Episode 20: Joshua Ellis - No Manuals
Writer and futurist Joshua Ellis is back with more advice on resilience, resistance and community in dark times
Pulitzer-nominated journalist, writer and futurist Joshua Ellis returns to talk about apocalyptic escapism in Mad Max, infrastructure collapse, right-to-repair, the British tradition of allotments, and his plans for a less toxic kind of social network. Listen now.
Those of you who’ve followed Strange Exiles from the start may remember Episode 4, where Josh introduced himself and his work, and told some crazy stories about Las Vegas, Slab City, and his early life and career. It’s worth a listen if you just joined us! Below, you’ll find links to some of the books, movies and ideas Josh talks about in Episode 20.
Manuals for the future: Joshua Ellis
Josh said in our interview that the thing he finds incredible about apocalypse fiction is that nobody kept hold of a Haynes manual. So in the spirit of useful links, schematics and how-to guides, here are a few of the concepts, thinkers and ideas we covered in the episode.
Josh mentions Wade Davis, and his recent piece for Rolling Stone on the decline of America’s water supplies. As Josh points out, he’s been singing the same song as Davis sings in his new book River Notes for over a decade now. Davis is also the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow, a 1985 book that was adapted into an excellent (if anachronistic and dated) little Wes Craven horror movie about Haitian voodou. Here’s some contemporaneous footage of Davis discussing his book, and the original trailer.
Josh goes on to compare the sub-prime mortgage crisis to what’s happening in the US farm belt. This Time piece is a few years old now, and things have gotten much worse, but it gives some in-depth background on the financial, climatological, water and supply-chain issues faced by American farms. To say things look precarious in that market is definitely an understatement. Here’s a link to a 2022 piece on the ‘mega drought’ in Tuscon, Arizona that Josh mentions. Here’s one to a piece on the water restrictions faced last year (and over the past few years) by (especially poor) South Africans.
I mentioned an interview with the scientist Peter Turchin which appeared on The Free Press. It’s a great listen, not least because Bari Weiss really rakes Turchin’s theories over the coals. Turchin’s website has a few things you can read about ‘cliodynamics’, and his book End Times is out now. This paper on the science behind his virally famous 2010 prediction about instability in the US in 2020 is worth a read. I mention the similarities between cliodynamics and Isaac Asimov’s ‘psychohistory’, as depicted in the sprawling Foundation series. I have some thoughts of my own about predictive systems in science and science fiction which I might unpack in more detail on a future episode. Are you watching Foundation on Apple TV yet? If not, why not? It’s awesome.
Josh mentions the measure of ‘civilisational complexity’, one of the factors the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to measure the possible impact of climate phenomena. This paper from the IPCC explains a little about the topic, and links to more in-depth research. Here’s a piece on ‘cargo cults’ from Scientific American, which is what Josh thinks a post-collapse civilisation might resemble.
Josh briefly mentions ‘the jackpot’, which was the name William Gibson gave to a civilisation-threatening collapse event in his ‘Jackpot Trilogy’, which so far includes the near future thriller Agency and the reality-bending, time-travel driven The Peripheral. The idea of a ‘jackpot’ moment where different threats to human civilisation converge is explored in detail in this PLoS One paper by Huggel et al, which looks at potential ‘cascade effects’, and the social consequences of infrastructure collapse.
We talked about a few classic apocalypse narratives and deconstructed them a little. If you’ve never seen the 1971 classic The Omega Man, that’s definitely worth a watch, perhaps the archetypal template for the ‘lone rugged man after the fall’ stories we’ve seen so often in the decades since. I’d also recommend a re-watch of the first Mad Max if it’s been a while. I think you’ll agree it feels uncomfortably close to reality now. Josh mentions Stephen King’s 1978 book The Stand as the seminal apocalypse text that drew him in.
Here’s a piece on ‘Hoovervilles’, the semi-permanent homeless camps used in Depression-era America to get the population back on its feet. Josh thinks Depression-era approaches like this could be worth revisiting in an era as precarious as ours.
Josh talks about a question he asked on Twitter this year - the crisis hits, and the lights go out. What do you do? This reminded me of a 2006 Joe Rogan special (watch from 46:00). He does a bit about all the dudes who know absolutely nothing about technology or the way the world works meeting up in the streets after a power cut. Like or loathe Rogan, what he lays out here feels pretty accurate. We’re so divorced from knowing how things actually work, our technology actually makes us increasingly vulnerable. Or as Rogan puts it, “If I left you alone in the woods with a hatchet, how long til you can send me an email?”
If you’re a UK listener and Josh’s chat about allotments raised your interest, here’s a link to the National Allotment Society that has all the information you might need to apply for a plot, and start your journey. They’re a brilliant, democratic idea - unfortunately the waiting list for one in England is gigantic, and growing. It’s a scheme many would like to see expanded, and one that’s worth championing. Josh also mention’s John Seymour’s The New Complete Book of Self-sufficiency, which sounds like it has everything you might need to follow some of the examples Josh gives about how to up-skill, and learn how things work and grow.
On the technology side of things, here’s a piece by Cory Doctorow on the importance of ‘right to repair’, which covers a lot of the factors Josh mentions. He recommends investigating The Pi Hut, who supplied the components Josh uses for self-repair and experimental builds, and his automated growing system. He also briefly mentions All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, an Adam Curtis documentary from 2011 which you can watch here. Or perhaps he was quoting the original poem by Richard Brautigan:
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
Josh introduced his ongoing projects, including The Capybara Club, an informal social network dedicated to bringing together like-minded people to talk and think about sustainability and community.
Josh also talked about Kowloon, his prototype for a federated online social network with a more curated approach than the exploitative ‘broadcast only’ models on legacy social media. He mentioned a few early internet pioneers, including John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of the manifesto ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’. He also mentions the author and critic Howard Rheingold, an early internet adopter and original member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, and his associate Kevin Kelly, who started out at The Whole Earth Catalogue before founding Wired magazine. Josh briefly mentions Dunbar’s number, which measures how many social connections human beings can realistically handle.
Josh is looking for people to get involved with The Capybara Club and Kowloon, especially coders and web designers, who he needs help from to build his network. Get in touch with Josh via Twitter if you’d like to know more.
Up next: Johnny Cypher
Our next guest is rapper, activist and educator John Spence, aka Johnny Cypher. An outspoken and passionate advocate for a human rights-led, equality-driven approach to climate activism, he played an instrumental role in the demonstrations in Glasgow against COP26 in 2021.
Johnny uses philosophical and political texts in innovative ways in his classroom work, helping people express themselves politically through the medium of hip-hop. We’re old mates, so this was a brilliant conversation, recorded live in a Glasgow pub garden on the last sunny afternoon of September. I look forward to sharing it with you before the end of the year.
Until then, take care of each other.
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ICYMI!
I had some pretty exciting news recently, in case you missed it! More on that soon.
I also published a couple of essays, here and elsewhere:
Beyond wrapped: Poptimism, false meritocracy and the death of the critic
Are we in the Wicker Man? On Joker and Midsommar (Revol Press)
I’d love to know what you think of these essays, please get in touch in the comments or come see me on Twitter.
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