Welcome to the Outquisition
Alex Steffen writes:
What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. We imagined that it would need an almost missionary fervor, something like the Inquisition (which largely destroyed knowledge) in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition.
First, we need some kind of symbol.
Then, we need some kind of loose plan.
Then, we better get our asses out and off in the open.
Techmissionaries!
why must we wait for shtf? fixing it now is the answer!
My friends and I are actually getting quite busy with our plan and are in the beginning stages of gathering equipment (Seeds, Jars, KNOWLEDGE) as we speak.
Where do we sign up?
Reading your article on the WorldChanging site, it reminded me of a group, engineers without borders, that works on finding and developing appropriate technologies for improving lives in third world countries. The link to the main international page is here: http://www.ewb-international.org/index.htm
and there is the link to their database of technologies: http://www.ewb-international.org/ASTdatabases.htm
And flipping through their database links, it looks like it has a LOT of what you are looking for as far as technical ideas go, but there would still be a great deal of work in looking through the databases in finding what would be best to bring pockets of America out of the third world if a slow collapse does happen.
I hate to do this, because I really do like the idea. A collapse, or apocalypse is defined by the fact that there aren’t enough resources left to provide the type of leisure that would be required for the proselytizing. In other words, if it were a real apocalypse, the Outquisitioners would be walking 12 miles to find a stash of crackers, or fleeing roving packs of predators. If this isn’t the case, then it’s not really the apocalypse of catastrophe, it’s just a bad occurrence. And Katrina, Myanmar, and the China earthquakes show us that nothing changes after a bad occurrence.
First off I find it interesting that to start here there is big (C) Copyright, when we are talking about ‘Open Sharing’. I understand some things are important to secure in such a fashion, but as current society is learning to be scared of (C) when it comes to sharing, perhaps the small (cc) which is much more accepting of the idea of open sharing (I assume we are talking distribution of ideas and technology into ‘the commons’). It would align more into the philosophy of what Alex and Cory were talking about with this idea. My two cents at least.
Can I stay on the island? I know how to ferment stuff!
Seriously, great idea.
Lou
Sorry to add to the detractors but as somewhere who went from living in London, to now living in a town of 1500 in Oregon and almost nearly off grid…this concept is both arrogant and naive.
It misses the very fact that “lost” skill sets still reside within small rural communities. Which also means newer forms of alt-ag are also being practiced due to financial necessity. Which then leaves you with a group of well intentioned, but socially naive and elitist, individuals showing up on a resource rich small community. Simply put, I have friends who grow organic farm goods, free range sheep but drive trucks, carry guns and if you are on their land probably will not be made to feel welcome in a post apocalyptic world.
My suggestion would be to stick to the burbs where there is real disconnect and leave the rural areas alone.
I think one good way to get started is to put together a map of “folks who know tools and innovation,” reach out to them, and see how large of a network you can put together. You’ll probably need a more fleshed-out pitch than “helping the locals get tools they need.”
Then you’ll probably want to set up a form so that communities can sign up to get help (plus some marketing to get the word out), though you’ll probably have to figure out how to find the places as well.
Awesome idea! No pressure, but I’m expecting great things out of this.
[...] a few very smart people have left comments. I am still digesting them, but one of my favorites is this one: No pressure, but I’m expecting great things out of [...]
Looks like MIT’s got a similar idea, get in touch with them:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/13/1412226&from=rss
I wonder just exactly what sort of scenario is being batted about here?
I remember reading Stephen King’s “The Stand” 30 years or so ago and thinking of all sorts of problems with it even when I was a teenager. Even the recent “I Am Legend” movie presented a preposterous scenario before it turned into a zombie movie. Just living day to day would be hell.
If some catastrophe like that happens wiping out 99% of the population leaving survivors to live in the ruins, I’m not sure the other traps of technology wouldn’t finish the survivors off. In “The Stand” a flu-like bio-weapon kills off the population of the planet in a single summer, but how orderly would such a collapse really be?
Would for example nuclear power plants be shut down and safed? What would happen if they weren’t and several went critical like Chernobyl? Would the release poison the atmosphere and kill the survivors?
The bigger trap is, how much of the food lying about in tin cans would last any length of time? Supposing you can find a farm with all the equipment intact do you know how to use it? Can you learn? Do you know what and when to plant and how to process and preserve it through the winter so you don’t starve?
What happens when a medical emergency crops up that you can’t cure with your supply of over-the-counter meds you know how to use? An abscessed tooth or abdominal cramps that might be a burst appendix? How many people can even perform the Heimlich maneuver much less CPR?
In the event of apocalyptic collapse, I’m sure a significant part of the surviving population would die from the simplest inabilities to cope with the necessity to rough it and live off the land.
Those with lots of guns and little love for their fellow man would probably subjugate their fellow survivors into a life of feudalism for the skill sets they might have and the rest would be forced into brutal existences of manual labor and barbarism.
The carnage I would imagine would be exquisitely horrible. The religious nuttiness of America alone would make this a horrible place if just one survivor decides he’s the new Christ and starts managing the ‘apocalypse’ aftermath.
I think figuring out how to get things like the internet and other utilities up and running again will be the very least of a survivors problems.
May I suggest an Outquisition Wiki for survival skills, hunting/growing techniques, simple water filtration, energy generation, that sort of thing?
I love this idea.
Suggestion for a symbol, ‘Tree of Knowledge’.
I’ll be watching for the Outquisition wiki!
-Marc
Octavia E. Butler wrote a couple of greats books about a post-collapse West Coast. Overall themes ring true throughout the books.
Redefine civilization and we have a greater chance of rebuilding it. I am more of the mind that we should use this opportunity to start over instead of attempting to resurrect a failed system.
Should the collapse take place inside my lifetime, I plan on doing my best to bring people together. To build communities like we haven’t seen in centuries.
Change. Impermanence. Growth.
I think the principal goal of this project should be to find compile a set of cheap books, in the style of Where There is No Doctor, that will let non experts provide basic services and produce basic goods.
Many books already exist in this vain. (a collection of medical texts can be found at http://www.hesperian.org/publications_download.php)
IMO compiling a collection of and distributing these types of books will be far more helpful to a recovering literate society (such as the US) than having roving semi-experts. Ditribute a few of each book to each community, help with some basic problems, should they ask, and move one. While it is mightily idyllic to want to do infrastructure projects and give every student text books its hardly practical.
After collecting said works the next goal should be to create a distributed system through which more copies can be printed and then distributed.
This is a great start. My friends and I have always been slightly pessimistic about the “Big One” and have always agreed to meet up at the same hometown location and combine our skills to survive. Our small group already includes a pharmacist, horticulturist, paramedic, soldiers, hunters, construction experts and just good for nothing english lit majors like myself. The one thing we all agree on however is that we will survive and prosper. Sure its ridiculous to live every day in fear of the apocalypse; which is why this project makes perfect sense. I’ll be in touch - Sly - akron, ohio
I love Your optimism. It’s refreshing to see people trying to come together while preparing for the apocalypse. As for the post apocalypse missionaries bringing their technology to the rural slums, not entirely sure if that is realistic or valuable. I’m more worried about those trapped in cities than in rural areas. I do look forward to checking back and seeing what You create here.
My crystal ball predicts several related apocalypses in the future and present:
The end of cheap oil, resulting in the reprioritization of all resources that assume cheap oil
The consequential need to restructure how things are financed
Famine and pandemics resulting from the breakdown of food and medical distribution
Add to these the wild cards of
Political instability
Climate crisis related long term and sudden weather and ecosystem anomalies
Water issues
Infrastructure failure due to neglect and lack of materials or ways to build or tranport them
Dealing with the dead and dying
We have to use the remaining affordable oil while we still can to build local, sustainable energy, food, and community.
Why is the assumption that the keepers of technology are in the big cities? The real knowledge and skillsets needed are more likely to be found in rural farming communities. How much good is a city dweller going to be at helping with farming techniques? I think these Outquisitioners will be met with skepticism since their big tech ways are probably what led to the collapse in the first place.
Awesome start to something really great. Already subscribed to your Feed. This idea has SO MUCH potential !!!! I’ll be spreading the word here in Roanoke, VA. Peace be with us all.
I agree with Gerbil’s 7/13 comments.
Sorry, Gerbal.
This whole “movement” makes it sound as though there is a need present. During the actual Inquisition, people had “right knowledge” forced upon them. This sounds a little like that. Maybe you’d have as much to learn from the folks you are hoping to “save”.
I love this idea. In fact, I love it so much I think I’d like to use it in my next novel. I’ve been wracking my brains for a while to find a plot structure that would dovetail with the huge bin of ideas I’ve collectively gathered under the title “The Rewilding.” This strikes me as perfect, if given a slight twist:
Rather than imagining this as post-apocalypse, I’m thinking of it in terms of disaster relief, that is, of “greening” the world one disaster at a time. The toolkit you’re talking about might be best put into the hands of first responders like the Mennonite Central Committee, ensuring that when infrastructure is rebuilt after a catastrophe, it’s not the *old* infrastructure.
The stuff I want to write about concerns lots more than just this, but it strikes me that having the main character be a part of such an effort would be perfect; the antagonists would of necessity be the traditional power/organizational structure (think aide organizations versus local government–where have we seen that lately?). So this plot would just be the beginning; from outquisition, the story would whirl away in a completely different direction, specificaly towards the global transformation I’m calling “the rewilding.” But the idea of outquisition does pull toegether a whole raft of disparate ideas that I’d been trying to mesh together; it provides a great jumping-off point.
You’ve re-inspired me to add new content (and proselytize for this site) at my primitive attempt to gather such information available at preppedforanything.com
My thought is, given the possibility that we degenerate into a violent feudal society, how can those with knowledge and culture rise to the top? People with guns and street smarts will be fighting to subjugate people without guns and lots of book/tech knowledge. Hmmmm. Now if that second group had appropriate military tech as well as ag and energy tech, why, it would level the playing field, no?
Hey this project looks very exciting, and I would be interested in being a part. I have too have concerns though.
The “missionary” stance of outquisition seems slightly problematic, both given the history of “missionary” styles of organizing, and the fact that “non-city” people in fact often know much more about sustainable living than even your above average city dweller. I live in Southern Appalachia and can assure you that home gardening, resource conservation and recycling are not new things here, they are in fact very old, and born out of economic neccessity, not out of some newfound (and often short lived) moral zeal. What non-city folks often need is not new knowledge, but first for city folks and big institutions to stop standing in their way (for those insititutions and cities own economic benifit) and second to for some of the wealth that goes from rural areas to city areas to be transfered back to those communites.
If the purpose of outquisition is to build connections between rural and city folks on an equal footing and with equal respect for the knowledge that both groups have to share, than it is a good idea, but if it approached with a superior attitude on the part of the Outquisitioners, than they will hopefully be rounded up and sent back to the city where those sorts of attitudes belong.
A bunch of us are already doing this in Northern California, and it’s good that someone’s finally come up with a meme for it (The Outquisition).
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The scenarios we see ahead are based largely on the consequences of peak oil (it’s already happening: the reason speculators can drive up oil prices is because production is not increasing), and the climate crisis (also already happening, notice all the weird weather lately, plus the arctic & antarctic ice breakups).
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Our strategy is to seek out those individuals in local areas who already have vital knowledge, network them together, and jointly develop strategies for serving common goals. We already have a number of highly-skilled people onboard, including a couple of eco-industrial geniuses (people who can build and maintain vital sustainable infrastructure from scrap material), people in the construction tradees, farmers (including chickens and rabbits), permaculturists, mechanics, herbal medicine specialists, a couple of communications systems engineers (I’m one of those; telephone switching systems eng.), people with experience in materials science, chemistry, and a range of other fields. We are already somewhat established in the area in which we intend to build various elements of sustainable community and educational outreach.
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We are not “well-intentioned elitists” as per Damien’s criticism above. We are already local, already engaged, and as per our original intentions, we make no pretense of tellling others how to run their lives. We believe in “teaching what you know, and learning what you don’t,” and both halves of that are equally important. We recognize that the critical skills are already present in the community at-large, all that’s needed is to get organized for what’s coming. What we bring to the picture is nothing more than our hearts, brains, muscles, desire to work our butts off to serve local needs, and knowledge in our respective fields plus the overall picture of the current and expected crises.
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Our organization is called the Foundation Of Sustainable Living, FOSL (”fossil” as in “the fossil record”), website is http://www.thefosl.org (and yeah we’re going to be doing a radical revision of the website as soon as the relevant technical & design folks have time). We’re a 501c3 nonprofit, we are not affiliated with any political, religious, or other organization or ideology other than sustainability. No one in the group put me up to posting this, I just discovered this site on my own and figured I’d post this to see who’s interested. We’re doing the practical work right now and I want to find others who are motivated and have skills, to network and see where it takes us.
(Note, in case my email address is accessible via this system: spam-filter: remove the marsupials from the userID and the domain name.)
This post is me speaking for myself, not for the organization.
Something to keep in mind: Core definition of civilization: “a society within which violence decreases over time, and knowledge increases over time.” Everything else we attribute to civilization, such as rights and justice under law, cities, economic development, and so on, comes from those two key points. Civilization does not depend on any particular level of technology; you can have a civilized society operating with hunter/gatherer technology and limited horticulture (e.g. the Iroquois Confederacy), or with space-age technology.
The important things are to prevent the increase in violence, and prevent the decline of knowledge.
Toward that end, two sets of institutions are vital, and they deserve our support no matter how bad things get.
One is the system of law and justice; in the US that means our Constitution and state constitutions, and all of the apparatus of representative democracy. On the local level, it means the local court system and its ancillaries: the judges and their core admin staff, the police/sheriffs, public defenders, district attorneys, local jail, probation officers. For those of us who consider the question of “community defense,” the legal system is the first line of defense against the potential for an increase in violence. As per the US experience in the Middle East in recent years, don’t treat something as a military problem if it can be handled via criminal prosecution or civil trial.
Supporting the local justice system includes practical steps such as continuing to collect taxes or take contributions as needed to keep judges and staff etc. employed; providing volunteer labor for tasks such as maintaining the local courthouse; providing donations of essentials such as locally-grown food to feed those who are serving jail sentencees; and so on.
The second core set of institutions are those related to preserving and passing along knowledge: the local schools and library system, and community colleges as well as any other colleges and universities in your area. Here also, continuing to collect taxes or voluntary contributions is vital, along with volunteer labor to maintain buildings & infrastructure, keep staffs fed, provide housing for students if needed, and so on.
Libraries and expert academic staffs are your preservers of knowledge; teachers and their teaching assistant staffs are those who pass knowledge along to others. In a crisis, your local libraries should probably put vital books (those dealing with core skills) on a non-lending basis for use only inside the library, to keep these books maximally available for use by all who need them. In a crisis, public and private schools will have to establish additional classes where people with vital skills can teach anyone who wants to sign up (this can be done in the evenings). It will also be highly useful to have a listing of skilled people and experts of various kinds who are in the area, and those who are willing to teach what they know to others. Obviously, continuing the education fo children is vital; otherwise the links of knowledge between generations, that keep society going, will break. And it’s vital that such education also include what used to be called “civics,” the details of how to keep a representative democracy going.
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Re. the whole idea of “apocalypse.” Peak oil and the climate crisis, taken together, add up to something that could cause major economic and social breakdown, and widespread death from various causes including disease, hunger, and violent competition for resources. We normally think of “apocalypse” along the lines of “wake up one morning, and then the sirens go off, and the lights go out, and the s— hits the fan all at once.” (Think of how you felt on 9/11 when you first got the news and saw the pictures.)
However, reality doesn’t usually work like that. What’s more likely is that things just gradually get worse and worse, one crisis after another with lengthy periods of “nothing much is changing” in between. Think of the analogy to frogs in water that is slowly coming to a boil.
Our brains are tuned to recognize changes that occur rapidly. The changes we have to be concerned with are those that are occurring more slowly. We notice a 9/11, we notice when gas prices cross another dollar threshold (from $3 to $4, and next to $5), we notice when another big chunk of ice breaks off at the north or south pole. We notice a Katrina, a heat wave, a war in the Middle East fought ultimately for oil.
But it’s the slower changes that will get us if we don’t prepare for them. And there’s no time to start like the present.
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OK, two long postings in a row are (more than
enough for now; I’ll be back tonight.
Okay, I have just one question for you. Given the state of the world, why would you even assume that someone would want to help put things back the way they were?
Well, hey, I’m a biochemist. I can at least figure out how to make drugs. I learned how to make PCN once, years ago. Seems like a fun mental experiment at least.
The library idea is really your best bet, though. Everybody likes to think that they’d be the one to survive the plague/nuclear war/alien invasion/climate crash/zombie assault, but they seem to forget the statistical assumption of the whole thing. Most every one is dead. Most likely, that includes you.
[...] INGDOM Building: What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. We imagined that it would need an almost missionary fervor, something like the Inquisition (which largely destroyed knowledge) in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition. [...]
Re. Jay, “why put things back the way they were?”
There *is no* putting things back the way they were. As someone commented in BoingBoing, we bounced back nicely after WW2, but then they assumed we could repeat that performance. That assumption was dead wrong.
1940s: Lower population, greater resource base, plenty of cheap energy (oil), and stable climate.
Today: The Earth is overpopulated by about 60% and overconsuming by about 60%, the present era of cheap energy is closing (until or unless a replacement comes along (don’t hold your breath; nuclear + renewables + conservation all still take time we don’t have enough of), and climate systems are about to go over the tipping point if they haven’t already.
The likely outcome is a protracted dark age lasting a couple of centuries, during which time there will still be areas of light, as it were, where knowledge is preserved. However we will no more get back what we have now, than we will get the mythical flying cars of Atlantis.
“Mom, grandpa must be smokin’ funnyweed again. He just told me that when he was my age, they had living rooms on wheels that would take them wherever they wanted to go…”
The best that can be hoped for in the rebuilding phase, is to develop a sustainable culture that is largely agrarian but can support a high-technology science sector dedicated to solving our most urgent problems plus continuing space exploration (think “off-site backups” of Earth life & knowledge; otherwise, when the sun goes, it’s *over*). I’ve even got some notes for a fictional workup based on that idea: a story with the working title “And then nothing happened,” referring specifically to a *lack* of conflict & drama compared to “before.” One of the main characters lives in an agrarian town and works in local production. The other main character lives in a compact high-tech city and works as a mid-level tech on a NASA project. One visits the other, which enables depicting the juxtaposition of those seemingly unrelated worlds.
Worst of all would be humanity fighting itself over the remaining resources while going down the drain and back to the caves in the worst sense of that phrase. Think “Taliban World.” Very bad. (Worse than Lovelock’s +5C scenario because it would be a stable state rather than a complete re-initialization of the proverbial hard drive.)
Somewhere in between is the “neo-primitivist” scenario of a humane return to hunter/gatherer ways, advanced by Jason Godesky on http://www.anthropik.com. (think Daniel Quinn, _Ishmael_) I differ with Godesky about a number of things, but he and some of his folks are darn good thinkers & writers who make a coherent case, so I see them as kindred spirits in a way.
In any case, the future looks like a much smaller population living at a much lower consumption level, with energy/resource-intensive technologies used primarily for essential purposes, and with considerable potential for conflicts along a number of axes (the most likely being for control of resources, obviously).
And our place in that world, those of us who don’t get Darwinized along the way, is to take the best of what we have today and make the best of what we will have tomorrow.
About that missionary fervor thing.
We are in an age of competition between evangelical meme-systems. In that way it has something in common with the 1920s - 30s, where the emerging evangelical memes were communism and fascism.
Today the primary axis of competition is between religious extremism and its co-evil of fanatical obscurantism on one hand, and on the other hand, abject greed + its rationalizations, that can be called, for want of a better word, “grab-ism.” As in “grab-and-run.” (Note, when I refer to religious extremism as evil, that does not assume that religion in and of itself is evil; religion, like other philosophical systems, can be put to good ends or evil ends. Let us not forget Martin Luther King and Bishop Desmond Tutu, among others.)
Each of these (religious extremism, and grab-ism) is “evangelical” in the sense that it seeks to proselytize, often by force. Each of these has been successful at creating highly contagious viral memes, with perhaps billions of adherents around the world.
What we here are promoting is nothing more or less than a return to realism and reasonableness on a sustainable footing. Realism in facing the pending crises of our times, and reasonableness in seeking solutions that preserve “freedom and dignity” (to use B.F. Skinner’s phrase; and he was in the end far more of a humanitarian than his critics made him out to be).
The problem is, realism and reasonableness don’t sell so well, compared to martyrdom and mayhem, or shiny & new baubles and piles of ill-gotten loot. Realism and reasonableness are the equivalent of “plain vanilla.” Everyone “likes” them, but the more “exciting” stuff is behind the counter or in the back room.
So to overcome that limitation, we have to become somewhat evangelical ourselves. Contagiously enthusiastic, in the manner of the early pioneers of the space program or the internet, but about something far more prosaic including the deliberate return to a simpler material standard of living.
This is not going to be easy. And yet we must.
I have a funny feeling that what will be found in many places is that neither lack of cash of skills is to blame. Rather, the inability of individuals to act in their interests is the problem. Where there are no property rights, no allowance to act except by leave of the powerful, in whatever form, there will be privation. In these cases, an open source type of stealth government may be needed. Organize to aid all those willing to live freely and give others the same rights. Find a way to go around present strictures until there develops the capability of removing them. Government, religion, oligarchy, anarchy, all can keep people from doing the things that would benefit each and all.
http://www.walletpop.com/2008/07/20/top-25-things-vanishing-from-america-1-the-family-farm/
That’s why the information needs to be maintained.
All that land is either laying fallow or owned by large corporations.
The people that worked it are gone. if TSHTF, someone is going to have to work that land to produce food. Who will do it? Who will know how? the people that already do it will have their hands full with their own land. Farming anything larger than a small backyard plot is a full time job. I know that there are people out there that have the knowledge, but they won’t have time to be teaching classes.
They’ll have time to teach their employees, who will be more permanent than the migratory farmworkers of today. Probably there will be fairly stable social ecosystems developing around such farms as can still be worked.
Also, the large holdings can always be broken up into smaller holdings, that can be worked on a family or small-group scale.
Horse-drawn equipment will probably come back into use; surprisingly, this is entirely viable.