I recently read Juice by Tim Winton. Its post-climate catastrophe and dystopian setting and really bleak but boy does it make you think.
Of course there is the brave underground resistance fighting against the remaining oligarchs. It wouldn't be a post catastrophe novel without them. Its very easy to identify with small bands of highly trained and skilled operators penetrating the bunkers of the mega rich and killing everyone they find. A story needs a hero. We have all played COD and wish we were the avenging angel of death killing those who have killed the planet
Its a lot lot more than that though. The real heroes are the ordinary people who struggle to survive in a world that actively tries to kill them at every step. Searing heat, sea level rise, mass extinction, wildfires consuming whole countries, monstrous storms, disease, It all gets worse and worse through the course of about 30-40 years in the book too.
On top of that are hundred years or more of what is called The Terror which took place before the time that the novel is set in where the absolute worst of humanity came to the fore and hasn't entirely gone away.
It got me to thinking. What can I do NOW to help the people in the future? The book makes many references to people who managed to save information safely for the future. Not in fragile computers but on things that are more permanent like books in watertight containers. That's what we all should be doing in my view. Writing down and saving all we know that will be helpful to our ancestors.
If we save the best of humanities efforts now we give the future hope. Things like how to farm, make tools, recover scrap and smelt ore, make pottery and bricks, build structures. The seed banks are a wonderful thing but they need to have the information on what to do with the seeds stored in the same location.
Most importantly how to live together without killing one another. To show that a different way of living together is possible. A free, fair and just way of living. The future might well hold a Terror as the book portrays. It would be easy for the remains of humanity to get stuck in that way of thinking.
We need to save the evidence of the worst of humanity too as a warning. Don't be like this. Don't have leaders, don't treat people like animals, don't hate people for existing, don't exploit people.
A better world is possible, we all know that. By saving the best and the worst of this world NOW it might become possible one day.
#climate #ClimateCatastrophe #ClimateCrisis #OmniCatastrophe #capitalism #colonialsm #patriachy #futre #hope
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