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.
Professional scientist here. I would take a table of logarithms. In a world without computers, the logarithm table and slide rule are the essential tools of how things got built. We built the Golden Gate Bridge and put a man on the moon using nothing more than log tables.
Any one person can remember the gist of the scientific method and write it down on a page. To write down a quality logarithm table you would need 500 pages.
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.
But seriously - no religions allowed.
There will always be religion, especially if and when the civilized world ends.
A better way would be just to remind everyone that there were countless religions before and that they were all man made, corrupted and fell apart after a certain amount of time.
Remind everyone that there is no one true religion because there never was one before, there isn’t one now and there never will be be one.
But I’m afraid that as much as we’ll try … people will always be dumb enough to want to believe in fairy tales, an after life, eternal bliss / hell and that one group is better than another.
Remind everyone that there is no one true religion because there never was one before, there isn’t one now and there never will be be one.
“Yes, all the religions before were false, but ours is the right one!”
Fuck it. Scientism’s time to shine.
I think in a way religion was a necessary component in managing populations.
Without education humans will naturally look to “organised luck” or supernatural deities for meaning. That can be used as a kind of carrier wave to disseminate basic information.
“God says you should clean your cock and balls once a day in order to bring good luck”
Good luck on that. For what we can tell, it is a part of our makeup. But we could aspire to less asinine systems of belief.
“Spirituality is not religion. Religion divides people; belief in something unites.”
The scientific method, we’ll be able to extract most information of the world around with just that and time
Two lines:
“Axiomatically, those with the greatest material wealth will do everything to enrich themselves further. They must fail.”
I can periodically dust the book. When I’m not dusting, I can stand somewhere conspicuous, and say “This way to the book” if asked.
The All Mighty Guardian of the Book, Keeper of Knowledge.
You will also be required to know it by memory cover to cover and read it on request for anyone.
Can I give you holiday cover? I’d like this job, like some sort of holy librarian.
Brewing beer. It might not be “essential,” but the apocalypse is gonna be bad enough, might as well have beer.
Apocolpse probably needs something stronger like distilling skills.
Or how to make edibles.
Distillation alone would be useful for disinfection and conservation.
I can do those too! Hooray, I’m valuable
We value you regardless, guazzabuglio.
Appreciate it
Beer brewing fits right in with sanitation that a lot of us are pushing.
it may not be essential
Brewing began as a way of preserving fruits and grains, and of guaranteeing the safety of drinking water. It’s absolutely going to be essential if we get blasted back by about a thousand years.
I was thinking of it purely as a means to unwind, but you’re right. I kind of forgot about the documentary How Beer Saved the World, even if it is a bit exaggerated at times.
Even that angle is more than just frivolity. Sitting around a fire, having some drinks and some laughs isn’t just a nice time, it’s vital to humans both as individuals and as a community. We’re social critters. We thrive when we care for others and are cared for by others, and the bonding that develops out of those drinking sessions is a way to establish that.
Very true. Leisure is essential even if it’s not “productive.” That’s not a great metric to measure things by.
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 wonder if a book along these lines already exists. The nearest I can think of is The Art of Manliness website.
I would probably buy a book that covered a lot of the basic skills needed for a society if it were done well. I want to try a lot of those things like smelting, house construction, metalworking, etc. I’m sure books exist for each of these but I doubt one book tries to give overviews of all.
Also an interesting question: What ARE the skills needed for a civilization? Start from skills needed when dropped off alone in the wilderness and work your way up to “needing” bureuacrats.
Interesting, Thanks. I will be reading these further.
Thought I should mention that the second link is not working for me.
There’s also the “How To Make Everything” YouTube channel. I wonder if the guy that runs that has written a book yet? If not, he should.
There’s How to Invent Everything by Ryan North.
Interesting, I will have to check that out.
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 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.
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
Since I mentioned it in a response to another poster:
I would include everything I know (or had access to for the sake of this scenario) about germ theory. Admittedly my own off-hand knowledge is not much, but basic hygiene and sanitation and how to avoid getting sick would save a lot of lives. What germs are, how vaccination works, etc.
This needs way more upvotes
No person can grant you rights. Rights are those things you are capable of doing for yourself providing it doesn’t infringe on the liberty of another. You are physically capable of speaking and thinking. Of moving, of tending to property, of attempting to defend yourself, your family, those who request assistance, and your property. You can build anything you have the knowledge and means to build. You have the right to determine your own safety, this includes what you ingest and any precautions you opt out of. What is not your rights are anything that limits the liberties and rights of another person or property.
“Your rights are what you can take and defend by yourself” is the logic of sociopaths and warlords, not civilization.
Some of the inventions that historically took way longer than you’d expect: the shoe, the wheelbarrow, and the stirrup.
Also archival techniques so that history’s not as messy the next time around.
This exercise recurs regularly and there have been a few formulations.
One of the big ones is atomic theory. It took a long time to figure out - and I’m intentionally discounting the Greek version and monads here because I’m talking about actual atomic theory and not a philosophy of essences.
Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics are a second option, especially if you could squeeze in things like the germ theory of disease.
I’m not familiar enough with pure math to say that there’s one concept that would have let the Greeks or Mesopotamians develop the calculus millennia earlier than we did, but that would also massively accelerate scientific progress.
Combination of food safety and basic food recipes/methods of cooking for every biome.
