The title is a bit over dramatic but, per the title, if you could contribute with one piece of knowledge to a book that every single individual should learn from in order to kickstart a civilization, what would be yours?
My personal choice would be the process of soap making, from scratch.
Caring for animals in a humane way. Post apocolypse civilisation will be kind to our fluffy friends.
Basic logic gates for the most basic computational math As well as binary, octal, hexadecimal systems
I’m pretty sure you can make logic gates with water so maybe that’ll be of some use
Omg will they have redstone? :3
[C418 starts playing]
I would write an overview of extended mind theory, an introduction to human cumulative culture, knowledge engineering and TRIZ.
The history of human civilization is riddled with challenging problems, solving which takes more than multiple human lifespans worth of effort. Having a good learning resource about the most advanced methods and tools for navigating these problems would be a huge help, I think.
“We took all the easy to reach resources. Better get used to being primitive, suckers!”
Thus making it even more accessible, as ores have already been extracted and refine.
Building basic flying machines.
Fire safety, fire prevention, fire fighting. Y’all got the rest covered already. These things were and still are learned the hard way. No reason for us to repeat the experiments with more lives.
What is and how to fight for Democracy.
Considering no one has truly figured out how to make a Democracy survive, I’m impressed this is your contribution. You should probably be writing books before this one, if you have answers.
Yo dawg, simplistic, reductive answers to complex issues is what the world needs. It’s been working so well for the republican party for decades. Bonus points if you don’t believe any of what you say.
Yo dawg, I actually agree with you that this is the problem. It’s why I responded to OP that it’s absurd to suggest that they have the skillset to meaningfully contribute to the topic. America’s founding fathers basically dedicated their lives to democracy. The wrote books on books on books and yet here we are.
I said this in a comment elsewhere, but democracy and human behavior are always going to be at odds. If someone could write a chapter in a book to help a new society properly understand and fight for democracy, it would be done by now.
I think OP is just arrogant to even respond that he/she is qualified to contribute such a thing. It’s some main character syndrome bullshit if I’ve ever seen it on here.
Yo dawg, the founding fathers were mostly the same rich ownership class that we see are today profiting off of political gridlocks. Our democracy is deeply imperfect thanks to the efforts of some of them, and I dont think democracy as a concept should be judged by success and failures in America. I don’t think OP needs to be qualified, it’s just a thought experiment.
If someone could write a chapter in a book to help a new society properly understand and fight for democracy, it would be done by now.
Unironically Common Sense does attempt to explain this, and American founding fathers used this work as the template for our currently existing for of government.
Considering the fact that democracy depends on the contribution of all citizens, surely you would need to learn quite few things since your comment did not contribute anything.
Ok, I’ll bite.
Why are you qualified to contribute this chapter of a book to kickstart society? I’m totally open, maybe you are a constitutional scholar and I’m way out of line. I would like to understand why you believe that this is your chapter to write.
They probably aren’t. But they are qualified to comment on a theoretical post about the subject.
OP is asking what each person would contribute, not that each person must contribute something that they are qualified to. Which, for the most of us, is nothing. So get off your “intellectual” high horse and contribute to the conversation or change your non-contributions to silence instead of pedantic bullcrap.
I guess I misunderstood the question as being what we we’re capable of personally contributing.
If it’s just hypotheticals, I would contribute antibiotics and how to make those.
I read it as “what do you have enough knowledge of that you could aid in the birth/advancement of a new civilization?” Doesn’t matter if you have it fully figured out, just what knowledge can you provide that would be highly valued if all knowledge were otherwise lost.
I’m not sure your comment contributed much either. Just comes across incredibly arrogant to me.
The follies of democracy are mostly due to human behavior. It’s a complex topic and the idea that YOU can distill it into something meaningful is laughable to me. America’s founding fathers spent most of their lives dedicated to this and look where we are now.
It’s cool, you all can downvote me for being realistic. I thought this was an exercise in actual skills one could contribute, not pipe dreams. At some point, humans have to reconcile with human behavior not being congruent with democracy, but sure, you’ll write a chapter and society will figure it out.
Come on, y’all have to be more in touch with reality than this, right?
Yet you still fail to contribute friend…let’s see your proposals.
I’ve been informed that I misunderstood the question and we can offer to contribute whatever we would like regardless of our qualifications. If that’s the case, I would propose antibiotics.
I’m so far from an expert it’s not even funny but I’m a hobbyist for old valve (tube on the other side of the Atlantic) electronics. You need an industrial base to make semiconductors but if you can do flamework with glass and build a good enough pump that opens the door to amplifiers, radio, telecommunications, and even crude computers which in turn opens the door to a lot of creature comforts and social improvement that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
Electronic valves are still a thing?
I had relatives that swore on radios based on that technology could endure the detonation of bomb and still work flawlessly.
And I had a colleague in school that saved up to be able to buy a valve based guitar amplifier.
Yeah the guitar amp and vintage HiFi markets keep a few types (mostly power triodes and pentodes but also preamp valves and even a couple of rectifiers) in production, largely in the former Eastern Bloc. There’s a few people on YouTube making their own too.
They didn’t stop working somehow. The trick is that they need a very high (deadly) bias voltage to work, are mechanically delicate, have to be heated and possibly cleared of gasses leaking in, and from what I can tell have inferior characteristics for a lot of applications.
On the other hand, your relatives are right about the electrical toughness, and they have no firm upper frequency limit, so they still have industrial niches.
You actually can make simple semiconductors artisanally, once again plugging Sam Zeloof. The biggest trick is getting the silicon in the first place, since you need an electric furnace to smelt it with any efficiency. Then, it’s just a matter of distilling it to high purity and growing a crystal.
The pump is the biggest trick for vacuum tubes. If you have a primitive metalworking civilisation to start with, you probably have enough mercury for a Sprengel pump and/or a master craftsman who could make a mechanical pump, but if we’re starting really from scratch that could be an issue. Steam to displace air + a chemical getter is another option I’ve been wondering about.
Also worth mentioning are electrochemical diodes, which you can make with just brine, iron and a piece of aluminum. Aluminum is tricky to make but if you can produce it it’s also pretty good for wires, in case you don’t have a copper mine handy.
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I do not agree.
The basics of manufacturing fertilizer. It’s a lot easier to build a civilisation on a full belly.
Also, funny story, I already have a disk like this started.
Ever since covid hit, I’ve been keeping digital copies of several books like the following:
- Reader’s Digest DIY Manual
- The Forager’s Harvest - A Guide to Identifying Harvesting and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer
- The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants
- Back to Basics - Abigail R. Gehring And of course a copy of Wikipedia.
I haven’t gone full “prepper”, but seeing how fast things went sideways at the beginning of covid, it makes me feel a little better to set aside a little bit of hard drive space, just in case.
You can get full offline copies of Wikipedia too, eh? I use Kiwix for most of the stuff on mine.
Resist the urge to fall in line behind a “strong man.” Once a community is beholden to an individual, it’s tainted.
The book should definitely recommend a system of government.
I would say directly elected council members with brief term limits, to avoid concentration of power.
No bribery in politics, with actual consequences.
Two lines:
“Axiomatically, those with the greatest material wealth will do everything to enrich themselves further. They must fail.”
The bible.
I want to watch the world burn again. Humanity doesn’t deserve a second chance.
That’s bleak.
I’d explain LGBTQIA issues, personal and community acceptance of those born different.
Ancient people were much more accomodating towards those who were different.
Many so called “primitive” people reserved special roles for such individuals: xamans, oracles, etc. Their difference made them special, as if favored by whatever gods or spirits were reveared.
I read a very interesting book in my teens, essentially an anthropological/ethnological treaty, where the current obcession with difference was a creation from the 18th century.
xamans
Is shaman a gendered term? I had no idea
No. I just wrote it as I would in my native language without noticing it.
I can’t help but feel soap making itself wouldn’t be as much use as why/when to use it?
Mixing oil with the ashy water (which is as simple as soap’s gonna get) is reasonably easy to do and so useful that even without a civilisation people would probably be doing it either through discovery or by keeping doing it?
I think things like “how to build a wooden bridge so it will hold a laden cart and not fall down” are more likely to be lost without civilisation while still being incredibly useful (although I can’t say I’d be very good for that)
I might add a section on refrigeration methods like zeers or wind towers/yakhchāls if the civilisation would be somewhere hot and dry, otherwise maybe something on using rivers for powering looms, mills etc.
I was going to add “and notion of basic hygiene” but refrained from it as it be breaking my own guideline.
Amendement: one thing, with the necessary context to make understable to role in the civilization
I think the instructions for how to make soap would be less important to a civilization than why to make soap. Germ theory and basic hygiene practices would save a lot of lives.
I feel like we’re still working on this lol. The amount of people who don’t properly wash their hands is really nasty.
Today I watched someone in an airport rinse one of their hands while holding a bag handle in the other. Then they struggled to get a paper towel for their shit covered hand as they walked out of the bathroom.
We are fucked if we slip even a little, lol. People even know about germs these days and still only go through the gesture of washing without understanding why.
