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.
Professional scientist here. I would take a table of logarithms. In a world without computers, the logarithm table and slide rule are the essential tools of how things got built. We built the Golden Gate Bridge and put a man on the moon using nothing more than log tables.
Any one person can remember the gist of the scientific method and write it down on a page. To write down a quality logarithm table you would need 500 pages.
But seriously - no religions allowed.
There will always be religion, especially if and when the civilized world ends.
A better way would be just to remind everyone that there were countless religions before and that they were all man made, corrupted and fell apart after a certain amount of time.
Remind everyone that there is no one true religion because there never was one before, there isn’t one now and there never will be be one.
But I’m afraid that as much as we’ll try … people will always be dumb enough to want to believe in fairy tales, an after life, eternal bliss / hell and that one group is better than another.
- Crafting bows to hunt. Wood selection, shaping, tillering, natural bowstring materials.
- Some edible wild plants
- Some basic farming knowledge
- Some construction/shelter repair techniques
- Algebra and concepts of calculus, and why they’re useful
- How to preserve foods
- Basic concepts of electricity’s importance and how to make it, but someone would need to explain how to go from raw material to a functional wire, find some rare earth magnets, and figure out how to make LEDs or something else worth using the electricity for.
- The scientific method
- Concepts of how to engineer/design a solution to a problem
- Troubleshooting techniques
- Some basic concepts of boat stability and construction
- Some concepts of modern psychology
- Concepts of critical thinking and rejection of groupthink
- Basic physics. Loose explanations of kinematic equations, gravity, friction, pendulums, air resistance, aerodynamics, basic concepts of rocketry and flight/parachutes/gliders
- Evaporative cooling? I could describe the concepts of modern air conditioning, but that doesn’t seem useful yet.
- I could probably work out how a windmill works, how to make a wagon, how to purify water, how to make water-tight storage.
- Germ Theory
- The Paradox of Tolerance
- How pasteurization works
- Fermentation, concepts of distillation
- Basic oral hygiene? Habits of at least rinsing sugar out of your mouth afterwards, if brushes aren’t available.
- Use of alcohol and heat as antiseptics. Suggestion to use honey in a pinch
- Basic concepts of how magnifying lenses work and why they’re important
Dont forget the basics of antibiotics.
