history

They say, I think, that Leonardo Da'Vinci was the last person on earth who knew everything.

While I find that hard to believe, I think there is an important point there. About the acceleration of complexity, about specialization, and about the loss of so much information (to ordinary people) and how that circles back around and impacts our world.

We don't even know the mechanics of how a simple latch works, there is more information that any single individual can know, the result is not just how many things we don't know, but we also lose sight of the impact of all of that...no one thinks about the dead batteries from an electric skateboard. No one thinks about trash, it just disappears. Which is very different from No one thinks about the causes of the Vietnam War, it just recedes into memory and those who were there, die off, along with the lessons we neglected to learn.

And so I think about the peasant or other cultures who pretty much know everything in their world. They know the best way to grow their food. They know which plants do what, which animals are good for what. Their libraries are not physical, but rather a cultural accumulation that is stored in the aggregate of the population, it exists in the people. Everything they need to know. 

Well, maybe not everything. When faced with an invading, highly mechanized invading force, the requirements of peasant life may not provide a wholly adequate response. 

But I guess my point is that these societies are far more resilient than our own simply because there are so many people who know how all of the different parts work. Unlike our own where we know only the tiniest fraction of a percentage, certainly not enough to survive on our own.