Christmas Eve 2050
by Jason GodeskyJohn Michael Greer recently posted a short story, “Christmas Eve 2050,” noting, “the tools of narrative fiction have enormous value for putting facts in context.” I agree; that’s part of the reason we’ve been working on the Fifth World, and I think that Greer’s story is spot-on as a description of one segment of the population. It’s in a similar vein as Carolyn Baker’s “Journal from the Future: Middle-America, 2020 A.D., A Story That Could Come True.” I’d like to offer a story of my own, about a very different part of the population in that same world….
“The sun is dying!”
The sun was beginning to dip down from its zenith, but everyone in the hunting party knew the deeper truth in the hunt-leader’s cry. Since the Midsummer Festival, the sun’s strength had begun to fade; it had retired earlier and earlier each night, as the days grew shorter. Today was the day it all depended on—the day that would determine the fate of the world. Today, the sun would die, and as Tom gripped his bow, he knew that it had fallen to him to save the world….
Their quarry lay ahead; a herd of elephants on the open plains. Was it a zoo, or some private ranch owned by a hunter with a taste for the exotic, where their ancestors had once lived? No matter. Like the horses the hunters rode, the elephants, too, had an exciting story. Every hunter had a close relationship with his horse; Tom and Nageh had been inseperable since he was a child. The elders told him how the horses had emerged out of this very land, but then moved to the land of the Foolish Ancestors, who imprisoned them, and brought the horses with them when they came to this land. When the horses escaped their prisons, they found themselves back in their homeland, and profligated to fill the land once again. So, too, the elders said, did a cousin of the elephant once live in this land, only hairier, with bigger tusks; and that is why the few elephants that escaped turn so quickly into the multitudinous herds that the tribe now hunted for food, shelter, clothing, tools, and all the other necessities of life.
On a normal day, they might just as easily hunt buffalo, or even smaller game like voles or mice, but this was no ordinary day. This was the day the sun would die.
The horses caught up with the elephants, and the hunters readied their bows. The hunt leader had a gun, but there were strict taboos against using guns to hunt. The gun was just on the off chance they ran across townfolk. Townfolk are violent, and often carry guns; the tribe kept a few firearms on hand just for that occasion. Tom had never seen townfolk, but apparently run-ins with them had once been more common. The elders told him that the land had once been a prairie, where the townfolk grew wheat and corn. Tom could hardly imagine such a monotonous landscape; the land he knew was an arid grassland. When the crops failed, the towns disintegrated; most townfolk moved off into cities or bigger towns, closer to the coasts. The inner expanse of North America became largely deserted.
Largely—not all left. Some stayed, and began growing gardens to feed themselves. As the crops failed, the gardens became bigger. The elders called it “permaculture,” and apparently its methods were quite spectacular to townfolk. Tom could hardly understand that—isn’t it obvious that when you tend a garden, you should place together different plants that like each other and help each other? It just seemed like common sense.
The bulls of the elephant herd circled the young; it did not require any vocal coordination, the hunters simply knew to concentrate their fire on the sickly old woman on the edge of the herd. It was nearly a unified twang as a dozen poisoned arrows scratched the elephant hide. Tom couched his obsidian-tipped lance, and charged….
The herd put up only a mild fight before abandoning their comrade. They knew her time had come, and did not begrudge the predators their meal. Tom leapt from his horse’s back, and dipped the thumb of his right hand in the fresh blood of his kill, and used it to make the sign of a cross on his forehead. “Thank you for your sacrifice, Lady Elephant,” Tom prayed, “and praise to our Lord, Jesus Christ, whose blood shows us the path of sacrifice.”
Tom felt the hunt-leader’s hand on his shoulder. “Well done, Tom,” he grinned. “You have saved the world, and become a man. Come, let’s prepare our sister so her sacrifice is not in vain.”
The hunters took the wooden poles from their horses, and assembled them quickly into a frame underneath the elephant’s body. All together, they lifted it up to fix the wheel in place, and harnessed their horses to pull it back to the camp. “Haste, brothers,” the hunt-leader called, “the sun is dying!”
By the time the hunting party returned to the village, it was nearly evening. The fires were all lit, and Tom was seized by the smell of all the baking foods that had been gathered while they had hunted the elephants. Once, a century ago, the village had been a small, rural town. Those days were long behind it. First recession, then depression, and then the end of the old ways completely had ended that way of life. There had been no one moment they could point to and say, “That’s when it happened,” of course. After the crisis in 2015, things were never entirely the same. Police took longer to respond, and then stopped responding altogether; the violent storms that destroyed the crops brought no help from the government. Eventually, people stopped paying their taxes—and no one came to collect them, as sure a sign as anyone could ask for that they were officially on their own.
They heard of places where people still clung to the old ways, barely getting by in increasingly difficult circumstances. Tom didn’t understand why they didn’t just head off into the wilderness. His life, and the life of his tribe, had always been a happy one. Why would people choose to suffer like that? Townfolk, Tom assumed, must be so violent because they’re so very unhappy, but the question that always bothered him was why they never did anything about it?
Of course, Tom reflected, it was not as if his own tribe had “decided” to move off into the wilderness—the wilderness overtook them. They had been farmers; then they became gardeners; and only in his own generation, hunters.
The minister met them as they came to the village. “Jack, thank God you’re back. We’d worried you wouldn’t find the chosen elephant in time!”
“Not I,” the hunt-leader answered. “It was Tom.”
The minister smiled at Tom. “Tom, you have saved us all. You are a man today!”
“Thank you, minister,” Tom answered graciously.
It did not take long before the elephant was butchered, the meat cooked, and the meal finally finished and served to the whole village. Tom had seen enough of these days to know the formula, so when the minister stood up, he knew what to expect. “Thomas brought us this sacrifice. Thomas, is this the one you hunted?”
Tom stood up, and addressed the village in the same formula he’d long since memorized. “We found their herd coming from the house of the sun in the east, and I recognized this one, for it had spoken to me in my dreams, saying, ‘We elephant-people live with the sun in his house, beyond the eastern horizon. I have seen him grow weak, just as I have watched you grow strong. Come, hunter, and kill me, that I may nourish the sun, and give him the strength to be born again.’ And so we hunted her across the land, and we killed her, and we brought her here that we may give thanks, sacrifice to the Son of God, and convince him to rise again.”
The minister answered: “Truly and well did this brave elephant speak, for we have all seen you grow strong, Thomas. You left here as a boy among men; you return a man.”
There was a cheer, and the feast continued until the last light of the sun was gone, and the moon had risen above the grasslands.
Then, the dancing began….
Most of the village drummed and danced mildly in support. The main focus was on the minister, whose wild dance lasted all night, calling the fire of the Holy Spirit up out of his belly, boiling up his spine until it exploded out the top of his head. It would take all night, with blood spurting out of his nose, but in that ecstatic trance, he would see visions, and speak with the sun, the light of Lord Jesus, directly, and implore him to rise again and bring light and life to the world.
The apprehension grew through the night, and so the villagers would feast and dance all the more, to remind Lord Jesus of what is good in this world, and to keep the fire—the gift of the sun—alive, in hope that the sun would return to gather his children. They always grew fearful and doubtful. What if this were the year that the sun decided it was no longer worth it—the year the sun gave up hope, and chose to die?
And then, the first light of dawn tickled the eastern horizon. There was such a loud cheer, and the minister fell right over, exhausted. The sun had been born again; Christ had risen; the world was saved.
Thomas was smiling as he sat at the feet of his mother. “Mother,” he asked.
“Yes, my fine, young hunter?” she answered, full of pride.
“Is it all a game?” Thomas asked. “I’ve never seen the sun not come back. Does the sacrifice do anything at all?”
His mother smiled. “Once, I might have told you this was all superstition. But I know better now. I think we all do. That’s the way the townfolk think. I could tell you the science I learned when I was a little girl, but that’s a fairly trivial thing. What you have here, I think … this is much more real.”
Tom relaxed against his mother’s legs, and his younger sister soon snuggled up against his side as well. He knew that his mother had secrets she would not share, but that was all right with him; he knew how the townfolk had learned many trivial things that distracted them from what was real. They did not even know they were part of the world. He was happy to know his place in it. As he felt the warmth of his family around him, he simply smiled, and watched the sun rise.
I found the clinging of estranged Christian cultural mythology being merged with shamistic practices very interesting. Do you know if Christianity started similarly? I will have to claim ignorance on that front.
Also, I certainly hope the collapse is that simple, just a return from farming
Comment by hassysmacker — 21 November 2006 @ 1:46 PM
shamanistic*
Comment by hassysmacker — 21 November 2006 @ 1:47 PM
Bravo! (I’ll be making you noseplugs from bloomed milkweed pods…)
Comment by JCamasto — 21 November 2006 @ 1:48 PM
Hassymacker, I’m glad you liked the syncretism. I’ve found it difficult to inspire people with just how syncretic and creative the solution ahead is with academic articles alone. I think the Fifth World has had more success in that, and Michael Green’s “Afterculture” is nothing short of brilliant. I wrote about the origins of Christianity in “Betraying the Son of Man.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 November 2006 @ 3:16 PM
nice work, Jason. bravo. i mean it.
can we look forward to another story, perhaps sometime soon?
Comment by Rory — 21 November 2006 @ 9:49 PM
I’m curious to know if you’ve tried showing this to someone who normally can’t get a handle on your academic articles. and - what their response was?
Comment by Aaron — 22 November 2006 @ 4:57 PM
i do not consider posts like this to be his strong point. he does a good job on stuff like the thirty thesis’s. this post is a entertaining story but to believe that neo tribalism like this would override anything previously learned so quickly is the same as people who think the bible describes how man came into being.
now if it was the year 2500 or 3000 in this article i would think it would be possible for that stuff to take over.
Comment by truekaiser — 23 November 2006 @ 4:05 PM
Thanks everyone! Aaron: No, I haven’t.
Kaiser, from the other responses I’m sure you can tell that not everyone shares your assessment of where my strengths lie, but more to the point, history provides a number of examples of far greater social change than I’ve posited here, in response to much less severe crises. Over the next 50 years, the status quo will see our oceans dead, major climate change, and the extinction of 0.7% of all species on the planet. Human societies, like ecologies and species, operate by tipping points—punctuated equilibrium. When we change, we do so very quickly. Consider the social changes from 1900 to 1950—and that was without any major crisis to adapt to.
What’s more, this is a story on civilization’s periphery. The collapse of the Great Plains is already well underway. By 2050, the Great Plains will be a desert; either people will be living in something at least recognizable to this, or people just plain won’t be living there at all. The reason I think this is plausible is precisely because it doesn’t override anything previously learned. It merely shifts the emphasis, and even that in ways that are never entirely dramatic. To think that it would take longer is, I think, simply to ignore the evidence of history.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 November 2006 @ 4:14 PM
personally i think your the one who is doing the ignoring because you like tribalism, but the simple mater of fact as times get rough people cling to what is familiar.
your basically saying here, that people with little or no knowledge of the tribal way of life will when the going gets rough jettison /everything/ they learned up to that point and adopt this way of life and be successfully at it? no that won’t happen.
what is most likely to happen is the preacher is instead of being the tribal leader, is instead a firebrand fundamentalist preacher who would go on about how the rough times they are now having are do to their sins and thus the people must repent as he tells them how.
the grandmother would instead of finding solace in your Utopian tribalism saying all she learned up to this was wrong. would instead chastise the grandchild for questioning the preacher.
also the conditions that caused the 1900-1950 changes do not exist anymore so i do not see how that can be justification for this.
Comment by truekaiser — 2 December 2006 @ 12:05 AM
Consider the social changes from 1900 to 1950—and that was without any major crisis to adapt to.
We had a world wide depression and 2 world wars during that time. Not to mention wide spread development of the electric grid, transportation, and communications by the telephone. Granted there were places that remained untouched, but still saying there was no major crisis is a stretch.
I should say, I see great plausability in your scenerio Jason. I envision something similar. Though I beleive it’ll take longer than 50 years for evangelical christianity to evolve into an earth based belief system. Those scary fire and brimestone memes will take more than a few generations to overcome. Go a few more generations out, maybe to the 2100 date in Greer’s latest post, and I could see it.
Also, the collapse of the heartland has been due primarily to sociological reasons. A combination of corporate consolidation of agriculture and the lure of mass media pulling the young people away from their small towns and to the excitement and opportunities of the coastal cities. It’s hard to say what will happen as collapse progresses. I have no doubt the first stages will be promarily economic, are it becomes clear that all the debt out there is colateralizes by empty promises. Young people will probably move back home looking for a safe place to sleep and a meal.
Of course…once the Ogalala starts to run dry things will get interesting. That will probably be the eventthat defines the tipping point where a collapse becomes pronounced in the heartland.
Comment by jan — 2 December 2006 @ 10:00 AM
Where I agree that it would take more than one generation, the mothers thoughts on the changes would be better suited to say a grandmother. (and would take generations for the elephants to populate the plains to that extent). If that grandmother were only a child in the times before, her reliance on the old religions and teachings would be mere memory. This can been seen easily in one generation even today. Parent’s change religions, or gives up religion, and the following generation is no longer taught that previous beleif.
The tribal mentality is not so far away as one would think, In many small towns, this relianace on each other and group mentality can be seen. Families are often closer together, they raise their children together and you do see a tribal or clan type of structure. This can be seen in cities also, especially within ethnic or racial groups that live in tight knit enclaves of a specific culture. Gangs today, could also be an example.
Throughout history evolution of beleifs have evolved, The fact that the Son/Sun is used here is significant, The Sun was the primary force in early aggrarian cultures. I would imagine that over time it would revert to a truely more hunter gatherer worship of the moon.
As for the mix of christianity into a tribal or earth related beleif system, one only has to look at christianity and its evolution, Judsaism is the backbone and initial starting point, from that the new beleifs were added on top, yet over time the emphasis on the old testament or the old Jewish traditions and holy days have been lessened. In the process new traditions and holidays have been added, and co-mingled with pagan or tribal holidays and beleifs as christianity spread. All one has to do is look at how things like the Pagan christmas tree, candles, Yule log, gifts, and feasts were merged into the traditions of christianity. You could take a step further and examine the Higher worship of Mary in some branches of Christianity, as an extension of previous worship of a Mother figure Goddess.
Comment by jett — 2 December 2006 @ 10:33 AM
11 comments, 2 of which are politely dissenting, in response to a viewpoint which would be instantly dismissed as crank futurism by 99% of the internet and the world. You guys aren’t as bad as freerepublic or dailykos yet, but you’re close.
Comment by Anonymous — 3 December 2006 @ 10:26 PM
This is hardly a good thread to judge by, Anonymous. Fiction will do that. You should take a look through our archives; we attract a very intelligent crowd around here, and it’s exceedingly rare for things to be so harmonious.
Then you missed the whole point of the story. These people did not become tribal out of ideology; they were driven into it not because they liked it, but because it worked. That was one of the main things I wanted to express here; tribes will not emerge out of ideological conviction, but out of practical necessity. What we face is a matter of evolution, not revolution.
Pick a small town at random, and it’s not likely to survive. But what will be left throughout the midwest will not be the “abo-trekkers” of today, but the descendants of those towns that did survive. They have a tight-knit community; they have farms, and just as often, personal gardens. When times get tough, they’re the most likely to adopt increasingly horticultural/permacultural techniques in response, even if they don’t use a term like that to describe it. They’re the most likely to be hunters, too.
No, I’m saying they’ll continue with what they know—all that will change is the emphasis they place on X, rather than Y. When the fields aren’t doing well, they’ll spend more time on their gardens, and they might start hunting more. Most won’t, but some will, and this story isn’t about the most that won’t, because by 2050, they’re already dead. They’re not jettisoning anything.
Isn’t that what he is? Evangelical Christianity is incredibly fickle; even in relatively static times, it reinvents itself completely with each new generation. Religion’s role is primarily adaptive—it relates us to our way of life in important ways. This is rarely understood directly by the priests involved, of course, but they are moved by that “invisible hand” nonetheless. With fields failing and all the food coming from hunting and gardening, a mythology of dominating nature becomes patently absurd. The preacher couldn’t stand up and preach that, he’d be laughed right off the pulpit, because the everyday life of every one of his congregation betrays the very notion. There are animistic tendencies already latent in Christianity; all that’s needed is the pressure to need them. As for the rate of change, as I said, evangelical Christianity is a very fickle form.
I’ve never known any of these Bible-believing, small-town folk to be that blindly obedient. And wouldn’t her conviction that everything she used to know was wrong fit in with the preacher telling them all about how this is punishment for their sins?
It shows how we’ve seen periods of such rapid change, and since the process of collapse in our case will make the forces pushing it along stronger in a positive feedback loop, I think we can expect accelerating change, speeding up to a period of simply unprecedented social change—enough to make the rate of change from 1900-1950 seem slow by comparison.
That should tell you just how high I’m placing the bar for what constitutes a “crisis.” The World Wars and the Depression, well, that’s just the cost of doing civilized business, no?
I think the division of sociological and economic reasons are primarly artificial. They’re just differing facets of the same underlying system.
If it does, it will be the most remarkable period of theological stability in the history of evangelical Christianity. This is a group that completely reinvents itself every 20 years or so. The evangelicals of 20 years ago cared little about homosexuality, but were very concerned with dancing. Today, they’re “kissing dating goodbye.” Even normally static religions change drastically in the kind of social millieu we face over the next several decades—how can we expect such a fickle group to remain unchanging under those circumstances?
I did mention the horses, didn’t I? Richard Manning includes this in Against the Grain:
That was because the horse was returning to its original habitat. Likewise, the North American plains were once home to the mammoth, a fairly close relative of the elephant. With the depopulation of the continent’s interior already underway, and the unavoidable escape of some specimens from zoos, circuses, and private ranches, I think we’ll see a similar boom for elephants as we once saw for horses. For horses, it took less than 80 years to fill Argentina; to think that elephants could fill up the plains in 50 years is certainly conceivable.
I guess I didn’t express that very well, either; this is not a new religion. As far as they’re concerned, this is what Christianity has always been, just like every generation of evangelicals comes up with a completely new interpretation of Christianity and claims it’s the only interpretation they’ve ever had. And the elements are already there in Christianity, waiting to be pulled out for something like this—see “A Very Different Bible.”
Exactly—and isn’t that precisely what we should expect? Humans are tribal animals; where we have no tribes, we create them.
There’s a long tradition in Christianity of associating “the Son” with “the Sun” (and it isn’t even a pun in Greek or Latin), such as the Apollonian depictions of Christ in the Roman catacombs, or Constantine’s vision at Milan Bridge of the chi-rho in the sun. Sun worship isn’t just an agrarian thing, though (though it’s big with them, as well). Hunter-gatherers are animists, and typically revere the moon no more or less than the sun. Sun worhsip is fairly well known among foragers, too.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 December 2006 @ 1:07 PM
I don’t see elephants escaping as inevitable, at least not in the numbers to populate a big part of a continent in 50 years.
The elephants in the zoos, circuses, and private ranches will be hunted down in the crisis before they have a chance to reproduce. We really have a very big population, elephants have very little chance
Comment by _Gi — 4 December 2006 @ 1:47 PM
The numbers needed would be something on the order of a few dozen, at best. Some of the private ranches have two to three times that many on just one ranch. The Spaniards left behind far fewer horses in Argentina than we have elephants now.
As for hunting, as noted elsewhere, that’s an option most people don’t think of. When economy goes bad, hunting declines.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 December 2006 @ 2:08 PM
[quote]As for hunting, as noted elsewhere, that’s an option most people don’t think of. When economy goes bad, hunting [i]declines[i]. [/quote]
Here’s evidence for the declining numbers of hunters:
[url]http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=HUNTERS-01-22-04&cat=AN[/url]
[url]http://www.manchesterjournal.com/localnews/ci_4694984[/url]
[url]http://www.examiner.com/a-394307~Trends_indicate_number_of_younger_hunters_on_the_decline.html[/url]
[url]http://www.srd.gov.ab.ca/fw/hunting/numberhunters.html[/url]
Note that it’s very much tied to age and early hunting experiences. I’m starting to think that it really is probable that a lot of people in the States today wouldn’t turn to hunting and foraging wild foods; which, to be honest, is something that I’ve been having a hard time accepting up til now.
Comment by jhereg — 4 December 2006 @ 2:32 PM
Hey –
BTW Jason, love the story but neglected to post before now. Good Show
However, one quick point on the elephants… you may be reaching a little bit, here, simply because of the disparity of horse and elephant lifecycles. Horses mature within two years…but elephants… isn;t it more like ten? Scratch that, its a two year gestation with maturation falling around 13-14. So over fifty years, you are only looking at three generations (as compared with the horses: 80 years gives roughly 30 - 40 generations) (link)
Janene
Comment by janene — 4 December 2006 @ 4:59 PM
Thanks; you probably have a good point there. Still sounds like we can expect herds of elephants on the plains, but it may be in more of a Fifth World timeframe.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 December 2006 @ 5:56 PM
Yep -)
J
Comment by janene — 4 December 2006 @ 6:06 PM
Excellent story.
Interesting and vivid portrayal of anthropological features we in the West relegate to “indigenous” populations…very refreashing to see this meme reflected back on us.
I agree that the timescale might more look like 2100 or so.
Check out this fantastic article by Lovelock:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article338830.ece
Comment by Nick Vail — 7 December 2006 @ 7:01 PM
You say most people, I say whoever you left out of that definition will still be a mighty number, much better armed than the pre-Columbian tribes, with a huge potential profit motive, if food becomes scarcer.
If 99% will not turn to hunting, that still leaves 3 million of hunters. And if they are able to make money selling their meat to the townfolk, they will have little motivation to seek employment in urban areas.
Comment by _Gi — 7 December 2006 @ 8:34 PM
Thank you, Nick, though I think if it takes that long it will be remarkable as the slowest change to ever come over evangelical Christianity! As for the article, you may be interested to know I actually wrote an article in response to it some time back: “Gaia’s Revenge.”
Gi, 3 million is still an order of magnitude smaller than the pre-Columbian population. As for selling meat to the townfolk—transportation has, in most periods of history, been a significant factor in trade. Only in the petroleum age have we had the energy to make it negligible. With the close of that age, it will become a major factor again, particularly with something that spoils as easily as meat. I’m afraid that alone will force towns to depend on a fairly small radius around them, and preclude such trade as any major factor.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 December 2006 @ 9:47 PM