Here’s a one-stop shop for everything that is wrong with the way things are, and a vision that incorporates Jim Kunstler’s four-volume series World Made By Hand about how things could turn out. From Jim Quinn at theburningplatform.com:
Having recently finished reading The Harrows of Spring, the fourth and final novel of Jim Kunstler’s World Made By Hand series, I couldn’t help but compare and contrast his dystopian post economic collapse America versus our current warped egocentric pre-economic collapse America. His world made by hand is forced upon Americans who have survived some sort of conflict resulting in the destruction of Washington D.C. and Los Angeles by nuclear blasts.
The Federal government has ceased to exist. The nation has splintered and varied factions are vying for power in autonomous regions of the country, but the small community of Union Grove, New York has been left to fend for itself. The four novels detail the trials and tribulations of average Americans in a small rural town after the implosion of modernity, as the world is stripped of its technological oil based comforts, devastated by terrorism, racked by epidemics, and having endured the ravages of economic collapse.
Kunstler’s dystopian future isn’t as bleak as the dystopian visions of 1984 or Brave New World. If dystopian means a world characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or a cataclysmic decline in society, then Kunstler’s World Made By Hand series doesn’t match that characterization. There is more humanity and hope in his novels than you would expect in a dystopian vision of the future. The novels focus on various types of societal segments who represent the different courses society could chart after a breakdown of modern social norms, enforced by central authorities. Living through a national catastrophe and stripped of the modern conveniences provided by cheap plentiful oil, the citizens of Union Grove see their community falling apart from neglect, natural decay, disease, and lack of hope for the future.
The setting for the story appears to be only a couple decades in the future and is entirely believable when you step back and observe our current unsustainable economic path, increasing threats from Islamic radicals, warmongering politicians beating the drums of war with Russia and China, disintegrating social fabric, increasingly fragile electrical grid, and our brittle just in time supply chain, dependent upon cheap and ample supplies of oil. The faultless community of Union Grove struggles to regain some semblance of normalcy after events beyond their control force them to confront a new reality. The way of life they had taken for granted, with its modern conveniences, technological wonders, and taken for granted luxuries, had suddenly faded away.
Wallowing in their depression and sorrow would only lead to further needless death and suffering. It needed to be replaced with a new found respect for each other and a pragmatic approach to creating a new future based upon the reality of their situation. Gone was electricity, oil based transportation modes (automobiles, trucks, airliners ships), mass produced anti-biotics, frankenfoods sold at warehouse stores, policemen and soldiers to “protect” them from bad guys, and politicians bribing you with debt financed entitlements for your vote. That paradigm was always unsustainable, but Americans preferred the illusion of sustainability to facing the reality.
To continue reading: Worlds Made By Hand
