“In the world I see – you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”

The reality of a post-apocalyptic society would, in some ways, be awful. Some significant ways. There would very likely be horrific loss of life. Some people would turn barbaric towards others. Some people, not all people. Diseases could be a massive problem. Very limited access to electricity. No internet. No supermarkets. No hospitals anymore. Loss of, or very limited, access to medicine. Our daily existence would be much more demanding. Fear would be a daily reality.

I have always found the above to be a very evocative quote. That idea, that someone (or people) could really want our society to revert back to our beginnings.

In some ways the idea of the loss of normal societal structures does appeal to me, in a theoretical way. The reality that the good people would have to band together. Group together. Find each other and be tribal. Intense tribalism and intense loyalty. Solidarity. Survival through loyalty. Because the alternative makes no sense whatsoever.

It is very difficult to imagine that kind of real solidarity existing in current western society. We would have to be forced to think that way. Forced by circumstance to behave that way.

This is why I have always rated the novel The Postman, written by David Brin, highly. It is a very interesting post-apocalyptic story. It’s a good read. It’s a healthy experience to put yourself in the shoes of the main character.

I have also always rated the Cormack McCarthy novel The Road (and the brilliant film adaption) very highly as well.
For different reasons. They are quite different post-apocalyptic stories. There is a powerful solidarity in the story of the two main characters in The Road: the father and young son. It is bleak. Intensely, intensely, bleak. It is an arduous read.

I have always said that I needed a hot bath, glass of whiskey, and then a hot shower, and another hot bath, after I finished that novel. I knew that I would never read it again.
It is moving. It is bleak.

It is painful, it is confronting, it is fascinating, and it is frightening. It is a challenge.

Finishing The Road (novel or film) is a test of a person’s fortitude. There is no fun to be had. It will make you cry. There is nothing wrong with that.
It is a bleak vision into a future we should pray, never happens. It shouldn’t and very likely won’t.

There isn’t much genuine solidarity in modern life really. In my opinion. We must value it very much. In some ways I sometimes feel that we deserve to have the clock wound back. Our civilisation taken back to a more basic point in time.
Hence the quote that I started this blog with (which is an extreme idea).

A simple life. Simple in the sense that your daily existence is focused on meeting the needs of your tribe (or clan), serving your group responsibilities: contributing your share of labour, contributing your solidarity, so that you contribute to the group goals; subsistence (or better), survival, procreation, society, kindness, humour, education for the children. Caring for your immediate family.
Maybe some recreation.

In that scenario, that kind of reality, we would be honest with each other. We would have to trust each other. We would focus and contribute our intelligence towards fundamentally important group endeavours. Simple things. Important, simple, things that we would strive to achieve together.

These are the principals, the purest ethos, of socialism. Which history has shown us does not work. Socialism cannot be successful in post-industrial modern western society.

But with our backs to the wall, so to speak, in a post-apocalyptic world, some of us would listen to our survival instincts and we would group together and we would form socialist tribes. Tribes that adopt the ideals and practices of socialism, without giving a damn about how we describe our behaviour. It would just be pragmatism: survival and community via solidarity.

Men and women sharing all sorts of group responsibilities: building, making clothes, farming, hunting, fishing, cooking, teaching our children, fighting our enemies if necessary, engineering, exploration.
It would also potentially be a desperate battle for survival.
Or not, maybe.

Would we be better humans? Would we be happier humans? Would the two go hand-in-hand?
Who knows.

Quotes

“Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.”

“It’s said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.”

“I’ve put some thought to it. How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?”

“He stared in wonderment when he saw that they were balloons, airplanes, and rocket ships. Dreams.
They floated away in all directions, and the air was filled with hope.”

“What’s the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning,” he said.

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God, God never spoke.”

“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.”

“By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”

“You have my whole heart. You always did. You’re the best guy.”