Dark Age

Back to book reviews and penses on my latest reading material.
Before I get into that, I was recommended to read "The Place Near Kolob" or some book of that type of title. I pretended to be interested. Is that bad?

Jane Jacobs, in her last book, Dark Age Ahead takes the opportunity in her last years of life to tell what she thinks will happen to 'North America' which is really USA/Canada if certain problems are not corrected. There are times, while reading the book, in which I find myself agreeing, and there are times I find myself unable to agree, because I don't have much experience with what she describes. There are arguments which she made previously in her more well known book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, written before she went to Canada and while she lived in New York City.

I actually didn't know she was dead until I looked her up in Wikipedia to see whether Dark Age Ahead was her last book or not. It was her last book, she passed away just over a year ago.

As usual I'd like to include an excerpt where I think she makes an excellent point:

Everyone needs entrées into networks of acquaintances for practical as well as social purpohses. Think what hte adults in a nuclear family--just two of them--areexpected by society to provide:

Knowledge and experience sufficient to use simple home remedies in cases of trivial illnesses or wounds, and--more important--the ability to judge correctly and quickly when ills or wounds are too serious for home remedies, maybe even life-threatening. Ability to tutor children needing help with homework. Ability to be a soccer mom and a hockey dad. Skill and tact at training children to shun drugs and to be cautios of strangers but not to mistrust everybody. Ability to purchase responsibly, make bill and tax payments, and in general handle money realistically in spite of blandishments to gamble or become profligate. Bake ordinary home and equipment repairs and keep abreast of maintenance chores. Deal knowledgeably with banks and bureaucracies. Pull a fair share of family weight in community betterment efforst and neighborhood protection. Deal civilly with people whose upbringing, cultures, and personalities are at odds wiht the traditions and customs of one's own nuclear family, and teach children to be both cosmopolitan and tolerant. Without this last ability, nuclear familys can be irreparably torn asunder when relationships develop between their children and lovers from other ethnic or religious backgrounds or, if the family is very stodgy, simply from other educational or income groups.

Who are the paragons that, unaided and unadvised, can earn a living and also provide all this and more? Few of them exist.

She talks at some length about losing what the previous generation had already worked out. It makes sense to me, that the good knowledge seems to be flushed away with that bad, during upheavals and overthrows of culture. The way she describes and at the same time warns reveals a thinking mind, one that has had time to put the problem into words succinctly and in many ways, accurately. The book retains much of its punch because the author doesn't venture far into areas she does not know.