One of the most glaringly stupid ideas I have encountered is the assumption that if the society collapses the ability to shoot a gun will be key to survival.
It’s not. The real race will be to go after the libraries. When the light goes out the only way to turn them back on physically and figuratively is with knowledge and know how.
We will run out of bullets but we better pray we never run out of books. They represent the most elegant concentration of knowledge once the grid goes down.
When the lights go out, we have still have supercomputers, which is behind each our ears and right behind our eyes. But the books are the hard drives.
You can teach an idiot to shoot accurately at 100 yards, but try getting an idiot to Trouble shoot rebuilding generators without new flown in Chinese parts. Some of the greatest engineers suddenly become the Africans fixing German cars in desert of Mali and Niger where it’s already do or die.
You ever heard of The Flynn Effect?
Human populations have been remarkably gaining 3 IQ points every decade. That means if you scored a respectable 105 on an IQ test in 1990 you might score a relatively dull 96 today. There are many factors to what is called The Flynn Effect, but you better be getting smarter every year because a 120 IQ ain’t what it used to be.
We have been going around imagining an Idiocracy when that isn’t actually the case.
But if society collapses the Flynn Effect could collapse in a generation.
And be wary of White Supremacy’s circle jerk idea that Europeans alone will lead mankind out of the darkness. One of the world’s great ironies besides Anti Semitism in allegedly CHRISTian populations is that when Rome collapsed with what Hitler would claim was an inferior Mediterranean population, Northern Europeans (AKA my Father’s ancestors the Nordics) took a 1000 effing years to emerge from the Dark ages and get back to zero.
And the kicker of it all was that Europeans never would have emerged out of their dumb dark castles if the Saracens AKA the Muslims had not invaded much of Europe and left behind translations of Greek science, math, philosophies in their 700 year retreat.
Who translated many of those Greek treasures? The Sephardic Jewish scholars that were fluent in Greek and Arabic.
The point is this. When the smoke clears in a collapse of Western Civilization the only real winners will be those can not only decipher books. We will have to be able to apply them (and find a real apprentice).
We’ll be left scrambling for music and musicians. Because nearly every traditional function of society requires music.
…and the only way music will once again be worth something is if musicians are the only ones left that truly remember it.
While the pencil today is nearly obsolete, if the lights go out the pen will be mightier than the sword. And a Webster dictionary will be worth a box of AK 47s in some Capitalistic situations.
Behold the The Flynn Effect and the fleeting power of Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He is planning a tour of Nigeria for 2018.
