It’s been six months since I wrote my gloomy outlook and unlike most things I wrote, my thoughts keep coming back to it and issues I talked about. My view hasn’t changed. 2009 is indeed shaping to be a great year for me and an awful one for world in general.

If a problem like over-fishing, that is both well-understood and has known and relatively cheap solutions, seems to be beyond our willingness to solve, what chance do we have then to find and implement solutions for problems that require enormously more effort and resources?

Game over indeed.

I don’t see our civilization surviving this century even if no giant rock crosses our path. There are many reasons for this, but none original or interesting enough to dwell upon. At the same time I do think this is not the last century in which humans live.

If we are all indeed descendants of a tribe that at some point numbered only 2000 individuals, as I’ve heard in a lecture once, then it doesn’t take much to imagine that out of billions enough people will survive to continue our species existence. Not even me imagines a world completely void of water, plants or small furry animals.

Alas civilization needs more than mere presence of humans. Inspired by Irish post-Roman example a question occured to me recently: “Which 100 books would you try to preserve if you wanted to preserve our civilization?”

Point being that if things go the way of Dodo and people have to fight for survival, it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect enlightened person or small groups to preserve many more books than that. And books are still the best way to preserve knowledge in long term. Other forms are either too transient or can pack information far less densely.

I quickly realized two things. First, that I have no clue which books I would pick. And second, that there are more fundamental questions.

Can a civilization fluidly metamorphose from failing to a new, thriving and likely different civilization or does the new one need to start anew from ashes of previous ones?

Question matters, because I imagine that civilizations are in a way like companies. Establishing one is quite different than keeping one going and hence knowledge needed is probably different too. Most historical examples I know of persuaded me that scale of a problem and length of time before its full consequences are felt are inversely proportional to likelihood of our dealing with it before it is too late. However I am not a historian and could well be wrong. Still, you do with what you have and this seems reasonable enough assumption for further inspection.

Assuming this, what does it take to establish a civilization?

One thing that comes to mind is a high enough density of people who don’t spend all of their time procuring food. This means they can’t be hunter gatherers and some agricultural knowledge needs to survive to successfully plant and grow existing crops or tame new ones.

It would also be helpful if all technological knowledge isn’t lost either. Electrical gadgets will be hopelessly obsolete, but creating and fixing a good plow or knowing how to preserve perishable goods for longer periods of time will not be something to sneeze at. World might be full of decrepit remains that might be reused, but there is no good reason to leave it just to human ingenuity to discover how and to what purpose.

Another way to increase number of people living is to stop them dying needlessly. Hence preservation of most effective ways to stay healthy and low tech remedies for most common diseases and injuries would be helpful too. Most drugs will be gone for centuries, but it’s remarkable how much can be achieved with what will hopefully still be found in nature.

Mathematics is also an underpreciated, yet necessary underpinning of every developed civilization. Calculus will not be needed from the get-go, but just counting doesn’t get you far either. There’s hardly a plan that couldn’t be improved with a sensible application of mathematics. Related to this, basic economics should be preserved too.

“There is no such thing as society,” said Margaret Thatcher, which of course is rubish and why it is not enough to learn how to live in complex social structures, but also why and in what ways. Therefore sociological and philosophical texts should also make cut. I find it difficult to imagine titles, because I don’t think culture is something you can implant. It is nurtured and developed not only by circumstances and challenges society faces, but also with choices it makes. It is unlikely that next round would follow our footsteps but optimist in me would love to leave something that inspires and gives something to aspire to.

All these knowledge would be dead ink on paper if person holding a book doesn’t know how to read or what words actually mean. So alphabet learning book and a dictionary should also survive even though most of modern dictionary will probably be fairly useless by then and rest might be unhelpfully terse.

Last I would add a book about ecology trying to explain complexity of the world around us and why it would be wise to be careful how we try to change it. There is probably no better definition of stupidity then repeating same mistakes and expecting different results.

So what did I end up with?

An alphabet book, a dictionary and books about medicine, agriculture, mathematics, economy, sociology, philosophy, some basic technology and ecology. There are no titles since I don’t believe such books have been written yet. We have lived in a world full of books and knowledge for so long, that we simply never saw or had a reason to write a book premised on the idea, that it might be one of few books around.

In any case, even though I have spent more thoughts on this then is probably reasonable at this point, I am sure I haven’t thought of everything. What else have I missed?