this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
99 points (99.0% liked)

Asklemmy

42493 readers
1398 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The title is a bit over dramatic but, per the title, if you could contribute with one piece of knowledge to a book that every single individual should learn from in order to kickstart a civilization, what would be yours?

My personal choice would be the process of soap making, from scratch.

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A book on the ethics of care

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Honestly though, it doesn't matter. We had religions based on ethical treatment of people along with a bunch of other recommendations to keep the population safe. Things like don't eat meats that were more likely to get people sick. Yet all of those books created cult like following, like any good media, a cult pops up around it. A lot of the time that cult perverses and changes the message of the media to fit what they want.

A good example of this is... Bluey, have you seen this show? A lot of people think it's an example of the perfect parents with normal kids but really it's not at all like that. The kids are unrealistic most of the time. The challenges the parents face are mundane compared to real life. It's just a media that points you in the general direction but doesn't answer any of the real challenges of parenting. You ever talk to the cultists on /r/bluey, you can tell they miss the point of the show entirely yet will completely make up their own points to each episode and set by them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Caring for animals in a humane way. Post apocolypse civilisation will be kind to our fluffy friends.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

All these tasty nutritious facts are great, but they're doomed without a robust immune system.

They need to know how there's a drunkard's walk or one-way tropism for wealth and power to accumulate in the hands of the few, how the noblest intents get degraded and corrupted over time, how rich people get to make the rules and thereby get even richer, giving them even more control over the rules.

How this is what killed our civilisation in the first place, and how it will kill theirs if they let it. How you need to water the roots, not the leaves, unless you want the whole tree to collapse.

What rent-seeking looks like, how tribalism works, how propaganda and psyops and PR campaigns work, what narcissists and sociopaths are like, what abusive relationships look like (since they use the same tactics), how to spot demagogues, grifters and think-of-the-children paternalism. How internecine conflict is encouraged and used to distract from actual oppression. How the church maintained a vast grip on power for millennia just by manipulating shame, fear and self-righteousness.

How you can (and should!) make a bunch of rules to slow or mitigate this, but cancer finds a way; it will worm its way past your defenses in time. And when it does, you can't fix it from within the system, pretty much by definition, because it subverts the law and the entire social contract to protect and serve itself.

How the only fix is to step outside the law, step outside the system and root it out the hard way, from the top down. You can't put a formal trigger condition on this, as the failure mode will game its way round it: just say that when you need it, you'll know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Sounds like we need to get the sociologists and cultural anthropologists on it. Can't decide whether economists should be involved. Probably not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

My contribution is a very practical tip for parents: When you need to carry a kid sitting on your shoulders, first pick them up and have them sit with both legs on your right shoulder. Then, with your right hand, grab the kid's right leg, and with your left hand grab the kid's left leg and lift it over your head to place it in your left shoulder. Mirror the maneuver if necessary. The result is a quick lift-sit-and-switch technique, and fewers kicks to the head.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (5 children)

How to get rid of hiccoughs. No one knows this trick! All you need to do is hold the flaps of your ears closed and drink a little water. It works every time!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

This can't be true, as the real method is to plug your nose, look at the ceiling and drink out of the left side of a cup.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Another one is a small spoonful of peanut butter. πŸ€·β€β™€οΈ

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Please spell it as hiccup. The spelling hiccough gives me a headache.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Can't go wrong with the Old Testament, amirite guise?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Paper making and double entry accounting

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Some basic concepts of medication - clean wounds (preferably with alcohol, because it kills germs), understand how germs spread, and know the basic ideas behind vaccines. If society had known these things 1000 years ago, it would've saved billions of lives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I’d put the National Electrical Code out there. It doesn’t tell you how to do everything with electricity, like generating it, but it does give a lot of details of how to wire things safely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Is there a book called "Living off the Land for Dummies"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Never trust someone who says one thing but tries to do another, or who's inconsistent on something while saying they're not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Explain the concept of a train and tram.

load more comments
view more: β€Ή prev next β€Ί