A World of Change

This is where my senior thesis begins, and I need some feedback, and theory, to keep on running with this:


Imagine a world, plagued by natural disasters, the scope of which is beyond catastrophic; overall we are looking at global cataclysm. What would we do if we didn’t have time to rebuild before the next storm? How could we prepare ourselves?
It is scientifically accepted that the earth has gone through a number of ice ages, which would seem to portray the event as a system of cleansing. Through each of these disasters, some forms of life survived, adapting to fit their new environment, becoming stronger and smarter. Art Bell and Whitley Strieber suggest in The Coming Global Superstorm that “it is perfectly possible that there was an advanced civilization on this planet that predated our own and that many of our most ancient myths are actually devalued versions of that civilization’s own perfectly accurate but very different descriptions of the world in which it found itself and of the disaster that killed it.”
All through the world we can find myths that tell of environmental destruction, and prophesies which foresee the fall of the world, as we know it. The Iroquois Indians, of New York State, have recorded much of their history on wampum belts. One of these belts, nearly ten feet long, tells the tribes entire history, and then continues on to prophesize the future. Towards the end of the belt, a scene is depicted of humans, fish, animals, and trees upside down. This scene, Henry Niese, author of The Man Who Knew the Medicine, tells me, is depicting the natural disasters we are beginning to see today. There are many other native tribes who also share common prophesies of the “Great Purification”.
The most commonly known destruction myth is that of Noah’s Arch, however, as Bell and Strieber explain, there is a known precursor to this story. First recorded in writing by the Sumerians in 4000 BCE, the Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a man (Gilgamesh) who survives a great flood by floating on a raft. “The Mayan Popul Vuh (the sacred book of the ancient Quiche Maya of Mexico and Guatemala)” Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods explains, “associates the flood with much hail, black rain and mist, and indescribable cold.” John Bierhorst tells of another Mayan account in The Mythology of Mexico and Central America saying, “It happened that the sun was still bright and clear. Then, at midday, it got dark.” The years to follow were filled with darkness and excruciating cold.
If these, and various other myths from around the world, are a watered down account of the destruction of an advanced civilization, maybe they were trying to send warnings to future generations of “earthlings”. Perhaps early tribal societies took the information in their legends to be lessons, viewed nature with fear and wonder, and really understood the earth’s workings, and true value. Perhaps, modern man wrongly classifies these stories as coming from primitive minds; therefore believing the storms they speak of to be minimal, at best just exaggerated fantastic tales made in the mind of primitive imagination.
Observing nature can teach us a lot, but it is not until we listen that we can see the wrong in our ways. The earth is crying, and as humans, we have forgotten our duty to care for her. Instead we rape her of her resources. Modern technologies, in combination with a highly unbalanced consumer culture, are key issues today, a conquest that we (especially as Americans) pride ourselves on. However, on our quest for knowledge, we began to lose some of the realest attributes we held as humans…Survival skills. We have lost a basic understanding of the stars (both as a map, and a calendar), we have forgotten the days of hunter-gatherer and family farming, of preparing hides, and of spinning wool. It is a rarity to come across a person who can start a fire without match or lighter, but worst of all, the world over shares the illusion that money has real value.
As I watch recent events unfold, from the Tsunami in India, to Hurricane Katrina, to the Earthquake in Pakistan; I begin to question what good my typing skills of 55wpm do me in the case of a cataclysmic event blowing my house, and grocery store, away. I also begin to wonder, if there were already such major issues of getting people help, to shelter, and to keep them from becoming destructive after a Hurricane, like Katrina; how would we cope if storms like so were multiplied? It becomes hard not to imagine what the future could hold.


WHAT IF…

I would like to fantasize a world of intense weather patterns, and consider what could happen in such a situation. There are many different paths such a scenario could take. Perhaps, being ignorant to what the planet is showing us, we don’t prepare, and the government becomes useless to us, all are left to fend for themselves. In such a case, survival would probably depend on the institution of gangs (or tribes). Without a food source, people may become prone to cannibalism; we can see this on a small scale in the case of Easter Island. Perhaps fire is a commodity that needs to be protected, seeing that the people are not quite sure how to make it. How precious does a pack of matches then become, is it an article worth killing for?
On the other hand, we could imagine that we saw what was happening to the planet, and prepared ourselves (as best we could) for what was to come. The picture I paint may not be pretty; it entails a lot of destruction, and probably a lot of death (you can’t expect everyone to survive global cataclysm). However, my hypothetical story will propose one theoretical solution to earth shattering events. It is my belief that survival depends on four main points:
· Education
· Shelter
· Food
· Water
Let us envisage a time in which we as a global community have re-evaluated everything that we believe to be of true significance. What is necessary for survival? If I were going on vacation for 2 weeks right now, I would probably over-pack by 3 weeks. This is because of my obscured Western notion that I need certain items. What if we, knowing we could never rebuild ourselves as we were at the height of our glory, built a system of safe-spots, and distribution centers, as well as structurally sound schools and greenhouses before we lost the technology to build at all? Suppose we have figured out a way to harness some energy from the storms, using them (somewhat) to our advantage. Let us postulate that we have underground emergency shelters, to weather the storm in, but afterwards resort to quick, temporary housing, until the next storm comes…cycling back towards primitive lifestyles. We can also conceive of underground food and water distribution centers. Perhaps we collect rainwater from the storms, and as it makes it’s way into our underground storage bin, it goes through a filtration system; perhaps we have figured out how to use wetlands as natural filtration system. Conceivably, we also store materials for our quick shelters underground (that is unless we construct them from the piles of debris that would lie about the ground). So, how do we find these underground havens of food, shelter, and water? A system of internationally known symbols could be set up to indicate their use and location.
As for the schools and greenhouses, these are both an integral part of the education system, and we have already realized that unless we willingly work together as a community to educate all, for the greater good of both society and the environment, we will not survive; in turn, these spaces become important community centers.
Despite the construction of safe spots and greenhouses, and the idea of people working together as a community, it is hard not to conceive of separate communities becoming completely separate cultures over time. Taking into consideration the scope of such catastrophe, we also have to realize that communication with the rest of the world will not be easy, and may become a rarity. Structures within each culture may take different forms, according to the majority of skills the people retain in each area.
What I would like to do is visually paint a picture of this cataclysmic world, telling the story through mainly images and questions, in a simple storybook fashion. For my template (using Strieber and Bell’s theory as my premise) I will be looking at early, and tribal societies, concentrating on their myths, and structures to paint a picture of what could have happened in the past. From this analysis of what could have happened, I tell my story of what could happen. The presentation of this world comes to an exploration into the evolution of shelter under such conditions.