World Made By Hand

I have to congratulate my friend James Howard Kunstler for writing a great, entertaining and thought provoking novel called “ World Made By Hand.”
The best books challenge our ideas, our values, our beliefs and our assumptions of the world. Judged by those standards, “ World Made By Hand” is a very successful novel. Kunstler does this successfully by pointing out how fragile our civilization is and how quickly we can loose it if we are complacent.
The novel is set in a near future America where a perfect storm of nuclear terrorism, oil shortages and economic collapse has laid waste to civilization. American civilization has descended to a post industrial level where modern Americans live like 19th century pioneers growing their own food, making their own clothes, relying on horses for transportation and living in fear of violence. Electricity, automobiles, electronics and the modern economy are things of the past. In a remote small town in Upstate New York people are maintaining something of a civilized life while the world around them succumbs to barbarism.
Kunstler paints an entertaining and convincing if not plausible picture of what life might be like after the oil runs out. Americans have to live like my mother did on the farm in World War II era Ontario, without central heat, electricity and indoor plumbing. They hoe potatoes and plow fields with horses. Cars, computers, telephones and most of the conveniences upon our lives are based are things of the past.
Now personally I agree and disagree with Kunstler’s hypothesis here. Yes, the oil and automobile age will soon end and it will have catastrophic effects on our society. But no it won’t cause us to slide into neofeudal barbarism or return to the 19th Century. Like it or not the machine age is here to stay computers, automobiles, trains, genetic engineering, robots and the rest are here to stay. A more realistic scenario is a few years of social disorders (think the 60s on steroids) followed by a gradual but painful transition into a less auto oriented country. One ugly side effect of this maybe a more authoritarian government and militarized law enforcement. The end result will be something a lot like modern Japan, the majority of Americans living in apartments or row houses and taking the train to work. Take a look at recently built suburbs like Lone Tree, Colorado, with closely packed apartments surrounding an electric rail line. Cars will be reserved for the rich or rented when needed.
If we do descend into some sort of post industrial barbarism I doubt it’ll be anywhere near as primitive as what Kunstler describes. Indeed it might be much worse because a lot of the technology will still be functioning. The guns will still work and there will still be plenty of ammunition. Cars will still run and it won’t take some smart cookie long to rig them to burn alcohol.
A great deal of the electronics will be around for a long time, I had one TV set for ten years, my dad had one for thirty years. Even computers last a long time they get switched out because the features and software in them is obsolescent not because they wear out. These gizmos are going to be with us for a long time no matter what happens, even if the grid goes down, there are generators, solar panels, windmills, hydro power etc.
A far more chilling nightmare scenario will be that the smart cookies who can keep the technology going will lord it over the rest of us like mediaeval noblemen. Like warlords in Somalia and Yugoslavia they’ll form private armies and fight wars among themselves. Sooner or later this will end when a super warlord perhaps a religious fanatic or maybe just the geek who can build the most efficient robot soldiers establishes a dictatorship of some sort.
An interesting premise would be that corporate America which does work will simply supercede government which doesn’t. Something like that has already happened in Russia where virtually everything has been sold off to Post Soviet businessmen. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to envision Congress selling off the Interstate highway system to Maglev developers.
The American tyrant of the future is more likely to be some ruthless businessman who can make things work than a general or politician. Indeed if the generals or politicians get desperate they’re likely to turn control of the country over to somebody like Bill Gates.
Still Kunstler’s book is definitely worth reading, first because it is a great read with interesting and believable characters in a grim situation. More importantly because like George Orwell’s 1984, it lays out a nightmare future that must be avoided at all costs.

“World Made by Hand” 2008, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press.
For those of you who want to see how a modern book marketing campaign should be ran Jim has a really cool website and even a u-tube.