The Old Man and the Wasteland

[Guest guest]

The Old Man and the Wasteland

By Nick Cole

An interesting update on " The Old Man and the Sea. " It is set some time in the

future in the US after a lengthy nuclear attack people in the US never thought

would happen.

I found some of the philosophy in it interesting. That is to say the philosophy

of the villagers and the horde, and that of the Old Man which develops over the

course of the novel as it did in " Sea. " I'll try not to give away too much here

in case anyone wants to read it (its only 99 cents on the Kindle or an emulator

version on your computer).

The villagers look out for each other, seem to be pretty sober and are trying to

keep things going.

The horde on the other hand was founded by a college professor who was not a

very nice fellow. The " Laws of the People " were:

There are no laws

There is no God

There is no such thing as wrong

Don't hate anything

You are the center of the universe

By the time of the book, maybe 30 years after the war, they are feral. Indeed

the horde kills, and eats, everyone they encounter.

Now, there was another. A surviving soldier had tried to preserve knowledge of

what had come before so humanity wouldn't have to restart from scratch. The way

he did that was quite interesting but I won't give it away here. Some of his

choice nuggets of wisdom:

We didn't believe those who had sworn to kill us

We tried to fire God

Power is never satisfied

People will tell lies to get what they want

Don't let someone spend money who never earned it

Don't let anyone but a soldier tell you how to fight a war

Rockstars, actors and politicians don't actually so anything

And my two favorites:

The younger discovering the world feel like Columbus. They ignore

the Indians who have been here for thousands of years.

Beware of the self-loathing government.

There are others on the list.

Overall I think its an interesting take on civilization and savagery and how

easily people could fall into the latter, and in no small part because of the

incompetent morons who we put in charge who also refuse to learn from the past

(which is what the Indians above represent). I really think he has a point given

how society has not even collapsed yet the savages are already striding forth

and attacking the civilized.