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.
The bible.
I want to watch the world burn again. Humanity doesn’t deserve a second chance.
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
Don’t. Civilization kinda fucked the planet and is the reason you live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
It’s hard to choose “one piece” of knowledge, so I would try to persuade whoever is writing the book to include the time traveler’s cheat sheet. https://i.imgur.com/O6vSrvq.jpg
I didn’t make it, but includes a lot of information that didn’t have an intuitive path to discovery, but a lot of practical benefits for humanity. If I were to add to it I would try to include at least descriptions of a few other things:
- batteries
- engines
- simple computers (although this may be more involved than the earlier parts combined, so perhaps just simple logic gate diagrams)
- genes
- a guttenberg press
- lenscrafting
- a world map
- calculus
- special and general relativity (also complicated certainly, but could be useful later)
- and basically as many physics equations as I can think of
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.”
Caring for animals in a humane way. Post apocolypse civilisation will be kind to our fluffy friends.
Explain the concept of a train and tram.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
[C418 starts playing]
Laws of Electromagnetism
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.
I’d put the National Electrical Code out there. It doesn’t tell you how to do everything with electricity, like generating it, but it does give a lot of details of how to wire things safely.
