What would you keep of Western civilization post collapse?

chrispi · Tar Sands Joined: Aug 17, 2005 Posts: 80

There are some good things, and some bad things, about the West, as it has been called. I think that it's a widely held opinion here that Western civilization has reached its climax with Peak Oil, and will soon dissipate into a new dark age.

You are a scholar. What would you preserve?

(I, for one, would preserve as much of higher mathematics as possible, especially Clifford algebra.)
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"When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around."--The Police

Ghog

I know this isn't really what you mean, but I would want to keep info on how we got to the collapse. If future generations can't learn from our mistakes...........

master_rb

I hope you're not serious with this thread

even with PO it costs only a few dollars to store a whole database of knowledge, it's not medieval times when a book was worth what a plane is worth today, you don't need to preserve anything

I think you confused capitalism with the west, capitalism won't make it through PO (in its current form), the west will and it's not going to be dark ages, people won't go back to beliving the earth is flat, I know some doomers actually think that way I hope you're not one of them

Cashmere · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 27, 2008 Posts: 1971

Master RB - let's give the OP some slack.

It's a hypothetical question not dependent upon your ability to store all knowledge on a few dozen memory devices.

Rock and Roll.

And I'm not f--ing kidding when I say that.

"Shareeeee ee eeef don't like it."
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Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.

WyoDutch

An old friend of mine had this to say of our Western Civilization...

"While Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel... aboriginals were squatting naked in the mud... drawing stick figures. They still are."
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Be yourself... Everyone else is already taken.

TheDoctor · Tar Sands Joined: Jan 27, 2008 Posts: 23

tecumseh

I intend to defend and preserve my local library. Razz

chrispi · Tar Sands Joined: Aug 17, 2005 Posts: 80

Narz

I'd like to keep my chess books & MP3's (I had a pretty tough lil' MP3 player that runs for 70-80 hours on one double A so as long as double-A batteries still exist). I'd like to see guitars, drums & pianos/keyboards still manufactured.

Oh and I kind of like public libraries. Very much. And the Internet.
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jlw61

jlw61

americandream

I'm an internationalist so I don't really see the world in terms of these strict regionalisms. No man is an island as the saying goes.

That aside, I would hope that we can move beyond the infantile pettiness that capitalism thrives on. It may be much to hope for given the tendency for rogues to wheedle their way into positions of prominence, but a secular world in which reason and a collective sense of stewardship prevailed would not to far of the mark of what I would like to see post the demise of shoptopia.
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Bugger me, I hear oil's runnin out mate!

Ferretlover

Hhmmm... Full color coffee-table books filled with pictures of what the Earth used to look like.
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"RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto

katnipkid · Tar Sands Joined: May 30, 2007 Posts: 45

The first thing that popped into my head is soap and hot water!! And deodorant soap!

Books! Lots of books, on all topics, esp. science and technology. When I see textbooks tossed out, it is sad. Anyone here save books? Building a library? I have, and I must have about 500 books. No kidding. Topics include essential crafts such as weaving, rug making, black smithing and the like. The classics, such as Plato, Aristotle, and others are well included. Also included are things like the history of certain topics, foriegn language books, books on Japanese gardening, gardening and botany, also some fun fiction by a couple of favorite authors. Oh what the heck, it will be a fun little look back....

Photography. I hope that survives. Probably won't, but then again, maybe it will, remember it was invented in the early 19th century, so maybe it will survive.

I guess technology. I hope that our advances in the sciences is preserved.

Eyeglasses. Medical knowledge that works.

Most important of all, I hope that an open minded, tolerant attitude toward those of different religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, ethnic origin and so on survives. That probably won't survive, but I hope it does.

I don't believe that capitalism or corporations are going to go away. They began long before the oil age, and they will still be around.

ReverseEngineer · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jul 16, 2008 Posts: 1741

Anything invented prior to Oil will be preserved. Gutenberg's Printing Press did not run on Oil.

The vast amount of data on the web is another question. I read today that Google says the Web is now a Trillion pages long. A good 30,000 of those pages are mine, but I wonder if they will be preserved or readable in any fashion in 100 years?

Most of my material sits on Google and Yahoo servers, I have no idea at all where they are located. Will there still be enough power to run those servers and print out all the material at some point in the future? No way to know that.

Music, Art, Writing, all this stuff comes from LONG before Oil came to Rule the World, it will be here after it is gone. There is little good that has come from oil, it mostly just escalated the human tendency toward greed. The internet is one of the few good things that came out of oil, but the power to run the servers and maintain the infrastructure probably won't last all that long. The data on the servers though will last quite a long time.

I would like to see all the trillion pages printed out on acid free paper and carefully preserved in libraries for future generations to go in and read. They can retranscribe the pages with pen and ink, as Monks did before Gutenberg printed the Bible. As long as we have writing, knowledge will not be destroyed.

Reverse Engineer