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A Kindle wouldn't do me much good as I read mainly nonfiction (history mainly) and many of the books I read and, indeed, the ones I look for are not the kind that would probably be available on Kindle.
There's a big difference between the decline of the British empire and a descent into some sort of Sub-Saharan Africa style warlord anarchy.
Well, how many books one could buy is based upon the cost of the books you read. The kindle version of one book I'd like to read is $4.99, the "hardcopy" version is over $100. I've got 10 or so of these books on my list, all of which the kindle version is much cheaper. The Kindle keeps looking more and more appealing. (Plus not having to haul 10 hardcover books with me for a week's travel.)
A lot of the situations you describe I was taught that you don't read books in. If my father caught me reading a book in the bathtub or bathroom (where it could get water damaged) as a child, I would have had my hide tanned. It was the same level of offense as cracking a book's spine or writing in a book with ink. Dropping a book on the ground and soiling it was also not acceptable behavior- accidental or not- as one needs to be careful with books. I was raised that book destruction was a sign of a lack of respect.
To this day I'm still horrified when I open a library book and someone wrote in it in ink, it just hits me as so wrong to write in a book with a pen (regardless of the fact that you shouldn't write in books you don't own, an even bigger offense).
There are neighborhoods today where that difference isn't as big as you think.
mmmmm valid point. Then again, hasn't that always been the way?
The difference is that there are a lot more places like that than there ever were before -- it's becoming common where it was once uncommon. Cliche though it may sound, I grew up in a time and place where you honestly didn't have to lock your house at night. Now I bolt the doors and sleep with a pistol in my nightstand.
A few weeks ago, while leaving work around 10 at night, I saw two drug-crazed lunatics beat an animal to death in the middle of the street. Last winter, exactly one block away from where I live, a man was beaten senseless in his own living room by a drug-crazed thug who apparently just picked him out at random. The house next door to me was formerly occupied by a drug-dealing nest which was only shut down when one of the customers was carried out feet first in a bag.
This isn't the inner city. This is a small town of less than 7000 people. This is insanity. If this isn't a collapsing civilization, I don't know what one would be.
It sounds like meth use.
RD
We have a gigantic meth problem here -- that's what they were doing in the house next door to me -- and it doesn't help that the person running the local methadone clinic (now shut down) was using it as a front for dealing crack. The new thing, though, is "bath salts," which is a street name for some horrendous poison sold at head shops that, so far, remains legal. It's been sweeping the state, and it's terrifying how bloody stupid people are to use such garbage, and how utterly impotent the police are in putting a stop to it.
Before someone raises the point of "oh, the twenties were rough too, remember Prohibition," let me say this. I had an uncle who was a bootlegger during Prohibition -- he drove a taxicab as a front for running booze down from Canada, and he made a pile of money at it. But Maine wasn't Chicago. You didn't have random horrific violence in the streets as a daily thing like we're getting here now. Something profound has shifted in the balance of the universe, and it's only going to get worse.
Before someone raises the point of "oh, the twenties were rough too, remember Prohibition," let me say this. I had an uncle who was a bootlegger during Prohibition -- he drove a taxicab as a front for running booze down from Canada, and he made a pile of money at it. But Maine wasn't Chicago.
The USA may be too big to fully collapse, but imagine all the electrics being knocked out by a solar flare. There's no way you could supply the entire population with food, let alone clean drinking water or any modern conveniences without electric power. IS that a decline or is that just like putting a house-broken cat in the wild. That's not decline just an infrastructure dependency - but isn't that what we wanted when we invented technology? I'm not sure apocalypse is the same as living in an uncaring society due to everyone being too concerned with their own human rights to want to help each other out.
Thanks HD, I just kind of flew off the handle there.