Survival+ [Paperback]

Should some future archeologist stumble across a copy of Survival+ while rummaging through the detritus of Western civilization, he will have found a veritable Rosetta Stone, unlocking the secret of what went wrong with this incarnation of Homo sapiens. Along with it, he's likely to find The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (James Howard Kunstler, 2005), The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future (William H. Kötke, 2007), Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (Richard Heinberg, 2007), and others of that ilk, because members of the choir to whom those authors preached tended to accumulate libraries of secular revelation. You could pretty much get by with just this volume, however, if solving the mystery of modern man's hubris and fall were your only goal.

Smith warns his readers that "we face not some isolated, temporary `financial crisis' or even a political crisis, but an interconnected, self-reinforcing series of crises and challenges which span every level of modern life, from the internal politics of experience to depleting resources to degraded environment to financial and political domination by Elites of capital and State and on to demographics and the host of ills triggered by over-reach." He forsees collapse but not apocalypse. He is hopeful that survivors will learn lessons from the experience--lessons that he painstakingly elucidates--and fashion "a new model of governance to replace the failed Savior State/Plutocracy partnership." This is, after all, a book of "survival." No, even better than that. "Survival Plus."

Having frequented the author's website, the always timely, insightful, and literate oftwominds dot com, I knew not to expect that Survival+ would be something along the lines of John Wiseman's The SAS Survival Handbook: How to survive in the wild, in any climate, on land or at sea (1986), or other works of that "survivalist" genre, written by manly men for an audience of the lost, doomed, forsaken, or survivor want-to-bes. But Smith's title did seem to promise some practical tips for making our way safely through the coming collapse, perhaps like those offered by Sharon Astyk in Depletion and Abundance: Life On the New Home Front (2008), which serves as a manual for "surviving in place." In Survival+ that promise was largely unfulfilled. Smith has a gift for conveying complex information in a way that readers can understand, and he sees through the noise of events and data to the human motivation that drives our society. Penning a book of survival tips is not his purpose.

If you start at the end of a book, as I often do, in this case you'll come upon the signature of the author of Survival+. It reads, "Charles Hugh Smith, citizen and taxpayer." That's the heart of Survival+. A man writing passionately about politics and economics, writing an encyclopedia of our political and economic failures. And as with any encyclopedia, one can open the volume and read any page without needing to have read preceding pages for it to make perfect sense and to be of interest and value. Like daily posts on a website, which were, in fact, the source of much of the book's content. This is not to say that Smith's book is disorganized, or that it offers no useful advice to its readers. It has a smooth and logical flow, and it offers, in the words of its author, "not `advice' in the usual sense, but an expression of what I consider self-evident principles."

There are fifteen principles, ranging from "Engagement" to "Pare complexity to simplicity," followed by a sixteen-item "Action List," which ranges from "Add a feedback loop" to "Work from core principles." That last action item illustrates an aspect of the author's style, which is to reiterate, restate, and summarize. It comes across as helpful rather than didactic in a work of this density. But whole books could be written about each of the "self-evident" principles, as Henry David Thoreau did with "Pare complexity to simplicity," and the action items need considerably more fleshing out than Smith provides. He's thinking big thoughts, like that call to "establish a new model of governance." The details he leaves to us. Perhaps the most important details we'll have to look to Astyk and others to provide are those needed if we heed Smith's exhortations "to opt out."

Early on he writes, ". . . The Power Elites of cartel/crony/monopoly capital (who own or control 2/3 of the productive assets of the nation) and State fiefdoms (which absorb 40% of the GDP) influence the entire economy to enlarge their shares of the national income. With these two hands firmly squeezing their throats, the declining class of productive non-Elites have no choice but to submit to debt-serfdom, devolve into insolvency/penury or opt out." Later he observes, "Once the middle class opts out of earning large sums of taxable income and the debt-dependent `American Dream,' then the ailing dinosaurs (the State and Plutocracy) will fiscally implode." And finally he advises, "Opt out of consumerist passivity and construct a self-reliant alternative which is independent of the devolving State and over-reaching Plutocracy. . . . Opting out is legal and non-confrontational: turn off the media and 'starve the Beasts' by reducing consumption, debt and income. Own/control your own means of production."

Well, don't turn off the internet just yet, because you'll want to keep visiting Smith's website until the power grid fails, and before you cancel your credit cards, pick up a copy of Survival+ so that you and that future archeologist can figure out why everything went so terribly wrong. (Review also posted on my website, truthalyzer dot com.)

UPDATE: To his credit, Charles Hugh Smith has responded to readers and reviewers who found Survival+ lacking in "practical tips for making our way safely through the coming collapse," as I put it above. He is posting "concrete suggestions" on his website and he is "expanding" Survival+ to include such content in subsequent editions. He has also redesigned the book's cover to depict a Swiss army-style pocket knife, which has the effect of doubling down on the promise a book entitled "Survival+" seems to be making about its content.

UPDATE2: On January 30, 2010, Smith announced publication of Survival+ The Primer: "Reader feedback persuaded me that a 396-page book is a justifiably daunting prospect for many, and so I decided to create an Introduction to Survival+ that is only a third the length (48,000 words, 134 pages) of the full version. . . . I have no idea if the world needs a short version of Survival+ or not, but the only way to find out is to publish it and see what happens." It is not clear whether Smith still intends to expand the long version of Survival+ as described in my previous update.

This book is hard to classify, but I know many people from economists to survivalists have read the original, but shorter, version. The "Survival +" philosophy is built upon many of Smith's popular and insightful essays which include "When Belief in the System Fades" and "The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States". Smith uses a combination of short personal stories mixed with academic discourse and teachable moments to take the reader on a journey through his macro-level life philosophy.

Despite this book containing "Survival" in the title, it should not be considered in the same vein as all the other books on how to stockpile canned food and shotguns. Smith does not address those menial topics. His book is a "how to think" manual. Considering "mindset" is often cited as the most important aspect of "survival" by some other authors in the survival genre, Smith is the only one to have fully nailed it. Smith encourages the reader to think about a fully possible sustainable human future well within our reach without resorting to the safety of the usual sandbags filled with fear.

Charles was talking about the current economic collapse years before it happened. He has an uncanny way of summarizing huge forces that are at work (economic, social, etc) and drawing conclusions that are clear to a point that they seem like common sense. Reading his blog over the years has been time well spent. This book is a summary of the conclusions he has arrived at, given the topics he as covered over the years. Perhaps this book gives us an accurate look at the future, I wouldn't pay any heed to others attempting a feat like this other than CHS. He is constantly proved right again and again as time marches on and things play out. When he talks I listen.