Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

I came across this interesting blog post today...

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/13...pse-witho.html

Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition


Posted by Cory Doctorow, July 13, 2008 5:53 AM | permalink

WorldChanging's Alex Steffen and I sat down last week
for a cup of coffee and got to talking about
post-apocalyptic life. I noticed that while there's a whole
ton of stories -- and people who emulate them -- about
heavily armed survivalists bravely holding off the twilight
of civilization after the Big One, there are damned few
stories about super-networked post-apocalyptic Peace
Corps who respond to the Great Fall by figuring out how
to put it all back together. I even came up with a name
for it: the Outquisition; the opposite of the Inquisition --
missionaries who come to your town to remind you of
how awesome it can all be, leave behind a bunch of rad,
life-improving systems and tools, and generally get on
with the business of being happy, well-fed and peaceful.

Alex wrote up a great post about this and 24 hours later,
some WorldChanging readers created Outquisition.org.
I'm not sure what they'll do there, but in my dreams,
they're off building a non-secret society of
emergency-preparedness Nice People who think that the
response to catastrophe isn't lifeboat rules and militias,
but humanitarian aid and kick-ass tools.

http://craphound.com/images/outquisitionbanner.jpg

What would it be like, we wondered, if
folks who knew tools and innovation left
the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the
dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns
and climate-smacked farm communities and
started helping the locals get the tools they
needed. We imagined that it would need an
almost missionary fervor, something like the
Inquisition (which largely destroyed knowledge)
in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory
promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition.

Imagine these folks like this passing out free
textbooks, running holistic programs for kids,
creating local knowledge management systems,
launching microfinance projects, mobilebanking
and complementary currencies. Helping rural
landowners apply climate foresight and farm
biodiversity. Building cheap, smart, quality
housing for displaced people (not to mention
better refugee camps), or an Open Architecture
Network for cheap informal rehabs of run-down
suburban housing. Hacking together DIY
windmills and ad hoc smart grids,
communication systems, water treatment
systems -- and getting really good atadaptive
reuses of outdated infrastructure. In other
words, these folks would be redistributing the
future at a furious clip.

Link to Alex's post, Link to Outquisition homepage (Thanks, Alex!)

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

Never gonna happen - they will find out how peaceful things arethe second they go down to the hood to spread love and joy. Why they can start today with New Orleans or any other slum near them. Just roll up their sleeves and fix the problems then leave for the next challenge.

:hahaha::hahaha::hahaha: Obviously utopian liberals
JMHO of course

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

^I think they were talking about forgetting about cities (that would probably be beyond fixable) and going out into the suburbs and rural areas.

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

I agree, the title is "Post-apocalypse", so I would think the cities would be waste lands at that time. I think they're talking about the survivors trying to rebuild a saner world.

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

Cultures collapse when the people get tired of being told what to do by self-styled experts and they refuse to cooperate or even listen. They forget their heritage, their history, and their language. That is why it's called a dark age. Wandering mystics are tolerated but not taken seriously. Monasteries preserve knowledge during dark ages, waiting until the people have regrouped and are ready to relearn the old wisdom.

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

I don't doubt that you'd be fine mtnman...but i really don't think you can speak for everyone, now can you?

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

I think what we are trying to point out is that once the masses start their exodous out of the city they are going to find resistence and that they are mostly not welcome in the countryside. thus love and peace and blissville reconstruction can't happen alongside the anarchy that will also be present, unless it springs from within the native locals group :bear_wub:
It's a nice idea but thats about all - there are too many idiots and a**holes and mean people to think it will achive much success.

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

Doctorow's young adult novel 'Little Brother' is acclaimed:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/12/nei...doctorows.html

Cory Doctorow just sent out the following note:
Neil Gaiman gave me an unexpected Christmas present this year -- a stellar review of my forthcoming novel Little Brother (a YA novel that pits hacker kids in San Francisco against the DHS in a bid to restore the Bill of Rights to America) on his blog. He has a few quibbles with some of the plot elements, but closes with this:
"I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year, and I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can."

"Because I think it'll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won't be the same after they've read it. Maybe they'll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it'll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they'll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they'll want to open their computer and see what's in there. I don't know. It made me want to be 13 again right now and reading it for the first time, and then go out and make the world better or stranger or odder. It's a wonderful, important book, in a way that renders its flaws pretty much meaningless.

I agree. I read a draft of Little Brother earlier this year and loved it. The title, in case it's not obvious, is a takeoff on George Orwell's "Big Brother" from 1984. The novel highlights the dangers of the surveillance society we're now living in when it is kicked into high gear by threats of terrorism. It's a lovely book, a good story, but also profoundly educational.

When I read this book, I couldn't help but think of a now mostly-forgotten Victorian novelist, Captain Marryat, a former British Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars. (He made captain just as peace broke out.) Marryat wrote a number of young adult novels. One of these, Masterman Ready, could be characterized as the complete moral and practical guide to surviving a shipwreck. As much a tutorial as a novel, it gives practical advice on how to build shelters and a fish pond, as well as how to take adversity in stride.

Like young victorians preparing for an imagined shipwreck under the tutelage of Masterman Ready, Little Brother provides all the practical advice you'd need if you were a hacker teen faced with one of your buddies being hauled off to jail by over-zealous homeland security. Maybe it won't actually happen that way, but learning how to think your way through the problem in an imagined crisis is a fabulous way to learn. Even if you're not a young adult.

As Neil Gaiman also wrote in his review:
Cory is one of the Explainers. The people who see what's going on, or what they perceive to be going on, and then turn around and tell everyone else, and once you've heard it their way you can't ever see it the old way again.

Read this book. You'll learn a great deal about computer security, surveillance and how to counter it, and the risk of trading off freedom for "security." And you'll have fun doing it.

�Tim O�Reilly, founder and CEO of O�Reilly Media on Little Brother



Synopsis:

Marcus, a.k.a �w1n5t0n,� is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works�and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school�s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they�re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

This assumes these missionaries aren't slaughtered and eaten first.

One thing will never change: This sort of empowerment will be seen as a threat to the local tyrannical warlord. He'd rather see 100 children die of cholera than have any of the serfs start think his leadership isn't needed.

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

Though I think there will be a rough transition, mainly because government will get in the way of natural human cooperation, since so many sociopaths have accumulated power, I think after those with no clue how to be productive settle down or die off, then things will be much better.

There were whole convoys of volunteers who FEMA kept out who came to help New Orleans.

Some think food comes from micky dee's or maybe a grocery store. Some will be coming off hard drugs the first couple of weeks if there is a sudden crash. A slow fall will have less of that kind of problem, because those are the rabid dogs I want to be able to protect my home from. Then later, any who try to set up as warlords.

We had the same problem at our national beginning. Spoiled lordlings who had to be told 'those who do not work will not eat'.

But after that settles out, then I think we can create very nice lives out of the ruins of the homeland of the pet rock. People thinking what will help now is good. You can live ok on your homestead, but if I could read that site and put together other community useful things besides the extra non hybrid garden seed I already have .... well, a community is a nicer place to live than a homestead for many reasons. One is the community keeping out warlords. Another is social life. I love live music, for example. I could use a lot less power, grow most of my food, but defending against big gangs or having a nearby bar or restaurant with music, that would make life sweeter.

Re: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition
 

"Put it all back together?"

"Textbooks?"

You mean like the kind I was forced to read in school?

"Holistic programs for kids" sounds like Hillary Clinton.

Survivors of the kind of collapse they envision are likely to be ornery folk . . .