Savage Continent
May. 23rd, 2014 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI have started reading Savage Continent by Keith Lowe. I forgot who recommended this to me, but I am only a hundred pages in and it is incredible. It is about Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and points out that our narrative of the Marshal Plan and Europe arising like a phoenix from the ashes glosses over a whole lot.
What is striking me most is that, those post-apocalyptic movies and books that posit a dystopian future where society completely breaks down? That's already happened. On a massive, massive scale. A post-apocalyptic hellscape where major cities are rubble, 60% of the roads, all of the boats, most of the railroads, and tens of thousands of bridges are destroyed. Where as much as a third of the farmland is unusable, where even if it wasn't, there was no way to transport the food. Where packs of orphaned children wandered around looting and playing with abandoned munitions. Where millions of people wander through Germany, some going east to towns they don't know no longer exist, some west in the hopes that when they get to Allied lines, they will be fed and sheltered. Where Allied troops rape women in liberated territories by the hundreds of thousands. All of that happened.
And it's not like post-WWII Europe is alone. All of that still happens, all over the world.
I am finding it...weirdly hopeful to read? Because it shows that this post-apocalyptic future we fear isn't the end. The worst happens, everything falls apart, violence is a normal part of every day, trust in any kind of authority is shattered, the infrastructure we rely on to bring us the food we need disintegrates, but that isn't the end. Somehow, after that, we recover. Society gets rebuilt. It may take generations, and many things that were lost can never be regained, but it isn't actually the end of everything. I don't know if I'm articulating myself well, but it helps me to think that there is still a future, even after something that I'm learning was infinitely worse than I had ever previously realized it was.
What is striking me most is that, those post-apocalyptic movies and books that posit a dystopian future where society completely breaks down? That's already happened. On a massive, massive scale. A post-apocalyptic hellscape where major cities are rubble, 60% of the roads, all of the boats, most of the railroads, and tens of thousands of bridges are destroyed. Where as much as a third of the farmland is unusable, where even if it wasn't, there was no way to transport the food. Where packs of orphaned children wandered around looting and playing with abandoned munitions. Where millions of people wander through Germany, some going east to towns they don't know no longer exist, some west in the hopes that when they get to Allied lines, they will be fed and sheltered. Where Allied troops rape women in liberated territories by the hundreds of thousands. All of that happened.
And it's not like post-WWII Europe is alone. All of that still happens, all over the world.
I am finding it...weirdly hopeful to read? Because it shows that this post-apocalyptic future we fear isn't the end. The worst happens, everything falls apart, violence is a normal part of every day, trust in any kind of authority is shattered, the infrastructure we rely on to bring us the food we need disintegrates, but that isn't the end. Somehow, after that, we recover. Society gets rebuilt. It may take generations, and many things that were lost can never be regained, but it isn't actually the end of everything. I don't know if I'm articulating myself well, but it helps me to think that there is still a future, even after something that I'm learning was infinitely worse than I had ever previously realized it was.