Skylark2076

My name is Skylark. I am a survivor. More importantly, I have been documenting events and lessons of human history for the purpose of informing future generations. Someone long ago said, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” While this is often repeated, ironically, we forget who first said it. And though civilization was made possible by symbolic communication, then accelerated by the printed word, and by web communications, we have for too long not committed our voices to a more permanent media. I wish to change this with these pages.

I live in a small community in the part of the world known as northwestern Canada. We live a simple life, growing our own foods, making our own tools and homes. Our families and friends are held close. We learned a lot about life and Nature since the global collapse of civilization in the 2020s. Its been, and continues to be, a struggle. We learned a lot about survival from local Indigenous people, Hutterites, Mennonites and hippy communes. They each had their legacy cultural wisdom. We are grateful and have tried to reciprocate.

We don’t want to see a repeat of that collapse in the future. We know there are many survivors around the world. We can talk to a few of them on Ham radio. There are rumours of still more communities of survivors. Its difficult to know how much was lost, how many people, cities, nations, or how much knowledge was lost. There may be nations that are still functional. We don’t know. But it will be many generations before the conditions leading to the collapse are likely to be repeated. So I want as many people as possible around the world to understand what happened and how to avoid a repeat.

In the early days following the collapse there was mass exodus from the large cities to the rural spaces. But most people didn’t know how to feed themselves and they perished. Even those who knew how to grow food or raise livestock didn’t have time to plant crops or acquire livestock. Very quickly, after stores were looted, farms were raided. There was no thought for the future. People were starving.

As a young boy I heard the sad news reports grow ever more desperate. For days, maybe weeks, near the end I heard terrifying shouts, gun-fire and sirens. I can’t recall the exact year or my age because so much happened so quickly and so dramatically. I remember how I felt. I can conjure up a glimpse of those feelings briefly even today.

I was lucky though. My parents had been following the events leading to the collapse and were preparing for an escape. They were both teachers and had a number of friends, many of whom who also teachers. They were resourceful and made plans together. They had farmland outside and away from the cities. Of course, as I remember, there was a lot of conflict within the group. Some went their separate ways. We didn’t see them again.

It is thanks to my parents that we younger folks could eventually continue some of our education. At least most of us from the original group could read and write and do basic math. But it isn’t until two important things happened that I was compelled to take seriously a mission to message the future with these dire warnings and practical insights. First, I had an accident. In a moment of absent-mindedness, I failed to follow proper tactics when felling a tree. I got in the way and it crushed my leg. Not only was I out of commission for a couple of months while healing, but it became increasingly clear that I was never going to be able to do the same work again. I could teach.

Second, a few years ago my son recovered a computer he found in the old village library. The library had long ago been abandoned and looted. The books were used for fire for heating when people couldn’t get dry firewood. The paper made easy kindling when it was hard to start and keep a fire going. Soon there were few books to be found anywhere. The computer seemed like a good doorstop until Brian figured out how to run it with our wind-power generator.

It was then that we realised that as a library computer, it was particularly well stocked with information from around the world. It contained knowledge in all disciplines and information about historic and current events. It was a gold mine of information! I knew my mission. I would take that information, figure our what happened to cause the collapse and write to the people of the future to make sure they didn’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

I learned that, like life itself, civilization is an ongoing experiment. It doesn’t have a specific destiny, but there are far more roads to destruction than to continuance. What survives of our past is quickly lost and overcome by the forces of Nature. We the living are the seeds of our future.