What Reading List Would Enable the Rebuilding of Civilization?

Actually, the Universities, Church, and various Guilds kept alive their various arts.I was taught that the classics of western civilization were preserved by the monks in Ireland.

Existence of drawn wire is mentioned in the hebrew old testament (exodus 39). Wiredrawing survived throughout history despite plagues famine crusades etc. Or maybe because of crusades, plagues famine etc...

Wiredrawing was a top military priority for chain mail armour throughout the middle ages. I was not an apprentice, but having observed casting and typesetting processes in a newspaper, could do that. And I learned wire drawing after university and metallurgy training and supervising melt shop lab...So the journeyman apprentice guild system worked out over the long term, which brings us back to the idea of associating with others, and also a chance to riff a little on an earlier theme by saying "no man is an island..."

So back to your original premise, a small band of motivated 'journeymen" could infact keep the fires of intellect and knowledge burning.

I would submit to you that CR4 is just such a small band of motivated journeymen in cyberspace.

And we are its journeymen.

To the reformed 13th degree survivalist:

"isn't the 13th step of the 12 step program where you sleep with the teacher?"

milo

I have heard of this 13th step.

I have also heard of a "Seed Bank".

I did a study of potatoes, and they apparently have eyes.

I ought to go to the local seed store, and buy a good set of seeds.

What set of seeds in the house or backpack, or car, would be a good set?

How did people make gunpowder?

Where as I really might be able to make a bow and arrow, I could not make a gun, nor the propellent from stuff in the yard.

The guys that have Black Powder powered rifles, shotguns, and pistols are probably in a better position, than guys that need cartridiges.

I have recently heard of premade seed asortments for survival, it was on a conservative radio station. Black powder would be the way togo and the modern designs don't even need primer caps.

A good seedsman in Decorah, IA USA

Hi,

gunpowder is not a problem but you need charcoal (no problem), sulfur (where is the next mine, nowadays often mined by steam extraction from 200m deep down), and may be most important: potassium-or sodium-nitrate: mined in Chile until Haber-Bosch invented artificial ammonia by high temperature-high pressure synthesis in Germany just in time to stretch slaughter time in western Europe to 4 years - without synthetic nitrate WWI would have had an end within 1 year.

To make a bow and an arrow: to hunt or protect with this high-technology weapon. Not to make the bow (maybe I am wrong here), the best possible material, the sinew, the arrow needs to be near perfectly straight, the arrowhead to be secured by glue and charcoal and fiber-reinforcement. Materials specialists needed.

Black powder versus smokeless powder? Store an ample pile of both and try to let it be known to everybody so that you will be robbed soon.

RHABE

No real tough problems in bow making.
If you allow yourself one tool, make it a very sharp axe.
The string is tricky, but plenty of plant fibres can be twisted into strings.
Arrows don't have to be too straight, many trees have nice straight shoots, hazel, or just about aything that has been coppiced... warm 'em over a fire and bend 'em by eye, that's fine, the fletchings keep it going the right direction, the point (flint or a simple blunt made like a # shape for small critters) can be secured with the resin from a pine tree or bound on with sinew or plant fibre.
You don't need a sophisticated bow....what you need most is patience and stealth to get your dinner.

The real point is , if you had the book I mentioned earlier you could read how to do all of it. It's really just good sound skills with hand tools and a bit of experience.
Now being a good consistent shot....hmmm that's a bit trickier
Del

Not knowing how far we fall before start "recovering" this knowledge (days, months, generations) I want to establish a graduated storehouse of knowledge.

Demonstrate you can read pictographs - solve the puzzle - get into basics library.

Demonstrate mastery of basics library - solve puzzle for access to advanced library

But how do I prevent a "priesthood" from controlling access? I don't want them to worship at the first library?

Good Idea (and answer) but good luck preventing the worship of the Word. Humans have shown that if it is possible to grab power to control others, they will do so.

Regards Dragon

Great Thread,

The Thread about value from last year is good. Towards the end of that one there was some discussion about water as a medium of exchange....

In this area water is paramount, providing both food & power, if ther were an "incident", securing both would be a good idea.

Books would be nice, but a group possessing a range of skills would probably be more useful, control of some key resources might be nice.

The system of valuation proposed by Chris would probably be very unstable. Regional differences in valuation would promote lots of divious shenanigans, just different kinds of shenanigans.

Talent is always undervalued compared to ownership/management

from memory :

the scientist built a mouse city...added 1..that 1 died..soon, alone, it gave up..

the next set was a pair..bliss.. total run of the space , food source , water..

kept adding and observing..i do forget the total finally in the city..and over how long

but their society developed into .. a pretty good mirror of the world as it is today..

greed , mayhem, random acts of violence for no apparent reason..clans developed , wars over food water ..etc

....not sure if that isn't a " hows that relevant " , and my memory could be suspect. but i think i've conveyed the gist of the experiment..

In order to find an optimum size for a society we must setup several sizes of societies and see which size survives. No guarantee that the surviving society is the nicest. No guarantee either that a pleasant society will survive at all.

If the name of the game is survival, then...

imho : society might be limited to size of the available area for its population,

i think , i lean towards concepts having more of a impact on how that specific society evolves...although.. and by no means am i saying that either is subservient to any factor named or unnamed , so far,

Japan : with it's emphasis on politeness in public..

American Native Indian : with the focus on being one w/ nature..

: memory jog : South Pacific Island : where bungee jumping was invented for a rite of passage ceremony..

are examples ..

thankz for the entertaining discussion

Vince

Good answer.

Dragon

you are either nieve or arrogant, "lack of foresight" are you serious? We are not at a level to prevent any serious pandemic, look how fast the latest swine flu spread, it was contageous but not as lethal as it could have been, given modern society a deadly contagen that was highly contageous would spread before a vaxine could be made (it takes 6 months).

We should be able to prevent wars? It takes two to have a fight, you cant controll the other guy no matter how much foresight you have, Iran is building a nuke, can we stop them, appearently not without going to war to do it. Oh that is unless you want us to surender, thats one way of preventing war.

Our only hope of diverting an asteroid is a very long build time, cause we can't even go back to the moon.

A wise man hopes for the best and prepares for the worst, haveing a survival library is a good idea, like insurance.

I would rather have a gun and never need it than not have one and need it despiratly.

In the big picture we are extinct

whether it's tomorrow or far into the future, who's to say?

while we may be able to influence the timing, the outcome is inevitable.

While english may one day become a mystery, for the next few hundred years, it should be fine....

Speculation as to a possible near future where this isn't true would be entertaining.

Sometimes when I study physics I get little glimmers of reasons for doubting the accepted truth.

So far there are strong reasons to accept that in the big picture, we are extinct.

Then this damn String Theory and some drawing in Scientific American put chinks in my certainties that our doom, and failure is certain.

I am not particularly impressed with myself, but am very impressed that we have made it as far as we have.

Of course I'm now wondering if we need to learn how to talk from pigs, dogs cats and birds.

For someone who was born to be melancholic, and depressed, it is amazing how optimistic I can be.

Amazing what can be done with opposable thumbs & oversized brains

Both good and bad

The idea of a pictograph/phonetic based language is fun. Do you imagine trying to express concepts or just sounds [english].

I would nominate the engineers handbook as being a good reference.

Mining & metalurgy wouldn't be critical for a "while", depending on the magnitude of the breakdown. Plenty of things to repurpose.

Since getting deep into this, and evolving in my thoughts to where whatever list is most practical for rebuilding, it is the same for maintaining and building, this concept of trying to match the sounds around us to the sounds of our letters, becomes as much a learning to read aid, as any sort of thing to save English, or any other language.

As a practical matter, our perfect list would be short. And of course I have come to feel our list will be complete and useful if it does have a real good Children's Category.

Milo is on that from his Home Schooling Syllabus.

Yesterday I was talking with a guy, who suggested I look into the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Years ago I did a little book manuscript titled Tools Jewels and Land. (it is lost.)

Later I did a 2,000 issue print of postcards with the tag line of Redeemable on Maturity for Food, Drugs, and Tools.

The issues of food, water, and shelter, are basic, and food is the number one ingredient for peace.

It is long since I had my Foxfire books, or the Wendell Barry books. Books about collectable plants to eat so far are to me of limited utility when I think of the movie Into The Wild. That particular movie for me has been a sort of implanted nightmare.

You can say all you want about Hollywood for all sorts of crap and excess, but still have to accept some incredible works of art somehow get made.

Into The Wild is sure one for anyone with Survivalist leanings to watch, though I will warn anyone you will not quite be the same after watching it.

When I was a Boy Scout, and worked in the summers as a Camp Counselor, my actual job was as the Commissary Director. -I haven't thought of this for years. I and some others were eventually fired for "insubordination", and it would be entertaining for me to write that story up one day.

But as I remember the Boy Scouts I fed would probably have starved without canned foods, or stuff that came in boxes, or if we had not had a freezer to put some chickens in.

(don't put banannas in the cooler, by the way, was one thing I learned.) I end up wondering if as far as an important food book, and forgive me if I've missed it in the list, a book about how to simply grow potatoes, might be practical, for they seem possible to grow in a wide variety of climates. Apparently they can be grown year round.

I read where you could stack up old tires, fill them with dirt, stick potato eyes in the dirt, and in a compact space, like making a skyscraper, grow potatoes.

How you might get the potassium out of the potatoes to make gun powder, I don't know.

Sailing skills have been mentioned, and this is significant since the Modern Era dating from the 1500s, does come from the technologies that enabled great voyages comparable to our recent visits to the Moon, and a tentative presence in a completely hostile environment we are not made for.

These days I wonder why more freight isn't carried in sailing ships. Certainly the high tech wind propulsion systems Cousteau pioneered give a good deal of power.

A book on how to build a great sailing ship may already be in our list.

As it is now it could benefit from some Graphic Design, and Categorization.

I myself am losing track, and think to tweak or apply Chrisg288's categories early posted.

It would be cool to have something like a Kindle Book with everything in it.

For Penny on Inspector Gadget, wasn't it called a Power Book?

Working on that show in Toronto was a turning point in my life. They told me it was gonna be like Bullwinkle, but that wasn't really the case.

as an aside to Milo, he caused me in his new thread to think of how certain writing jobs affected me. I've been caused to remember the Armstrong Sperry books like Flying Cloud when thinking of sailing now.

The book about Nathaniel Bowditch who wrote the book that enable precise navigation had strong influence on me.

:Thread crosstalk moment.

Del made the point that the Stone Age is under appreciated, and he has a strong point. His reading list, since we know Del, is one of an expert, and deserves a category of his own, under his name, in my opinion.

His unique sense of humor and enthusiasm is what is classic as a Brand.

What ages have there been?

What of cross categorization?

Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Modern Times? For each then same set of instructions all tech allows and enables, then layered by tech that enables building and rebuilding?

Who knows, maybe we will end up with a book of reading lists.

I feel Cheery Today!

Well, careful reading helps sometimes.

I thought (and still think) that our lack of foresight is the main reason why pandemics occur. I thought (and still think) that our lack of foresight is one of the main reasons for wars. Etc.

I'm not naive enough to suppose that we have the means but perversely do not use them. I do think that an intelligent allocation of funds could and still can make life safer and better for all concerned

When both neighbours opt for buying a gun each, they'll eventually use them. As for the moon... It all depends on where you spend your money and where you don't.

Unfortunately, the Powers That Be do not se4em to have a clue as to how to spend money to get the most bang for the buck. Wait a minute- that is an inappropriate expression. Most governments are trying for the biggest "bang" for the buck- what they miss is that there are many more things we need more than we need more wars...

If one looks at where the current US administration is directing funds in attempts to alleviate the fuel and climate issues, it becomes pretty obvious that they are only going to be digging the hole deeper, spending money on hyped up schemes that promise to create a lot of jobs, but do little to solve the real problems...

Agreed. We (in this discussion) seem to have reached Murphy's most important law:

"The only real problem is what to do next".

Last night I was thinking of the Tower of Babel Problem, and Dick and Jane books.

What I was attempting to do is to figure how to illustrate the relationship between letters of the Alphabet to their sounds.

I have a young friend who named his band Rongorongo, which is apparently the name of the lost language of Easter Island, so we know that this can happen, a language can be lost.

There are a number of Native American languages that have either been lost, or are on the edge of being lost as well.

Then I thought about the vocalizations of dogs and cats and birds, cows and pigs, and started to wonder if by each letter I could put an animal that made typically a sound that approximated the sound of the letter.

For instance a growling dog comes close to making the R sound.

A cat purring may come close to making the P sound.

A crow comes close to making the C sound, and so on.

Is there a book like this?

Is there a language you could illustrate using the typical calls of only birds, for instance.

In our list of books that would enable the rebuilding of civilization, we do need a Childrens Book category, and certainly the faster one can simply learn to read will be with, or without any KatassTrophy, a good thing.

This train of thought that we have worked on, has evolved.

The same reading list that would enable mankind to rebuild, is the one that enables him to know how and what to build, for though the future is here, it is not here everywhere on Earth, as some other writer has written.

Someone, or some group of Linguists may have well attempted to either do such a thing with pictures in a book, or in a movie, and of course I am aware of Sesame Street visual and entertaining productions that help children learn to read.

What crossed my mind, may already exist, and I might simply not be aware of it.

In my concept of any reading list that would enable quickly rebuilding civilization, as the civilization of mankind is dependent on the ability to make and use tools, I certainly accept the possibility of too much information, and useless facts.

In Cold Mountain there is a scene wherein the Preacher Father, tells his daughter, he feels he has failed her because he more taught her how to be a pleasant companion, than practical things.

- I think he then dies.

I always say your parents don't teach you what you need to know, but what they know, and that's why you need to go to school.

What is the best Home Schooling Reading List? Certainly that list is best intended to address this potential flaw, and it is likely good for us to become aware, and hone for our list, the best, of the best, for all ages.

Transcendian,

We home schooled our brood up to high school, Come to think of it, One up to high school, other two back in formal public schools in eighth grade- One because she was beyond my ability to teach while I was working full time and her math was already calculus- and my son to get acclimated to formalities before the grades counted for real on his transcript.

We found that it didn't really matter so much which books we chose, what mattered was staying on task all year. so there was no Catch up/review what was forgotten over the summer break.

Mostly we used discarded textbooks from public schools, though we did purchase some very good "oldmath" and way we were taught to read books from Abeka books

http://www.abeka.com/

Some of these books had more than a polite share of religious doctrine included, so we taught our kids how to be critical thinkers and recognize 'commercials' at an early age.

We also had them read the complete "golden book childrens encyclopedia" while they were in elementary grades, and we used the "what your (First grader/Second grader, etc.) needs to know" series of books to help us supplement the texts. My wife has a lifetime reading list of classics which she put them through, (she got it when she graduated highschool...)I'll see where that may be.

BTW, our kids were always done with their studies by lunch time, had not seen tv cartoons until oldest was age 10, (doggone weekend sleepover at friends house!)and were high achievers and highly ranked upon graduation. After lunch three days a week they held down part time volunteer jobs at local Red Cross, United Way, Local History center, or Library. All participated in Summer stock for "socialization" as well as girlscouts/4H. That's where the people skills for success come from.

I'll see if I can get that lifetime reading list.

SO now You've got me thinking about what is the definitive list of Science/Technical books that I think are key for competence. I think that should be another thread.

milo

milo

Dear transcendian, in practicality the writen language doesn't need to be vocolized as along as it can be interpreted. pictures can define many words. the interpreting individuals can define the sounds for them selves, If you feel its important it would be possible to creat a diagram to show how to build an old style phonograph (hand crank) from scratch, and then leave behind porcline records to train in language along with the pictures and words.

Spacecannon:

Chinese and Japanese use quite similar characters, but both societies ascribe totally different verbalizations to them (I am, of course, referring to the older Japanese Kanji, not some of the more modern character systems in use in Japan). I believe that, although the pronunciations differ, many of the meanings are quite similar (at least for the basic characters), which pretty much supports your premise.

Furthermore, there was a space program a few years ago, where a couple of the Pioneer space craft were expected to venture beyond the solar system. Two, I believe, carried gold discs that (if I remember rightly) included a recording of Bethoven's music or some such. The disc had the following illustration engraved into it:

I can envision using engravings such as this to describe processes that would be useful to future generations...

The world would be a much better place, with much less need to consider Armageddon, if everyone were taught to be a pleasant companion.

What Books of Engineering and Science would enable the rebuilding as quickly as possible the best of our civilization?

Is a blank book allowed ? If the meltdown was bad, making decent paper would be time consuming. Without paper to communicate/doodle designs on, we'd be a bit stuck. A chunk of slate or stick+sand would work, but make life difficult.