By RUBEN BAUER NAVEIRA*
The future is always open, and always at the mercy of the unpredictable and the imponderable – especially when it comes to the actions of men
Faced with the tragic historical moment we have reached, this article proposes that we think about the unthinkable – what our lives will be like post-nuclear war – and it is made up of five parts:
The first part, “There is no 'reality' unique to men” consists of a preliminary and necessary digression regarding the intrinsic nature of living beings, people and societies, to substantiate the other parts; the second part, “Save the dollar – or die with it”, talks about why a nuclear war in the world has become very likely today.
The third part, “Death is not just from bombs”, addresses the direct consequences of a nuclear war; the fourth part, “A setback that could last centuries or millennia” deals with indirect and long-term consequences; and finally, the fifth part, “Or together, or nothing”, discusses what we could try to do to deal with these consequences.
Or together, or nothing
Faced with the enormous difficulties and challenges, exposed to third part and fourth part of this text, what will post-nuclear war society be like? I don't know – and nobody knows. Hollywood screenwriters fantasize about all sorts of dystopias, , “Mad Max”, but for this they make it a rule that people's dark side will prevail.
We know that this side exists, and that it can prevail. But, let us take license here to proceed with a gross reductionism, and divide humanity into three main groups:
A first type of people, faced with a post-nuclear war, may simply no longer want to live. Who can judge them? Who can measure the pain of losing, suddenly and without prior warning, all your references, built throughout your entire life?
A second type of people will want to live, but based only on survival instinct, and so these people will adopt highly individualistic attitudes (the “standard Mad Max”). Again: who can judge them, for wanting and seeking to survive, if that was basically what they learned their entire lives?
There is, however, a third type of people who attribute meaning to the historical journey of humanity, the “human adventure on Earth”. People who carry within themselves a connection to the human species as a whole. Even as a minority, at least initially, these people will be able to act to reinvent life in society and, to the extent that they become successful (if at all), they will gradually be able to “win over” people from the other two groups for this collectivist perspective (“Who will cry, who will smile? Who will stay, who will leave? Because the train is arriving, it's arriving at the station, it's the seven o'clock train hours, it is the last one in the backlands”).
I know that what I am proposing seems unreasonable. Will we leave the current dystopia (yes, the current world is already a dystopia) to another dystopia countless times worse – and would it be then, from this extreme dystopia, that we would finally be able to reach some utopia? Well, Keynes once said that “it is never the inevitable that happens – it is always the unpredictable”. Or, as he sang Morrissey, "because if it's not love then it's the bomb that will bring us together".
I also know that the future is always open, and always at the mercy of the unpredictable and the imponderable – especially when it comes to the actions of men. Despite all the deluge of adversities, there are two factors in our favor: quite possibly, we will emerge from nuclear war with our infrastructure intact; and, for now, we still have some more time before the war, during which we can try to carry out some advance preparation.
I have already written in this text that it is not certain that there will be a nuclear war (the future is always open…), even though I consider it quite likely. From the bottom of my heart, I hope I'm wrong. I am driven by utopias, but no utopia is worth the price in pain and suffering that a nuclear war will exact. However, if it has to be that way, let us say goodbye to this unhappy world in which “There are times Not even the saints have the right measure of evil, and for some time now it has been young people who have fallen ill, and for some time now charm has been absent and there is rust in smiles, and only chance extends its arms to those who seek shelter and protection.”
In the post-nuclear war, as exposed to fourth part this text, capitalism will collapse (and, let's face it, this is already late). At this time, the big problem will reside in the self-preservation of identity, according to the theory of autopoiesis of Maturana and Varela (which we exhibited in the first part of this text). Both people and societies have been operating under capitalism for so long (centuries) that the “regularities in their internal correlations” in this regard are already too consolidated, and thus the process for their “reduction” will be both painful and time-consuming. update” – the inertia of change. The longer people and societies insist on trying to save a bankrupt and irrecoverable system, the more precious time will be lost to do what really matters.
And what really matters will be taking care of what will be left when capitalism has collapsed – people.
At first, people need to have their survival guaranteed – water, food, shelter. And energy (for pumping and heating water, cooking and preserving food, night lighting). And this will have to be sought in the midst of chaos.
Life in cities meets a capitalist requirement of economies of scale – bringing workers closer to the means of production. After a nuclear war, cities will be the worst place to be, not only because of the collapse of water, food and energy supplies, but because they cram thousands or even millions of people into a small space, almost all of them “in a tailspin” before of chaos.
“Time is everything that cities will not have” (Fred Reed, in an article transcribed in third part of this text). No restoration, capitalist or otherwise, will be possible in time to help people stranded in cities. As soon as possible, these must be evacuated, with the population dispersed in areas that are as sparsely populated as possible.
Look: there is not yet a post-capitalist world. All there is is a process of transition, disorderly and chaotic, towards “something” that we don’t know what it will be, and that we don’t even intend to build intentionally – if it is built it will be in practice, in fits and starts. .
So, in terms of access to water and food, it will be necessary for people, as soon as possible, to move to where there is cultivable land, organize themselves into rural communities, dedicate themselves to subsistence community agriculture (because it will have greater productivity than traditional agriculture). strictly single-family), understand each other regarding access to and use of available local water sources, and learn to live in a community (for example, the community taking care of children and the elderly, or even eating community meals, to save firewood and minimizing food waste).
What would the land issue, Brazil's eternal open wound, be like? It wouldn't be, and it would be resolved that way. A large landowner, to maintain himself as such, needs employees, foremen or whatever. These people will no longer “show up for work”, because everyone will take care of their family’s survival – just like everyone else. Let's say this farmer is a cattle rancher. Who will he sell his cattle to? And, even if he doesn't raise it on feed (he would no longer be able to buy it) but rather lets it out on pasture, who is going to round up the cattle at the end of the day?
Ultimately, there will no longer be any point in landowners clinging to their land (of course, it is expected that there will be respect for the houses in which they live with their families – the assumption is that there is enough land for everyone). Finally, there will be no more property registry offices either – except as suppliers of old paper for lighting fires.
Parenthesis: “reactionary” is someone who reacts against any change. For the reactionaries in automatism, better draw: I am not proposing to end private property; What will inexorably put an end to private property will be the collapse of civilization – an immeasurable catastrophe of which I will also be a victim. All I'm proposing is that we try to deal with the collapse of civilization in a minimally orderly way, in the interests of everyone (including reactionaries), and, to anyone who wants to safeguard private property, I wish them good luck. Close parentheses.
Even if access to water and food is considered precariously, the ceiling issue can initially be mitigated by converting farm or agribusiness improvements (sheds, warehouses, etc.) into collective accommodation, until the community takes care of providing better accommodation for all.
Another parenthesis: we will not start from square one. The accumulated experience of organizations already focused on providing land for planting to those who do not have one (MST) or housing to those who do not have one (MTST) will prove to be of great value. Close parentheses.
All of this so far is the “least difficult” part of the problem. The hardest part will be maintaining essential services, especially with regard to energy supply. And let it be clear that, by “essential services”, we are not talking about services essential to the continuity of the economy (which will no longer exist, as we saw earlier). fourth part of this text) and rather only those services essential to people's survival: electricity, cooking gas, water and basic sanitation, road freight transport, gas stations on the roads (even if only for diesel: “the suppression of transport can cause more deaths than bombs” – again Fred Reed), and a minimum of communications to provide guidance to people, and also so that communities do not become isolated and can perceive themselves as parts of a larger social whole.
The workers required to keep these services afloat are not necessarily the same employees of the companies that provided such services before the war – it is whoever can do it, including retirees, former employees, people who had migrated to other areas of activity or even lay people. to be trained for some basic functions. The crucial point is: who takes care of these people's families, so that they can volunteer to maintain these essential services aimed at everyone's survival? Ideally (although unlikely) this task should be supported by what remains of the State; otherwise, by the communities, who will need to welcome and care for these family members so that those who will provide essential services can feel safe to do so.
On the premise of “intact infrastructure”, that is, that the physical resources remain given, what is missing is the social structuring to put them into operation and at the service of everyone. Would everything that was postulated be, at least theoretically, feasible? Yes. However, it will be unlikely. Because the “hardest of all” will not be in the world outside people, but within them – breaking with the inertia of change. Realizing that the world did not end (what ended was that world from before) and that, if we continue to be alive, it is up to us to live our lives in this new, open world, to be built by everyone together.
As for capitalism, can it one day be restored? In the short term, obviously not. In the long term, yes, it would be possible – but, in the long term, societies will certainly have realized that they can live better (much better) without capitalism than with it.
And regarding the issue of knowledge, and the magnitude of the setback due to the loss of it (which was detailed in fourth part of this text): since civilization as we know it will collapse, all hope lies in the possibility – which is not certain – that some new civilization may succeed it. The knowledge to be held (and passed on to future generations) by this new civilization will be as greater as our capacity to preserve and put into use the largest possible portions of current knowledge, knowing what losses (thus, civilizational setback) there will be.
There is no chance of something like this happening in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps parts of Russia will escape – if the country's missile defenses can shoot down the overwhelming majority of American missiles. Maybe India and Pakistan – if they don't seize the opportunity to destroy each other. The best chance for the planet will be the survival of South America and Africa. If – if – they manage to somehow survive the civilizational collapse, with luck it will be possible, over time, to even rescue some of the remnants of knowledge remaining in Europe, the United States, China, Japan.
It is imperative to safeguard the largest possible volume of knowledge records from the outset (printer toner available). But it will also be extremely important to create a new web for the circulation and renewal of knowledge – which is what keeps knowledge alive (saved knowledge records will be of no use if they are not accessed by people capable of understanding them).
In this sense, it will possibly be as or more fruitful to take care of basic knowledge (people's ability to grasp knowledge – in a word: education) as applied knowledge (the practical use of knowledge). As has already been said (to fourth part of this text), children cannot be left without studying, under penalty of precariousness of their cognitive abilities. If it is not possible to keep the established schools in operation (let us remember, teachers will also be focused on taking care of the survival of their families), the community must take on the task. To this end, teaching plans and lesson plans for each subject for each academic year will be essential documents. Every person with knowledge that can be used to educate children and young people (and even adults) must be recruited. In an exchange economy (barter), this knowledge must be appreciated.
In order for the new society to be created to recover minimum civilizational levels, it will be necessary for professionals such as engineers to be able to once again perform complex calculations, as they routinely do today using calculators and spreadsheets that will no longer exist. An old tool, now forgotten but still on sale, which until the 1970s was used on a large scale as a kind of “pre-electronic calculator” was the slide rule (see also here ou here).
This tool will need to be rehabilitated (as well as the trigonometric, logarithmic, radiciation and other tables, for those who do not have access to a slide rule). Furthermore, these engineers will need to come to understand the mathematical principles behind their calculations, just as programmers will need to go “back” and reacquire the ability to program using machine languages.
With regard to what remains of computers and the internet, priority should be given to restoring the supply of electrical energy to existing specialized supercomputers (and may God forbid them from an electromagnetic pulse, an impact we discussed in third part of this text), while efforts should be made to “insulate” geographic areas in which it is possible to establish substitutes for the current internet that once again operate as fragments of it, and that can gradually become interconnected, forming larger networks.
What promotes not only the conservation of knowledge but its evolution, that is, what makes knowledge something alive in itself, is the gigantic (worldwide) web of human interrelationships and interdependencies, through which knowledge circulates and is renew. With a nuclear war the current web will break and be lost forever. All we can do is start weaving a new web. If we turn out to be really good at this, it will still take decades – with luck, perhaps our grandchildren's grandchildren will be able to enjoy our current standard of living again. In short: we will not do this by ourselves. It will be for future generations. It will be for the human species.
But, either that will be it, or humanity will lose knowledge as the primordial factor of production, its civilizational engine. If the factor of production returns to land, we will have gone back millennia – and it will then take millennia before we return. If it becomes the capital again, it will be centuries. For it to be “only” decades, only if we are able to weave a new web of knowledge.
The value that men attribute to land and capital is by no means absolute and immutable. What is it that land and capital have in common, and that they do not have in common with knowledge? Answer: both land and capital are outside people, while knowledge is inside them. According to the theory of autopoiesis, everything that is outside people does not constitute them, is not part of their identity, it is just an environment external to them, and will therefore only be referenced internally by people as a way for each of them to flow (live) in their environment ( “couple” to it).
We saw that, over time, this constitutes a common culture that stabilizes, with tradition taking on enormous weight (an inertia) – taking the form of a collective identity. However, we have also seen that such internal references can be redefined depending on the need to update identities – and this is exactly what will happen after a nuclear war.
It may take some time, but people will eventually feel the pain, internally, of realizing that it was their dysfunctional identities that led them to war, and all the (external) pain resulting from it. Humanity as a whole will then be able to renounce tradition and embrace a new collective identity.
Since all people will be experiencing, at the same time, the hardships of survival, they will be able to identify with each other, in an unprecedented way, on a planetary scale. It will then be possible for us to reach, also in an unprecedented way, a collective consciousness of humanity. Only in this way can land become a community and money be stripped of its charm as a passport for accumulation, ostentation, consumption and the pursuit of pleasure, and returned to its original condition as a means of exchange.
There will be no middle ground: either we will be able to take the evolutionary leap of constituting a collective consciousness of humanity as a whole, or we will ruin, and dishonor, the entire evolutionary trajectory of humanity so far – we will dishonor every drop of blood spilled and every scream of pain so that we could leave the caves and get to where we are.
So far, we have discussed those that could constitute general guidelines for a social reconstruction effort in the post-nuclear war period. Based on them, prior planning work – while we still have time for it – could address (among many other things): (i) psychic support for people in the process of their individual passages to the new reality; (ii) practical guidelines for them to start operating in this new reality; (iii) previous actions to mitigate the main infrastructure bottlenecks; (iv) Previous actions to preserve critical knowledge records; etc.
But this is all just in my head. A consistent, structured, methodological planning work would reach a more robust result, validating some of the points I listed, discarding others and adding others, but mainly detailing them all.
Among the various planning techniques, I consider scenario planning to be appropriate for this challenge. In a simplified way, that's what I did; In fact, that description I made (in fourth part of this text) of a post-nuclear war Brazil is the scenario that I believe will come to pass, and not what will actually happen, because neither I nor anyone else knows (as already said here, the future is always open): “What will be what will it be? That all warnings will not prevent (…) and all destinies will meet, and even the Eternal Father who has never been there, looking at that hell will bless, what has no government and never will.”
In a scenario planning exercise, several possible future scenarios are envisioned and detailed (for example: with or without an electromagnetic pulse; with mild or intense nuclear winter; etc.). One of these scenarios is selected as the most plausible (reference scenario), and the actions to be adopted for it are detailed in depth (without prejudice to actions being also outlined for the other possible scenarios).
For such prior planning, it will be important to gather a critical mass of thinking minds, because this will be a work of elucubration, which should not be handled by one or a few people. Since we will be dealing with something absolutely new, the difference between a brilliant or stupid idea can be down to a minute detail, so each idea must be subjected to the scrutiny of a group. The requirements to join this group would be: systemic thinking, creativity, thinking “outside the box”, teamwork – that is, nothing that requires any specific academic or formal training.
Another requirement will be to be imbued with the purpose of overcoming capitalism to build a society focused on the fullness of human life (we will detail it later). It also helps a person to have life wisdom, to know human nature and to be interested in understanding Brazil. Naturally, it will be important that methodologies for collective consensus building are used (please, don't bring these people together around a table for that outdated and unproductive practice called “meeting”).
The methodology that I see as most suitable is that of David Bohm's Dialogue Groups (according to which, as a methodological requirement, the group size must be forty people), but there are others, such as Harrison's Open Space Technique Owen or Appreciative Inquiry by David Cooperrider.
Could the Brazilian State take charge of this prior planning? In theory, of course yes – basically, this would be a civil defense activity, which is already a reality in several other countries: in Russia, from October 04th to 07th, 2016, the government shut down the country for four consecutive days, when forty million people were trained to each go to their respective nuclear shelter and how to stay there for a long time; Scandinavian countries have been producing and distributing booklets and other materials with guidance on how to act in the event of a nuclear war, which directly or indirectly hits the country, for decades; in Switzerland, since the end of the XNUMXth century the army has been abolished,[I] and practically in every residence there is a shelter as well as weapons so that the population can resist a possible invasion (and, of course, everyone receives training).
I do not believe, however, that the Brazilian State can be prepared to take on such a task. Again, the autopoiesis: What is the historical vocation (i.e., identity) of the Brazilian State, since colonial times? Serving the powerful, serving common people (a vocation that has been vigorously revived in the recent period from 2016 to 2022). And, what is the vocation of the current government? Reconcile with capitalism, without ever confronting it. Would the Brazilian State then spend resources on a hypothetical situation, which no one wants to happen? Would the Brazilian State plan for a future in which it itself will most likely disappear? Would the Brazilian State guide people to act against the interests it serves (such as occupying land)? Very unlikely.
But, if such approval were possible, the State could conceive actions beyond the capacity of anyone else. For example, implementing a universal income for all people (see the article by Yanis Varoufakis regarding[ii]), and thus lay the rudiments for an exchange economy.
Naturally, the effort to create a new world does not end with the mere survival of people. At least three successively distinct phases can be envisaged; first: survival (water, food, shelter, energy; taking months to complete); second: subsistence (health, clothing, more effective care for children and the elderly, social norms respected by all, arbitration bodies to resolve conflicts; which will take years to complete); and third: enjoyment of life (in Marxist jargon called “emancipation”; taking decades).
Once everyone's subsistence is assured, there is no reason why societies cannot organize themselves so that people can use their free time to: realize their potential; express your innate gifts; contemplate nature; appreciate or create art; play sports or play; coexist with other people; have sex in a detoxified way[iii] and without objectifying others or yourself; follow a path of spirituality; fall in love; go to therapy; self-knowledge (in addition to engaging in activities aimed at the common good, such as reforesting the planet). As Caetano Veloso sang, “People It’s meant to shine.”
Could this be communism? Yes and no. Yes, because there would be no more capitalist accumulation, nor the inequality it generated, nor exploitation of man by man. But no, because communism as a theoretical construction has nothing to do with what we envision here (to begin with, Marx envisioned communism as a consequence of the “advancement of the productive forces”, while here we are conjecturing about a brutal regression of them).
Well, it's not that, because synchronicity, one has just come out article about the thought of the Italian philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi, who perfectly clarifies this paradox? Check it out: “Bifo uses the word communism as a provisional conceptual tool, it does not refer to communism as an ideological configuration, a systematic project of transformation nor does it refer to any political program. None of that. For Bifo, communism today means eradicating the superstition of accumulation and wage labor. It means egalitarianism and emancipation of social time. Techno-automatism requires less and less work and yet generates a wave of fear, misery and violence. This paradox is based precisely on salary superstition. We have become accustomed to thinking that our survival is only possible if we exchange work for money, as if wage labor were a law of nature. And it isn't. To say 'communism' is to use the word to refer to a meme that needs to be created, designed and put to work in the post-apocalyptic scenario. […] what really changes the rules of the game are unpredictable events. Thought is discarded as ballast in the age of communication and speed. It seems ineffective. Ornamental. […] But it is the unpredictable that is worrying. So let's not stop thinking, because the unpredictable may soon require thinking, and that is our job. Thinking about times of apocalyptic trauma. Capitalism is not a given of nature. It seems natural, due to our inability to imagine anything beyond it. We can't seem to imagine how beautiful life can be. Greed, conformity, cynicism, and ignorance are frustrating and diminishing our ability to experience imagination. This is why Bifo Berardi suggests that we prepare our minds for the second coming [of communism].”
This is what I call advance planning (because we still have time to take advantage of the web of existing knowledge, and on the premise that, in these parts, we will emerge from the disaster with at least our physical infrastructure intact), IF it is to be done, Will it be enough? Obviously not. Given the magnitude of the civilizational collapse and the resulting chaos, all this effort may, in practice, not make any difference. But, on the other hand, it could be the “little push” that will make all the difference.
We simply have no way of knowing. But, given what is at stake, it is crucial that something is done, even if it ends up being for nothing if war doesn't come (and it won't be for nothing, especially because some other form of collapse could happen as the world becomes became chronically unstable). I use the words of Margaret Mead: “never doubt that a small group of conscious and committed people can change the world; in fact, this is the only thing that has ever happened.” Two things are up to us: fighting the good fight (doing everything we can with our hearts), and having faith (“Tomorrow is all hope; no matter how small it may seem, it exists and is meant to thrive”).
I mentioned the advantages (and the unlikelihood) of the Brazilian State taking on this undertaking, but there is nothing to stop one or more private entities from doing so. Personally, I am going through an extremely difficult stage in my life, but I am making myself available by leaving my email address for contact: famac@famac.ind.br (which is also my pix key, any help will be welcome).
I dedicated this text to elucidating and proposing possibilities for collective action in the face of a post-nuclear war. But I would not like to end it without addressing possibilities for individual action, on the part of each person. I am not referring here to practical measures; for them, you can search for “survivalism” on the internet, there is a whole world of information out there (with its own jargon, for example, someone who stores food for long periods is called a “food preparer”).
Furthermore, survivalism is generally focused on the survival of individuals, whereas I hope I have made it clear that any survival in a post-nuclear world will have to be, even more than a survival of communities, a survival of society, even if under some circumstances. new form – either together, or nothing.
To those who endured reaching the end of this text, I want to say that I am very sorry for the discomfort caused by approaching such a distressing topic as this. And I condense my final guidelines into a single word – reconnect:
Reconnect with Nature: in this case it means reconnecting with “Mother Earth” literally, that is, with the soil, which is the ultimate provider of our subsistence. If a nuclear war comes, the worst place to be is crowded together with thousands/millions of other people, all of them going on a rampage at the same time. Immediately try to sketch out some “escape” route or itinerary towards somewhere inland, preferably with a low population density.
Reconnect with your loved ones: the hardships of a critical life condition can be better faced if you have solid emotional ties with those who are most valuable to you. If, for whatever reason in life, you end up moving away from people who are dear to you, look for them and open up to them in a complete and honest way, and try to get things right. The less alone, the better: reconcile, because now is the time (also because, if you or they end up leaving, you won't carry the weight of having been separated from them in life).
Reconnect with yourself: for each person, the meaning of their life comes from what they do with the life they have – which obscures the fact that the ultimate meaning of everyone's life is simply to be alive. If a nuclear war occurs, things we are used to such as accumulating, displaying, consuming or seeking pleasure will become impractical. Be open to the fact that, because you continue to be alive, you will be able to find new meanings for your life – for what you will do with the life you will continue to have.
Eventually, such new meanings could be much more collectivist than individualist (with the collectivity focused on the well-being of each of its individuals) – why not? Of course, something like this has yet to be built, so couldn't the meaning of each person's life become how to contribute to the construction of this new world, focused on the common good? Being open will be the first and most important step.
Peace in the world (and the avoidance of nuclear war) are certainly not within your reach, but your peace with Nature, with others and with yourself is – rediscover yourself.[iv]
*Ruben Bauer Naveira é activist-pacifist. Author of the book A new utopia for Brazil: Three guides to get out of chaos (available here).
Notes
[I] Extinct as an institution in itself; it was actually expanded to cover the entire population, mobilized only in the event of war.
[ii] Varoufakis' proposal is based on the intensive use of information technology (IT) which, as we have seen, will be compromised if not rendered unfeasible after a nuclear war. Even so, the State has the means like no other to design and implement a universal basic income.
[iii] Human sexuality has been increasingly intoxicated by a multiplicity of factors that intertwine in a very complex way. In addition to those factors that are more obvious and intrinsic to the patriarchal form of society, such as gender violence, machismo, misogyny, homo- and transphobia, etc., there are those that are not so obvious, such as the psychic and even neurophysiological consequences of exposure. to pornography, or the inculcation of moral standards of sexuality to the masses in a domestication of libidinal desires to curb, together with sexual drives, the libertarian drives for social transformations, succeeding in their place a conditioning to seek to “win” within the rules of the game of capitalism (see in this regard ALTHUSSER, Louis P. State Ideological Apparatuses. Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 1998 and MARCUSE, Herbert. Eros and Civilization. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1972), or even the induction of impulsive consumption through the manipulation of unconscious sexuality by the advertising industry (see in this regard KEY, Wilson B. The Age of Manipulation. São Paulo: Scritta, 1993). There are still other factors, subtle and not obvious (see, for example, the thought of Clara Serra or that of Franco “Bifo” Berardi).
[iv] I thank José Antonio Sales de Melo for his review of the five parts of this text.
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