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The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Our World From Scratch by Lewis Dartnell
I think it's pretty scary that (technological) civilization is so complex that no one really understands it. This book is 1) an attempt to understand it, and 2) an attempt at a manual at how to rebuild it after some sort of apocalypse. I don't know that it really succeeds at doing both of these things, and I don't really agree with some of it, but on the whole, I learned some interesting things. ( For example )
Desert by Anonymous
Uh. I don't quite know what to say. This is a primitivist anarchist text which a friend recommended to me and which I wanted to read as a balance to the one above, but. Gah, I've rarely seen someone be so brutally honest! Certainly I haven't been that honest, even to myself. I feel pretty off-balance right now.
This isn't a text that's trying to convince you of an ideology. It's an analysis of the present and future of the world, drawn from a pretty eclectic set of sources (all annotated), and then it goes, oh yeah, if you share my values, here are some possible strategies.
( Its points are: )
I recommend it. If, you know, you want to turn your brain inside out. Possibly the thing that it's not honest about is the trials and drawbacks of primitivist subsistence life, but the text isn't really about that and is not trying to convince you of the author's values.
I think it's pretty scary that (technological) civilization is so complex that no one really understands it. This book is 1) an attempt to understand it, and 2) an attempt at a manual at how to rebuild it after some sort of apocalypse. I don't know that it really succeeds at doing both of these things, and I don't really agree with some of it, but on the whole, I learned some interesting things. ( For example )
Desert by Anonymous
Uh. I don't quite know what to say. This is a primitivist anarchist text which a friend recommended to me and which I wanted to read as a balance to the one above, but. Gah, I've rarely seen someone be so brutally honest! Certainly I haven't been that honest, even to myself. I feel pretty off-balance right now.
This isn't a text that's trying to convince you of an ideology. It's an analysis of the present and future of the world, drawn from a pretty eclectic set of sources (all annotated), and then it goes, oh yeah, if you share my values, here are some possible strategies.
( Its points are: )
I recommend it. If, you know, you want to turn your brain inside out. Possibly the thing that it's not honest about is the trials and drawbacks of primitivist subsistence life, but the text isn't really about that and is not trying to convince you of the author's values.
