Let me second "The Restoration of Christian Culture". John Senior hits on a lot of familiar themes here - cultural decay, environmental destruction, etc., and interestingly finds part of his solution in music / spoken music (ie., poetry).
Even more, he tried exercising much of this in the fascinating Pearson Integrated Humanities Program at Kansas University in the 1970's. With the motto, 'be born in wonder', the program was led by three professors in English and the Classics, where they had students gaze at the stars, learn to dance, memorize poetry, learn to write beautifully (calligraphy), etc. Most classes were just of the form of having the students listen to the 3 having a discussion, to rediscover the art of conversation.
With this exposure to the good, the true, and the beautiful, many students radically changed their lives (leaving for monasteries). Of course, this couldn't be had at a public university, and so it was administered into death.
John Senior was probably the grumpiest of the three, but don't let that put you off. He tries to look to a brighter future in 'Restoration', and largely succeeds.
John C. Calhoun? I am from South Carolina- actually the very town in which his family lived , not to mention all the slaves. I noticed that there are very few woman writers on these lists...Madeline L'Engle and Flannery O"Connor, both of whom were strong Christians. I wonder if after this revolution/upheaval , the women will be saving humanity/spirituality , as Rudolf Steiner said. He should be on the list.
As a lover of Poetry I'm a believer that the human species's poetic consciousness is a very important "Library" to leave our descendants one way or another, as long as we can assume literacy in various languages is still a thing. Even if physical books become too difficult to maintain, perhaps our descendants can be like the old Welsh Bards and sing and chant their poems. Poets I'd want to take into the Apocalypse would be:
W.S. Merwin
Wendell Berry
Joy Harjo
Mary Oliver
William Blake
Keats + Shelley + Byron
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Antonio Machado
Miguel de Unamuno
Du Fu
Rumi + Hafiz
So many more but that's a start. Then the great religious literature:
The Bible (Old and New Testament)
The Gnostic Gospels in their entirety
Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita
Tao Te Ching and other core Daoist Texts
Quran
Indigenous American mythologies (Mayan, Aztec, Kogi, Inca, etc.)
everything by Hehaka Sapa/Nicholas Black Elk
teachings of the Buddha + Tantric Buddhist texts
Indigenous African cosmologies across the continent
likewise for Aboriginal Australian myths, the "Dreamtime"
Magazines:
Whole Earth Catalog
Co-Evolution Quarterly
The Sun magazine up for it's first 15 years or so
Parabola Magazine (real gem there)
Books:
a lot by Ursula K. LeGuin. Her "Always Coming Home" is an epic vision of the good and the bad that is possible in some future scenarios.
Wendell Berry once again, his essays.
Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier's Edible Forest Gardens and Carbon Farming books, and the Good Lord willing the Coppice Agroforestry book if Jacke ever finishes it (come on, Dave!)
Martin Crawford's work on Agroforestry
The Book of the Hopi, Hopi Survival Kit, etc.
Myths and Legends of the Cherokee by James Mooney (biased about this, because I'm a native of Southern Appalachia the longtime- 10,000 years possibly- and present day stomping grounds of the Cherokee people, and Mooney was lucky to get an almost complete cosmology from them in the late 19th century when they had intact knowledge of who they were and where they came from)
ANYTHING about Coppicing
ANYTHING about Dehesas and/or Montados Agriculture
Farmers for Forty Centuries by F.H. King
Farming/Agricultural texts by the Shakers, Amish/Mennonites/other Anabaptists?
Two from the spiritual perspective. One about how we got here philosophically and spiritually, and the other about a way to correct the Naturalists of old and ecologists of recent years through a hesychastic life and perspective.
Nihilism by Fr. Seraphim Rose
The Noetics of Nature: Environmental Philosophy and the Holy Beauty of the Visible by Bruce V Foltz
I know I’ve been one of those lobbing recommendations at you — Philip Sherrard and David Jones, etc. But honestly it’s hard to know where to start when you put it (movingly) like this. Do I want to bequeath something essential, or a warning? What will our descendants even be able to understand? It’s already hard for us moderns to really grasp certain cornerstones of the Western literary heritage, like for example Dante. We’ve lost too much of the cosmos that makes works like that meaningful. I mean, we may know about it, but we don’t actually know it experientially.
I think I would include The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings—both as a warning against all that is most dangerously evil, and as things of supreme beauty and craftsmanship in their own right. Those works stand at the beginning of my spiritual consciousness, at a quite young age, and my whole life has in a way been determined by them. Not the most original suggestion, I know.
I want to also suggest something that fills one with hope and vigor, zeal for the fullness of life. Much as I love Tolkien, that’s not quite how I’d describe those fantasies. This selection is surprisingly hard for me to settle on. I think for now I will say Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations. In whatever state the Earth will someday be, Traherne’s is the way to behold it: as theophany.
This is a great query. I’ll think on it more, and also look forward to seeing the final list.
You know, in a way this is what Ezra Pound sought to do — indeed it was a project that literally drove him mad. I’m not adding his works to my recommendations, just thinking about his work as a translator when he was young, and in a book like Guide to Kulchur, but then especially his life’s work in the Cantos. That vast poetic project is packed with what he thought were turning points, warnings, and supreme achievements in the literary and intellectual deposit of East and West. But the whole thing ends (more or less) with the famous despairing cry “I cannot make it cohere.” And he also says “what thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross.” That would be my criterion for selecting works for the scriptorium.
Bruno Latour's "Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime" seems on the mark, and it complements many of your perspectives.
Given that it is composed in the modern philosopher's tongue, it's more technical than your approach, but I've found it has offered insightful and useful thoughts to return to over time. If you've read it, Paul, I'd be curious to hear your take on it.
You might want to subscribe to my Patreon page, dedicated to crowdfunding my English translation in instalments of Bernard Charbonneau's La Société médiatisée at the same time as the book, written in 1985, is finally published in France. The home page includes a link to my first interview with Jonathan Pageau about Technological Society. Jacques Ellul wrote the book about it at the behest of his friend Charbonneau who first introduced him to the topîc around 1932, when he saw his intuitions confirmed by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Significantly, it is because Huxley recognized what he'd been talking about in Ellul's book that he got it translated in 1964.
On the theme of civilizational fall, I’d recommend Tom Wolfe’s journalism and novels, esp Bonfire of the Vanities.
A hearty second to this. Also, John Senior's The Destruction of Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture.
Let me second "The Restoration of Christian Culture". John Senior hits on a lot of familiar themes here - cultural decay, environmental destruction, etc., and interestingly finds part of his solution in music / spoken music (ie., poetry).
Even more, he tried exercising much of this in the fascinating Pearson Integrated Humanities Program at Kansas University in the 1970's. With the motto, 'be born in wonder', the program was led by three professors in English and the Classics, where they had students gaze at the stars, learn to dance, memorize poetry, learn to write beautifully (calligraphy), etc. Most classes were just of the form of having the students listen to the 3 having a discussion, to rediscover the art of conversation.
With this exposure to the good, the true, and the beautiful, many students radically changed their lives (leaving for monasteries). Of course, this couldn't be had at a public university, and so it was administered into death.
John Senior was probably the grumpiest of the three, but don't let that put you off. He tries to look to a brighter future in 'Restoration', and largely succeeds.
Good to see Bookchin make the list!
Yes, I love Shelby Foote’s The Civil War! I have read it three times and thoroughly enjoyed it every time.
John C. Calhoun? I am from South Carolina- actually the very town in which his family lived , not to mention all the slaves. I noticed that there are very few woman writers on these lists...Madeline L'Engle and Flannery O"Connor, both of whom were strong Christians. I wonder if after this revolution/upheaval , the women will be saving humanity/spirituality , as Rudolf Steiner said. He should be on the list.
Great selection.
To this lovely list I would add the Library of America editions of Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant
Ouch.
The Powers Trilogy, by Walter Wink
Paul and the Uprising of the Dead Trilogy, by Daniel Oudshoorn
Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Marie Brown
Living at the Edges of Capitalism, Andrej Grubacic and Denis O'Hearn
The Art of Not Being Governed, James C Scott
The Many-Headed Hydra, Peter Linebagh and Marcus Rediker
Caliban and the Witch, Sylvia Federici
Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber
Oooh I’ve got the Powers Trilogy on my reading list, excited to see it here
Kristen; what is the Powers Trilogy about?
Sorry Kirsten, misspelled your name. Please, no offense.
Great idea, Paul!
As a lover of Poetry I'm a believer that the human species's poetic consciousness is a very important "Library" to leave our descendants one way or another, as long as we can assume literacy in various languages is still a thing. Even if physical books become too difficult to maintain, perhaps our descendants can be like the old Welsh Bards and sing and chant their poems. Poets I'd want to take into the Apocalypse would be:
W.S. Merwin
Wendell Berry
Joy Harjo
Mary Oliver
William Blake
Keats + Shelley + Byron
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Antonio Machado
Miguel de Unamuno
Du Fu
Rumi + Hafiz
So many more but that's a start. Then the great religious literature:
The Bible (Old and New Testament)
The Gnostic Gospels in their entirety
Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita
Tao Te Ching and other core Daoist Texts
Quran
Indigenous American mythologies (Mayan, Aztec, Kogi, Inca, etc.)
everything by Hehaka Sapa/Nicholas Black Elk
teachings of the Buddha + Tantric Buddhist texts
Indigenous African cosmologies across the continent
likewise for Aboriginal Australian myths, the "Dreamtime"
Magazines:
Whole Earth Catalog
Co-Evolution Quarterly
The Sun magazine up for it's first 15 years or so
Parabola Magazine (real gem there)
Books:
a lot by Ursula K. LeGuin. Her "Always Coming Home" is an epic vision of the good and the bad that is possible in some future scenarios.
Wendell Berry once again, his essays.
Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier's Edible Forest Gardens and Carbon Farming books, and the Good Lord willing the Coppice Agroforestry book if Jacke ever finishes it (come on, Dave!)
Martin Crawford's work on Agroforestry
The Book of the Hopi, Hopi Survival Kit, etc.
Myths and Legends of the Cherokee by James Mooney (biased about this, because I'm a native of Southern Appalachia the longtime- 10,000 years possibly- and present day stomping grounds of the Cherokee people, and Mooney was lucky to get an almost complete cosmology from them in the late 19th century when they had intact knowledge of who they were and where they came from)
ANYTHING about Coppicing
ANYTHING about Dehesas and/or Montados Agriculture
Farmers for Forty Centuries by F.H. King
Farming/Agricultural texts by the Shakers, Amish/Mennonites/other Anabaptists?
Always incomplete, but a decent start there.
Second for Always Coming Home!!!
Yes, 'Always Coming Home' by LeGuin was my first choice, and 'The Parable of the Sower' by Octavia Butler is also essential.
Beginning the suggestions to the Library.
Two from the spiritual perspective. One about how we got here philosophically and spiritually, and the other about a way to correct the Naturalists of old and ecologists of recent years through a hesychastic life and perspective.
Nihilism by Fr. Seraphim Rose
The Noetics of Nature: Environmental Philosophy and the Holy Beauty of the Visible by Bruce V Foltz
I know I’ve been one of those lobbing recommendations at you — Philip Sherrard and David Jones, etc. But honestly it’s hard to know where to start when you put it (movingly) like this. Do I want to bequeath something essential, or a warning? What will our descendants even be able to understand? It’s already hard for us moderns to really grasp certain cornerstones of the Western literary heritage, like for example Dante. We’ve lost too much of the cosmos that makes works like that meaningful. I mean, we may know about it, but we don’t actually know it experientially.
I think I would include The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings—both as a warning against all that is most dangerously evil, and as things of supreme beauty and craftsmanship in their own right. Those works stand at the beginning of my spiritual consciousness, at a quite young age, and my whole life has in a way been determined by them. Not the most original suggestion, I know.
I want to also suggest something that fills one with hope and vigor, zeal for the fullness of life. Much as I love Tolkien, that’s not quite how I’d describe those fantasies. This selection is surprisingly hard for me to settle on. I think for now I will say Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations. In whatever state the Earth will someday be, Traherne’s is the way to behold it: as theophany.
This is a great query. I’ll think on it more, and also look forward to seeing the final list.
You know, in a way this is what Ezra Pound sought to do — indeed it was a project that literally drove him mad. I’m not adding his works to my recommendations, just thinking about his work as a translator when he was young, and in a book like Guide to Kulchur, but then especially his life’s work in the Cantos. That vast poetic project is packed with what he thought were turning points, warnings, and supreme achievements in the literary and intellectual deposit of East and West. But the whole thing ends (more or less) with the famous despairing cry “I cannot make it cohere.” And he also says “what thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross.” That would be my criterion for selecting works for the scriptorium.
Ha, that is an excellent warning! Yes, there is certainly a danger in trying to create a Casaubon-like book to explain everything.
Newish but good are Alan Jacobs three books:
How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds, by Alan Jacobs
Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, by Alan Jacobs
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, by Alan Jacobs
Bruno Latour's "Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime" seems on the mark, and it complements many of your perspectives.
Given that it is composed in the modern philosopher's tongue, it's more technical than your approach, but I've found it has offered insightful and useful thoughts to return to over time. If you've read it, Paul, I'd be curious to hear your take on it.
Totally agree (and should have read this before I posted a comment on Latour's Down to Earth on Paul's last essay).
A Secular Age by Charles Taylor
Kierkegaard’s Philosophy: self deception and cowardice in the present age, by John Douglas Mullen
Flannery O’Conner: The Complete Stories
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy
(All of McCarthy’s books, just not adding them all)
Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin
The Arrogance of Humanism, by David Ehrenfeld
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pilgrims Progress, by John Bunyan
Moral Believing Animals, by Christian Smith
Cormac McCarthy is terrific and so is Wallace Stegner, his novels and essays.
Totally agree about Stegner. Crossing to Safety is one of the best books about marriage I've ever read.
I love, love, love Flannery O'Connor. Great suggestion
Australian writer Tim Winton was inspired by her...as was Frederick Buechner....two of my favourite writers
Allow me to plug my translation of Bernard Charbonneau's The Green Light. A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement (Bloomsbury, 2018), Jacques Ellul's mentor, with whom he pioneered political ecology from the 1930s as the Bordeaux School. See my interview on these two thinkers (+ McLuhan) at https://thesymbolicworld.com/podcasts/christian-roy-technical-society-and-media/, and https://hermitix.podiant.co/e/the-work-of-bernard-charbonneau-with-christian-roy-38eeb04d120390/.
Fantastic!
You might want to subscribe to my Patreon page, dedicated to crowdfunding my English translation in instalments of Bernard Charbonneau's La Société médiatisée at the same time as the book, written in 1985, is finally published in France. The home page includes a link to my first interview with Jonathan Pageau about Technological Society. Jacques Ellul wrote the book about it at the behest of his friend Charbonneau who first introduced him to the topîc around 1932, when he saw his intuitions confirmed by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Significantly, it is because Huxley recognized what he'd been talking about in Ellul's book that he got it translated in 1964.
https://www.patreon.com/christianroymedia
https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/category/Pandemic+2
https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/category/Pandemic+2