speed. Their gift was culture. And with this ability they adapted to every climate on Earth. And where ever they went they changed what they found. Some species gave their last gift to the Earth in this process. But what humanity created was greater fertility. And greater balance between the species of Earth. This was the third world.

The talent of humanity for changing their environment made some grow in arrogance. And they proclaimed themselves supreme. They spread across the globe in an orgy of death. Proclaiming they were making the world better they marched forward with their banner of progress, leaving sand and baked Earth in their wake. Many species suffered, giving their last gift prematurely. But the tragedy is that humanity suffered more, because despite the separation, the lack of food, the unheard of diseases and illnesses, even the newly, unrelenting struggle to survive in a dead landscape…despite it all…humanity did not give their final gift. They only grew in number forcing humanity into greater and greater hardship. This is the fourth world.

Now we stand on the brink of the fifth world. Humanity will either give its last gift, or will go forward with a new purpose. Humanity’s gift from Earth was culture. We can change at will without having to wait for evolution. This is the great virtue that made humanity’s name a blessing, and then made it a curse. Humanity must exercise its gift again, and change. Creating life and bounty where we once left salt and sand. And this change will relieve the suffering of humanity as well. This is the fifth world. Building it is our great work.

I was originally introduced to this great work more than five years ago. Compared to some of you out there I’m pretty new at this. But I’ve seen a big change in the way we talk to people who do not yet know they are a part of the great work. Before we had to convince them things needed to change. Once we did, offering the solution of a new society was relatively easy. They needed to hear a solution, and we had one ready. The only toss up was whether they would want to run with us or stay on the sidelines.

Now people know we need change. That argument is quickly and easily accepted. They are even mostly prepared to hear the true extent of our situation. But they already think they have been given the solution. Renewable energy, clean coal, recycling, organic food, vegetarianism, etc have all been offered to people as solutions. They are not. Not a single one has a hope of solving the problem, not all together or each severally. The hard part is not convincing people things need to change. Now the hard part is convincing them that what needs to change is not our technology or our trash, but we ourselves.

– Benjamin Shender

P.S. Please feel free to leave comments. I know we have readers, I have the numbers to prove it. Feel free to jump into the conversation.

It is February the First, Two Thousand Eight in the Common Era. A few weeks ago I mentioned Miranda and I would be announcing a venture soon. As promised, we are prepared to go public.

The Mountain Top School is the first step in a venture to create a model of luxurious, sustainable living. Luxurious in the sense that, taken as a whole, the way of life will be preferable to what modern civilization can offer. Sustainable in the sense that, unless our environment changes dramatically, we could continue on forever, in obvious contrast to modern civilization. The Mountain Top School will function as a way to train others in necessary skills, earn the money necessary to push the venture further, and to recruit new members. As the Mountain Top School develops the skills and knowledge our new, post-industrial society will base its livelihood on, the school will be increasingly overshadowed by the larger development of a new way of life. One that will provide for its membership all of the necessities of life, a level of luxury, social support, freedom, education, security, and more.

Currently our modern society is ill-equipped to handle the problems leading up to the Collapse. Indeed, this is why modern civilization will collapse. If such a society cannot handle the problems that caused it to collapse, it certainly cannot handle the aftermath of that collapse. In order to survive the collapse of modern civilization, and also to go beyond it in a favorable way, we need not only a new set of skills but a new kind of society. And in the final analysis, the only way to create a new society is to create it with a group of dedicated, like-minded people. Until you reach that point all the planning, figuring, and thinking in the world is only so much intellectual masturbation. And so, here begins the great project of our time. Our revolution. Our hope. Our future. Mountain Top School.

– Benjamin Shender

Some people have unpleasant jobs. No, let’s not mince words. Some people do jobs that make most of us gag and contemplate suicide just knowing they exist. What these jobs are is a matter of personal opinion, and I won’t start a fight with any accountants by giving some examples of my list. But there is something important in there. What jobs are good and what jobs are bad is largely a matter of opinion.

Recently the question came up as to how to make people do unpleasant jobs without having a lower class. I had already considered this question, and I had my answer ready: you don’t force people to do anything.

All jobs that can be done fall into one of two distinct categories. The job is either worthwhile, or it is not. If the job is worthwhile then there will be someone who will want to do it. Take something small, like washing the dishes. Most people do not like washing the dishes, but it is worthwhile. And because it is worthwhile, eventually someone will wash the dishes. In fact, usually the benefits of having clean dishes is so high that many people who hate washing dishes do it anyway, just so they have the benefit of clean dishes. And some really odd people actually like washing dishes. :p

Now take a worthless job, like sweeping the desert. Obviously you would have to either pay someone a lot to get them to do this, or otherwise force them to do it. But if the job is worthless, why should it be done at all? Do we really have such an excess of resources that we can afford to throw them away on such worthless tasks?

If we don’t have such an excess now, why would we have such an excess then? Any task sufficiently beneficial to a society will be done by the society, no matter how disgusting or boring they may seem to us.

Benjamin Shender

Turning our head from the probable future, let’s talk about what happens if civilization does not crash and burn.

First, even if the crash does not occur, learning skills like the ones listed in the practical skills section is not a waste. If nothing else, people who know these skills get automatic cool points. Also, there is the added safety in emergency situations of being able to survive without outside assistance. And the psychological advantage of not being a stranger to the land you live on. The last is difficult to explain to a person, unless they already know exactly what you mean.

Perhaps more importantly is the fact the benefits of community are inherent to a community. Living in a community, even one inside of civilization, offers advantages. With or without the collapse of civilization we can still obtain these advantages for ourselves. We can still have the social support structures of a community. Support which extends from cradle to grave and is only conditional on you offering your support to your family in return.

The proceeding are known qualities, but we can also consider further possibilities. For instance, if civilization does not collapse it would mean several things had occurred. First, a suitable replacement(s) for oil must have been found. Second, we would have had to get our pollution and deforestation problems under control. Third, our population explosion must have been stopped and reversed. If you are reading this and scoffing, you have read the situation fairly well in my opinion. It is not likely. It is not impossible, but the only reasonable thing for a person to do is prepare for both possibilities.

Our problems can be summed up very succinctly as “over-consumption.” Like every living thing on the planet we have to consume, and consumption by itself is certainly not a bad thing. The only problem is we are currently consuming the resources required by other species. This is a problem for a simple reason: we rely on the other species on this planet absolutely for our existence. Without them we would all die. The solution is then obvious, all we have to do is reduce our consumption to a level sustainable indefinitely. Currently we are in a self-perpetuating feedback loop forcing us to constantly expand our consumption beyond even our current unsustainable levels. This is bad.

To reduce consumption we need to reduce our population. Fewer people consuming means less consumption. We also need to reduce our individual consumption. Community is a way to do both. The second is easier to explain than the first. Individual consumption is reduced because each person does not have to have their own ladder, washer, drier, television, etc. The community as a whole has them to share. There are two washer/driers for ten people, rather than ten for ten people. And thus consumption is reduced.

Human population responds to natural pressures in their environment the same as any animal does. Evidence indicates our individual ability to make choices does not affect our species as a whole. In the wild, animal populations correspond to food supply. Human populations have done the exact same, even though our greatest minds have been recommending smaller families since the Ancient Greeks. Apparently individual choices cancel out. But, because humans have cultures and societies our population also responds to societal pressures. This is why people in Western Countries can eat the way they do and have negative population growth. Socially, having too many children is selected against. In this specific instance it is simply too expensive to have a large family. In Third World countries it is the opposite. It’s too expensive not to have large families. This, combined with the growing availability of food to the general human population, continues to fuel a continuous, net population growth.

In self-sufficient communities, it works a little differently. Having children at or above the replacement level is encouraged, the same as it is in Third World countries, and for the same reasons. But, because it is a community, it is the community which is encouraged to have more children, not individuals. So while a community might very well have ten or more children, it would tend to average out at one per person unless another force causes it to change. The reason it would tend to average out to replacement level is because families needing many children need many children because they need them to work. In a self-sufficient community, especially one relying on foraging, much less work is required. In fact, raising children becomes the most labor intensive undertaking of the community. But the economic restrictions preventing Western Countries from expanding their population are not present. Hence, in a self-sufficient community, population will remain stable, unless food availability drastically increases or decreases.

It is rather ironic, but assuming the technology is present, which it is, the very same techniques we intend to use to save ourselves are readily adapted to repairing the system without a collapse, or with a greatly mitigated collapse. Unfortunately, the natural resource we have run shortest on is political will.

– Benjamin Shender

Technology is any device or knowledge which helps a person do work. Technology is both possible because and is limited by the laws of physics. Things like thermodynamics, mechanics, statics, and others. In a more concrete way, technology is limited by the energy a society has at its disposal and the materials a society has at its disposal.

After the crash, many materials and energy sources will become unavailable to us. There will be little or no oil and precious little coal. There will certainly not be a sufficient amount of fossil fuels available for industrialization. But industry is a technology, not a synonym for technology. Before industry clever craftsmen invented steel, blades sharp enough to cut through paper floating in a breeze, glass, ceramics, telescopes, printing presses, and a million other things. None of which required fossil fuels.

It was recently my privilege to watch and participate in an activity that has been called impossible by other sources. Using nothing but salvage and rusted iron, myself and others made high-carbon iron knives. The forge was made from pieces of an old car. The bellows were made from an old heavy-duty trash bag. And the fuel was charcoal. After the crash there will be an ample supply of old cars. Plastic trash bags are essentially immortal, and could be replaced easily enough. And charcoal is made every time you set a camp fire. Higher quality charcoal can be made by letting large quantities of wood smolder for a few days, but this is not a difficult process. This forge, and other related technologies, will give us iron, and possibly even steel. Copper could be completely melted at these temperatures.

Glass is also very simple to make. It requires a heat source and sand. Certain sands make better glass, but any sand will do. Glass itself is more useful than many might believe. First, it is one of the most basic materials required to make solar-powered devices. If it is passive solar, it can be the only item. Second, with glass manufacture, a craftsman could make optical lenses. Optical lenses would not only allow people to see who would otherwise be blind, but also permit things like the magnification of sunlight or an approaching army. With a little more experimentation, metal working and glass manufacture could allow a society to have solar panels, the kind that generate electricity.

Beyond this we often underestimate the most basic materials. Using only wood, a clever person could easily make a waterwheel. With that waterwheel and copper wiring, perhaps harvested from millions of miles of unused power lines, a water wheel can generate electricity.

Technological development will not vanish after the crash. It will change. This change will probably mean that some areas of development will be slowed and perhaps completely neglected. For instance, without such a readily available source of hydro-carbons, rockets will probably become only a memory. But creating a huge explosion is hardly the only, and far from the most efficient, way of propelling a vehicle. It might even be possible, given time, ingenuity, and motivation, for humans to conquer space, post-crash. Computers are also not out of the question. They might not be as small and fast as some current versions, but they are not out of the realm of possibility.

And all of this ignores what is perhaps the most intriguing possibility. Perhaps spending so much time on electricity has limited our vision. Only quite recently have we even begun to really explore the possibilities of light. We now have both fiber optics (made from glass among other things) and crystalline semi-conductors of light. This means that we are very close to the first optical computer. A computer that runs on photons rather than electrons opens many possibilities. While we may run out of fossil fuels to burn for electricity, we will not run out of light until the world itself is long dead.

All of this is very speculative, but none of it is out of the question. Many of the points in this article were simplified for the purposes of length. If anyone would like to discuss details or argue the point, please feel free to comment. (Note: I am aware that fiber optics also require synthetic polymers that would tend to be unavailable post-crash, humor me and wonder for a few minutes.)

-Benjamin Shender

Humans are animals, and therefore, have instincts. If the proceeding sentence offends you in any way, please stop reading now. The most commonly cited of these instincts are eat, procreation, and the so-called "fight or flight" reflex. Hence, these will not be discussed here.

Beyond this are several other instincts that are also obvious after some consideration. For instance, when babies are frightened they cry for help. This is hardly learned behavior as it is demonstrated too soon after birth for it have been learned. Also, the baby could not have learned it from a parent, as adults rarely bawl out when frightened, hungry, or wet. Granted the latter instance is usually due to a desire not to attract attention. Since this behavior is observed whether or not the child in question is in the presence of other children, it did not come from the parents, and could not have been invented it must therefore be instinctual. While infants do learn that when they cry their parents come, it is only because they already cry when something untoward happens that they can correlate the two.

There are many other autonomic reflexes that are instinctual; however, they lead to less amusing anecdotes. There are three specific instinctive behaviors I want to discuss. Namely, these are efficient action, the creation of communities, and gathering during perceived times of danger.

"What do you expect? People are lazy." I have heard this said many times before, and until recently I never really considered it. But now I always think to myself, "why do you say that like it was a bad thing?" Laziness is quite adaptive as is produces several reactions. First, while a lazy person will do everything they need to do they will neither look for more to do nor will they expend excess energy doing what they had to do. Therefore they have more energy saved for later, when it might be needed more. As such, laziness is simply a question of efficiency. Secondly, it makes exploitation more difficult. Exploitation requires massive expenditures of energy. A lazy person is unlikely to expend that energy unless they feel they must. In other words, unless a lazy person feels that their food, water, or safety is in jeopardy they will not expend the energy required for exploitation. Such is the case in civilization, where otherwise efficient humans believe that unless they work forty or more hours a week they will not be able to eat. This is a memic-illusion more than a fact, but it is yet a very real motivation. And, apparently, is quite sufficient to cause these persons to work.

When people gather in small groups without a previously determined social structure they invariably form communities. When a group of friends gets together for a night out, it is very rare that one person simply tells everyone else what to do in order to have a good time. More often either of a form of democracy or consensus is used. What is most intriguing about this is that democracy is only used if the group formalizes their decision. If the decision remains in formal then the group as a whole often discusses the options until an idea is reached that everyone in the group is happy with.

The power is out, everyone grabs their flashlights and makes their way to a central location. This happens so regularly as to be completely unremarked upon. The power goes out in a dorm, and two minutes later everyone is in the hall or in the floor lounge. The power goes out at home, and the entire household gathers in the living room. The power goes out in New York City, and everyone takes to the streets. Black-outs are simply a single example of a broader instinctual reaction. Studies have been done demonstrating this. The sociologists split their test group into two parts. The first was assured that the experiment was harmless, safe, and would not hurt. The second was warned that there would be pain and there was a risk of semi-permanent damage. Each group was given a questionnaire asking if they would like to wait their turns alone or together. Every member of the second group requested to wait with someone else. Many in the first group were fine waiting alone.

When the power goes out everyone does not think to themselves, "I should probably go outside now." Everyone simply grabs their light source, if they have one, and goes to a central meeting place. No signal, order, or decision is required. The power goes out, and people gather. It is only when members of that group do not gather that it becomes obvious that something is amiss. That person might feel uneasy, inordinately alone, or even fearful. This is quite regardless of whether there is any actual danger. Instincts relating to defense activate when there is a perceived threat, any actual danger being quite without standing. The historical antecedents of this instinct are easy to see. If a band of humans were in danger their best chance of survival was always when they were together. An individual human is always quite vulnerable, only in a group do people become dangerous.

So, if humans do better in groups, why do they seem to be so selfish? This comes from a misunderstanding of what selfishness really entails. A person will want what is best, not only for themselves, but also for those they consider kin. A person in a familial group, regardless of blood relation, will always work for not only their benefit but also the benefit of the group. Another way of looking at it is to remember that, in forager groups, the safety and prosperity of an individual is absolutely reliant on the safety and prosperity of the group; but, there is no benefit to support the safety and prosperity of other forager groups. In fact, expending energy providing for their safety and prosperity would be counter-productive. It would drain a person's own resources without benefit to themselves or their offspring. So, when humans evolved our instincts selfishness was a productive trait.
Ultimately the difficulty in understanding human instincts is that all instincts work invisibly. Instincts are, by definition, not conscious decisions, but rather an unconscious need. This need is not logical or sensible in the usual sense. While there is a distinct reason behind each instinct, otherwise they would not exist, they are not something that a person considers and then does. Rather suddenly that person feels that they have to act in a certain manor, and they do. This manor is the latest version of instincts dating to the first primordial ancestor.

-Benjamin Shender