How Likely is a World Made By Hand?
By Daniel G. Jennings
I really enjoyed James Howard Kunstler’s wonderful book A World Made By Hand. This entertaining novel is a tale of everybody life in a future America where technological civilization has completely collapsed forcing people to grow their own food, make their own clothes, govern their own communities and rely on horses for transportation.
The novel is very entertaining, touching and quite funny at moments. Kunstler is a brilliant satirist especially when he describes the efforts of a group of trailer park residents to entertain themselves without television and stereo systems. They put on a show that includes Heavy Metal played on homemade instruments, play acting of porn movies and episodes of the Sopranos and torture.
Still a nagging question comes into the back of our minds? How likely is the world described by Kunstler to come to pass? My answer is not likely at all, yes Kunstler’s thesis that our civilization faces a Great Crisis, a Long Emergency because of the depletion of oil will probably come to pass. Yet Civilization is always facing crises and emergencies, World War I, Communism, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, nuclear proliferation, and many others and guess what it usually survives. The depletion of oil is a crisis that our civilization will survive probably by a combination of free market economics, technology and good luck.
Kunstler postulates a couple of other factors that combine with oil depletion to form a perfect storm of crises to bring down America. They are a massive epidemic, the Mexican Flu and nuclear terrorism. The last great epidemic didn’t even slow our civilization down. The Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918 killed more people than World War One and it didn’t even slow civilization down. Indeed the decade following the Spanish Influenza, the 1920s was marked by decadence, unparalleled technological advance and economic growth.
Kunstler also imagines that nuclear terrorism will bring our economy to a halt. That might be possible, but nuclear terrorism itself is not likely. The possibility of terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear bomb is unlikely. Terrorists aren’t likely to build a bomb because they lack the massive industrial infrastructure needed to build one. They might steal one, of course that would require an organization and a criminal genius out of a James Bond movie. Hijacking a plane is simple, overrunning the kind of military base where nuclear bombs is kept would require hundreds of highly trained and heavily armed commandos, planes, scientists and technicians. Even at its best Al Qaeda couldn’t help to put that together. One tank or a platoon of infantry men could wipe them out.
Then of course there’s the other nightmare scenario the terrorists might buy a bomb from some corrupt post Soviet Russian. Okay, Russia has fallen back but not that far back. The Russian nuclear arsenal is still under the control of the Russian military and secret police and they regard its safety as their national honor. Russians maybe many things but they are honorable and they will protect their nation’s honor. Any Islamic terrorist who comes within a thousand feet of a Russian nuke would either A) be dead or B) get sold a box full of radioactive waste and a GPS tracking device that will lead Delta Force straight to his hideout.
Even if terrorists could wipe out a couple of our cities that wouldn’t bring down our society. During World War II Germany, Russia, Japan and several other countries suffered far worse damage than what Kunstler depicts and they quickly recovered their technological civilizations and became more advanced technologically. Similar developments occurred after our own Civil War in which large areas of the South were completely destroyed. Indeed postwar destruction probably accelerated technological progress in the United States after the Civil War and Europe and Japan after World War II.
Yes, terrorists are going to wreck a lot of havoc in the years ahead, indeed I’m surprised there hasn’t been a major terror attack on the US since September 11. But I’m not too worried about nuclear terrorism. The terrorism I’m worried about is the old fashioned kind that involves guns and bombs or the new kind of terrorism that involves computers. Cyber terrorism will be incredibly dangerous and destructive and in ways that we can’t imagine but it won’t bring down civilization. Cyber terrorism requires modern civilization and the networked tribes that profit from it want civilization to continue. They succeed by manipulating civilization not by destroying it.
There is one crisis Kunstler mentions that could bring us down and that is the crisis of the spirit. That is we simply give up on civilization and let it collapse, that is a possibility it’s happened before. The Romans, the Arab Caliphate, the British Empire all gave up at the moment of greatest triumph, the Chinese retreated from the world when they were at the pinnacle of their power. We have the tools to save ourselves from this crisis the question is do we have the brains, the guts and the courage to use them? Of course if we do give up the Chinese will simply take over and we Americans will end up like the British, second citizens in a world we made.
So terrorism, oil depletion and epidemics aren’t going to bring our civilization down. They will change it beyond recognition but I seriously doubt we’ll end up living in a World Made By Hand.