What are the skills and knowledge you could actually bring & fully realize at some point in the past?

And we're taking this in the strictest, nerdiest, materialist lense. I don't care how smart you are you ain't making a steam engine the in bronze age, for instance.

So what could you create, with just your knowledge & period tools? What kind of institutional, technological, philosophical innovations could you realistically recreate? How would you interface with the social fabric of society to not be some crazed pariah who never positively influences the place they went?

  • happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Trauma medicine and modern agriculture, the basics of modern scientific philosophy and dialectical materialism, I could probably draw a mostly-accurate map and chart a few of the notable dangerous currents, the dynamics of climate change/public health to get them away from fossil fuels.

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      2 years ago

      dynamics of climate change/public health to get them away from fossil fuels

      i respect it but how i woukdnt know how to begin on explaining that to a peasant

      • Kuori [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        i think at its simplest you'd essentially be saying "see this black rock? when it burns it makes you sick. you know how it warms your homes/makes heat in your forges/whatever? it also heats the planet, do this enough and it will be too hot to live"

        • Dolores [love/loves]
          ·
          2 years ago

          i dont think thatd be exactly intuitive to people who have to burn stuff to survive. what about some kind of cult of ecology that can counterbalance industry & burning things?

          ✍️ every tonne of coal burned must have 180000 trees planted ✍️ in the first testament

    • replaceable [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I dont think industrial revolution is possible without fossil fuels

      • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Fossil Capital writes a lot about this and it's definitely false. We moved away from water powered factories to coal powered factories not because of the energy (coal was actually more expensive) but because having to build factories in the rural countryside on rivers meant workers had too much power to strike and couldn't be replaced. Moving the factories to cities meant the reserve army of labor was much bigger and you could break strikes, but you needed coal rather than water wheels.

        • replaceable [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Water is a possible alternative in the case of factories and electricity generation but not in the case of metal smelting

        • SaniFlush [any, any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Haha, so all those people saying that a collapse of civilization would leave us technologically crippled forevermore is just wishful thinking on their part?