Mentats Wanted, Will Train | John Michael Greer

[Tace]

April 2, 2014 (Archdruid Report) -- The theme of last week’s post here on The Archdruid Report -- the strategy of preserving or reviving technologies for the deindustrial future now, before the accelerating curve of decline makes that task more difficult than it already is -- can be applied very broadly indeed.

Just now, courtesy of the final blowoff of the age of cheap energy, we have relatively easy access to plenty of information about what worked in the past; some other resources are already becoming harder to get, but there’s still time and opportunity to accomplish a great deal.

I’ll be talking about some of the possibilities as we proceed, and with any luck, other people will get to work on projects of their own that I haven’t even thought of. This week, though, I want to take Gustav Erikson’s logic in a direction that probably would have made the old sea dog scratch his head in puzzlement, and talk about how a certain set of mostly forgotten techniques could be put back into use right now to meet a serious unmet need in contemporary American society.

The unmet need I have in mind is unusually visible just now, courtesy of the recent crisis in the Ukraine. I don’t propose to get into the whys and wherefores of that crisis just now, except to note that since the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the small nations of eastern Europe have been grist between the spinning millstones of Russia and whichever great power dominates western Europe. It’s not a comfortable place to be; Timothy Snyder’s terse description of 20th century eastern Europe as “bloodlands” could be applied with equal force to any set of small nations squeezed between empires, and it would take quite a bit of unjustified faith in human goodness to think that the horrors of the last century have been safely consigned to the past.

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/mentats-wanted-will-train-john-michael-greer

[bemildred]

1. I've been thinking that if I was younger I'd start learning about horses.

And tools that don't have little motors in them. There is a museum in Eureka, CA that has all sorts of old sawmilling tools and woodworking tools and teaches classes in how to use them. It's very cool.

[cprise]

3. Solar panels don't have little motors in them.

And very many computers are now fan-less with solid-state storage... so the only moving parts are buttons.

I don't think its helpful to conceive of a post-apocalypse in terms of primitivism. 'High-tech' will remain, but its consumer excesses will have to subside; If that process doesn't happen fast enough, then nothing man-made or in nature will work to our advantage any longer and at that point we will have "bought it".

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. I have an old copy of Homemade Contrivances and How to Make Them:

Homemade Contrivances and How to Make Them: 1001 Labor-Saving Devices for Farm, Garden, Dairy, and Workshop
http://www.amazon.com/Homemade-Contrivances-How-Make-Them/dp/1602390185

among a few others. digital copies on the computer, hard copies when I can find them...