open_stories

The 10 Commands: Research Notes

Metadata

• Title: The 10 Commands
• Author(s): Theena Kumaragurunathan
• Genre: Speculative Fiction
• Year 2024
• Logline/Summary: A desperate man leading a small group of survivors in a post climate apocalypse future, encounters an ancient computer that promises to help him revive civilization.

Plot Overview

A Moses-like figure is leading a small group of survivors through a post climate apocalypse waste-land. He is starving, dehydrated and desperate, considering taking his own life as punishment for his failures to save these people who rely on him. At that most vulnerable of moments, he encounters an ancient computer that promises to help him and his people revive human civilization.

Plot Ingredients

This story will draw from mythologies of the Abrahamic traditions, early 20th century computing history ¹ (particularly Unix, and early AI and symbolic computing using Lisp), Marxism ², and contemporary survivalist culture.

Skills Needed To Revive Civilization

• Lewis Darnell answers a (hopefully) hypothetical: if you and a small group of people survived an apocalyptic event, what skills would you need to reboot civilization ³.

• I also asked ChatGPT to narrow down 10 essential skills in a post-apocalyptic world:

  1. Survival Skills: Basic knowledge to survive in harsh conditions.
  2. Resource Management: Efficient handling and utilization of limited resources.
  3. Agriculture and Farming: Skills in cultivating food sources
  4. Medicine and Healthcare: Basic medical knowledge and treatment
  5. Engineering and Construction: Skills to build and repair infrastructure.
  6. Communication and Collaboration: Establishing communication networks and fostering collaboration.
  7. Leadership and Governance: Organizational and leadership skills for societal structure.
  8. Technical Skills: Understanding and utilizing basic technology.
  9. Education and Knowledge Sharing: Passing on essential knowledge to future generations.
  10. Cultural Preservation: Safeguarding cultural heritage and traditions.

Marxism in the time of Apocalypse

Why Marx? I have a short and a long answer.

Short: it is a reflection of my political leaning.

Long: Capitalism is the sharp and pointy-end with which we have poked and desecrated, and continue to desecrate, our planet - repeatedly, and disastrously, since the Industrial Revolution.

Climate change is man-made. Capitalism made man do it.

I don’t agree with your politics

Fortunately, you don’t have to agree with my politics to a) read and engage with this material, and b) this is an open manuscript - if you don’t like the politics, feel free to remove the Marxism and replace it with Randian individualism and free-market utopianism; I am curious how anyone in a post apocalyptic context will lean towards capitalism, but hey stranger things have happened.

What did Marx have to say about the apocalypse

Nothing directly, as far as I can discern. Marx’s concern was the drip-drip of class warfare and political hypocrisy, not the doom-and-gloom of a planet on the verge of dying. Regardless, there are, I believe, key insights from Marx that would be apt for a post-apocalyptic world.

Marxist Insights

1. The repetition of history
2. The struggle for power among social classes
3. The role of individuals in societal contexts
4. Class conciousness
5. Revolutionary potential among the masses
6. Manipulation of political discourse
7. Transition of hegemony
8. Cultural and historical contexts, and their effects of on individual societies
9. The interplay between state institutions and societal structures
10. The irony and unpredictability of historical processes

How To Arrive at the 10 Commands

I combined the 10 skills needed for rebooting civilization with 10 insights from Marx. Pretty simple. There must be other ways, but this will have to do for now.

What are the 10 Commands

And spoil the surprise? I am not an anarchist (yet).

Place

• Unidentifiable because the planet is mostly a giant sand dune
• Arid desert

People

• Marxes: Leader of a small group of survivors
• OVI: An ancient sentient AI computer with a God-like understanding of the world that once was

Other Elements

The Prophetic Perfect Tense

The prophetic perfect tense refers to a linguistic construction used in some languages, particularly in ancient texts or religious scriptures ⁴, where a future event is described with such certainty and conviction that it is expressed as if it has already happened.

In this tense, the speaker or writer is so confident that the future event will occur that they articulate it as completed in the present or past. It’s often employed to convey a sense of inevitability or certainty about the fulfillment of a prophecy or prediction.

Examples from Scripture TODO %% Enter full quotes for below

1. Abrahamic

   For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders… Isaiah 9:6

   But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.. Isaiah 53:5

   Certainly has Allah showed to His Messenger the vision in truth… Surah Al-Fath (48:27)

2. Vedic

   Whenever there is a decline in righteousness and an increase in unrighteousness… Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 4, Verse 7)

3. Buddhist

   *TODO

This research is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Attribution: [2024, Theena Kumaragurunathan].

1. Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computing [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/] ↩

2. The 18th Brumerie of Louis Bornaparte [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/] ↩

3. Rebooting Civilization: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rebooting-civilization-survivorse28099-how-to-guide-for-restoring-technology-after-the-apocalypse-excerpt/] ↩

4. The Prophetic Perfect Tense [https://www.revisedenglishversion.com/Ephesians/2/6] ↩