Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on October 14, 2025 | 41 Comments
My book, Finding Lights in a Dark Age: Sharing Land, Work and Craft, is officially published today in the UK (US publication is 11 November). It’s available in paperback, e-book and audiobook versions. There’s a launch this evening at the town hall in Frome, my hometown. It’s fully booked, which is nice.
I wrote a little bit about the book here. I’ll start a short-to-medium length cycle of blog posts about it soon, but I think not immediately. At least that will give those who read my online posts and are planning to read the book a chance to get stuck in before I offer my meta-commentary. And I have a few more posts on other matters in the pipeline.
I’m thinking of Finding Lights… as the third and final book in a trilogy that I’ve published with Chelsea Green. Maybe it helps to introduce it in relation to those books. In A Small Farm Future I explained the crises or driving forces that I believe are impelling us away from globalised state welfare capitalism, and further explained why these forces will impel us toward small-scale farming and agrarian localism. To quote the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, I believe we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Though actually, I don’t think the easy way is any longer an option. We can do it in hard ways or harder ways, but a small farm future seems like a given. I’m just trying to highlight the hard ways we might achieve it, to help avoid the even harder ones.
In Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, I tried to warn against the siren song of ecomodernism, specifically in the farming and energy sectors. Ecomodernism has been aptly defined as “a movement that treats green technology as a substitute for political and economic change” and indeed there is a narrative style in the book and policy worlds which involves scaring the hell out of us with terrible future scenarios before pulling a rabbit out of a hat with some high-tech, high-energy new gizmology which supposedly will preserve high-energy urban civilization with little fundamental political and economic change. The touted gizmologies rarely stand up to scrutiny (the fanfares for the manufactured bacterial food that I critiqued in that book have already pretty much faded to black just two years later), but alas people keep falling for new versions of the same marketing patter.
In Finding Lights… I pretty much take it as given that humanity’s destination is a small farm future and that there are no techno-fix or ecomodernist get out of jail free cards. I try not to underestimate how ‘dark’ and jail-like this future might be, while at the same time upending that narrative. The present high-energy urban modernist world involves many jails of its own, while ‘dark ages’ aren’t always as dark as they’re made out to be. I’m glad that some writers and thinkers who I respect very much and who have written endorsements for the book have identified its positivity, the lights it seeks, despite the overall sombreness.
The book is a mix of history, autobiography, social science and creative fiction. It addresses some criticisms of my previous two books and tries to push the analyses from them forward and flesh out the future visioning a bit. It’s probably the easiest read of the trilogy, although it still has its social science-y parts. What it doesn’t do is predict or explain how people are going to ‘solve’ present problems. This is a criticism that sometimes comes my way, but I believe it’s one that misunderstands the role of the writer or critic. As I wrote in an earlier post “The best a writer can do, if they feel called to write, is to use words to draw attention to things that command responses beyond words, models or ‘solutions’.” I stand by that. Writers tend to overestimate their powers.
I was nervous about the reaction when my previous two books came out. I’m not feeling quite so nervous this time around. Maybe it’s because I’m more of an old dog now, or – same thing, really – because I’m no longer so bothered by angry fusillades. If people find things they like in the book or things they’d like to debate constructively, that’s great. For others, I wish them a pleasant route of their own into the new dark age that’s upon us. I only hope my book contributes to the appreciation that a new dark age, in the many meanings of the term, is upon us, and this needs to be the baseline for plotting the most congenial routes into the future.
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Looking forward to reading this when it gets to the US, I’ll see if I can get the library to pick up a copy or two.
Somehow Small Farm Future made it’s way into my hands shortly after it’s publication. At the time it helped tie together my activities and thoughts around my organic farming business, climate change, and the energy crisis (the technical aspects of our problems as I see it now) into a more cohesive vision. That vision may be a bit less cohesive today as I explore foraging and trying to move food outside the market entirely, but it did lead to us buying land which we will hopefully be able to live on within the next year. It’s probably not enough land ,etc., but the trap of modernity is closing shut faster now and there just isn’t affordable land (much less shelter!) to be had anywhere, which seems to be an advantage the older back to the land folks had. (I think I’m one of the younger readers here possibly by a good margin.)
Coincidently, Small Farm Future currently lives on my bookshelf amongst Small is Beautiful, the Great Gatsby, Heart of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, and East of Eden. Which is higher praise then any review I could write. I’m curious to see where Finding Lights will find it’s place.
I hear you on the window closing for purchasing land; it’s something I have hoped for since I was in my 20s but I’ve never been able to save up enough to manage it, and now that I’m in my 40s I’m gradually letting go of the idea.
That said, I think something is better than nothing… I am only an allotment tenant but I have already surpassed 480kg from a tenth of an acre this year (that is, since 25th March), and haven’t even weighed all the winter squashes yet. Is this enough to keep all three of us fed? No, especially not during the hungry gap in spring. Does it substantially reduce our reliance on supermarkets? Absolutely. We do still purchase some food, but more of it can come from artisanal, smaller-scale producers than would be the case if we had to buy everything we eat.
I do have the advantage of dip tanks for watering at both the Near Allotment and the Far Allotment, and am aware that without this, it would have been a very hungry year indeed. One of the guerilla gardens I have found is right beside a river (canalised so it doesn’t have sloping banks at that point), and I think that person or group of people have got a good thing going too — they can lower a bucket on a rope to do some irrigation. Some of the other guerilla gardens have struggled this year, though only one I can think of looked abandoned, and that might well be recovering — I haven’t been to check on it for a bit.
I very much enjoyed reading “Finding Lights” and will probably re-read it a few times. I said elsewhere, “If you are worried about the climate situation or the political situation or both, read this book. You’ll probably still be worried afterwards, but you might have a better idea of how to respond.”
If you’re already hitting 10,000 lbs/acre in veg without your squash that’s pretty good. For a 1/10 acre I would target 1,700lb | $4,000 (2019 prices) | 300,000 kcal | 250 labor hours. I do have a more erratic climate though possibly more solar energy and that yield is supported by poly tunnels and irrigation. Maybe I’m a little over concerned with scale, but one of my counters to increasing variabilities of climate to going to be to try more extensive means of growing and ideally better integrated livestock.
We had to take on debt to make it happen unfortunately, but even if our savings plan went well each year it was just never going to catch the runaway land and housing prices. I’m trying to tell myself it’s okay because it’s at least a way to turn my current fake financial resources into something real that I can at least use even if the bank owns it.
Land is probably one of the better things to get into debt for.
We’re now well over 500kg in harvest and I still haven’t weighed all of the squashes or spuds. There are more carrots and beers to come, and celeriac, parsnips, salsify, Jerusalem artichokes and oca I haven’t even started harvesting yet.
A lot of the weight has been tomatoes; it has been a stupendously good tomato year and the storage situation for jars of passata is getting dire. I’ve also donated at least 50kg of produce to the soup kitchen and there will be more of that too; it feels good to tithe my produce, and solves a storage problem for me. Tomatoes aren’t high in calories but we won’t get scurvy or potassium deficiency. And giving the tomato space to more spuds, squashes and dried beans wouldn’t be particularly difficult in harder times, and would probably reduce my workload.
I don’t know how to quantity my foraging range but I’ve had over 100kg from foraging this year too. I expect next year will be less, the top fruit this year has been hugely productive due to excellent weather during pollination season and a very sunny summer.
I’m hoping that’s correct, also trying to turn any financial resources I have into real ones. I’ll feel a lot better once I have access to shelter, water, heat and food even if it’s on a mortgage. And if we get a wage/price inflation spiral on the way down that will help.
Foraging is hard to quantify in terms of land area, for me it’s often public “waste” spaces or creeks that otherwise aren’t being productive anyway. This has been the best year for fruit in a decade, I’m probably good on jam and canned fruit for the coming year, not a mast year for the oaks though so I’ve only got 75lbs of them to process this winter, but going to try a serious amount of black walnut this year instead.
Bluejay, it’s great when I hear that my writing has helped people in some way to frame their practical activities. Sometimes I feel like writing is an indulgence of mine that’s held back more consequential practical work on my part, but words are one of my things, and they too can be consequential. So thank you! Indeed, being in that literary pantheon is better than any review. Truly honoured! When I was a teenager I read Steinbeck quite obsessively, though haven’t gone back to him in recent years. Can’t help feeling he connects with an ecological vision somehow. There’s also a common thread with Schumacher in the new book, particularly around distributism. Then there’s Conrad on colonialism…
Thanks also for that Kathryn, and for your inspiring experiments in creating food commons, food privates, and open country (as discussed in ‘Finding Lights’) in spite of impediments to land access … glad you enjoyed reading Finding Lights.
There is something ecological about Steinbeck, but I also can’t say I know what exactly. Colonialism was barely on my mind when I read Conrad in my teens, I was coming from a very restrictive canon of the King James Bible and Shakespeare (there must have been more I read but those predominate) and Heart of Darkness was one of my first experiences realizing the power of writing.
Having spent what feels like more time talking about farming this than actually growing food this year I also worry about words distracting from the practical. I have to remind myself though that’s still people out there who have never tasted a vine-ripe tomato and that might be the doorway to something more for them, and there are more who are interested in some form of homesteading, and I would like to see them succeed even while being honest. It’s work, you won’t make money, but you can grow a lot of food maybe just do that and share it(and change your expectations to what your land wants!). I recently had to inform an urban gardener that their location would only allow 4 hours of sunlight and that would probably restrict them to herbs and understory plants and then hadn’t even thought about solar aspect yet! So there’s a long way to go with the talking perhaps…
Here’s a link to a preview of the new book:
https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9781915294739&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=true
Wonderful! (you don’t change, Steve:)
A little light relief seems apropos…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So0616Z5uVU&list=RDSo0616Z5uVU&index=1
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/10/15/uea-publishes-a-green-food-communism-road-map-for-britain/
“… Use citizens’ assemblies … to engage and build public … consent for system-wide change, protecting it from culture war politics. …”
Hope the link works , if not just search wattsupwiththat . lots of links to gov thinking
“In Finding Lights… I pretty much take it as given that humanity’s destination is a small farm future and that there are no techno-fix or ecomodernist get out of jail free cards.” Good point, but then there is the land access problem for those who lack capital in the current System. Here is another way to look for solutions/adaptations.
I am very pleased that the “scrappy minority” (Love that term!) are discussing the land access problem. Some solutions/adaptations are already being used, like guerilla gardening and neighborhood foraging. But the paradigm shift that this involves can also be used in other areas. For example, I am recommending to everyone – that will listen! – to buy some silver coins. I started doing this in 2010 and watched as silver went up to $30 per ounce and then back down to $15 and then went up and down until the present steady rise in price, which is now at $54 per ounce. [I am using the price in US dollars because that is what people are used to. I buy in euros myself.] I have purchased all kinds of silver corns from governmental and private mints. I recently bought some Spanish 5-peseta coins from the 1870s, which I get from my local coin dealer for €2 over the spot price per coin. They are 90% silver, with .7234 ounce in each coin. There is also no VAT on these coins.
The reason to buy silver and gold is that it preserves the wealth you already have. It is not a return on investment – although the gold bugs and silver bugs could take profits in the current market if they wanted to. That is why a person needs to make another paradigm shift. Do not plan on selling your gold or silver. If you need liquidity for an emergency, you have it, and if you don’t even need your coins by the time you die, you can leave them to your children and grandchildren. My partner gives a bright, shiny silver coin to each of her grandchildren occasionally and they just love it. I will buy more coins as I can afford them over the next few years before I shuffle off this mortal coil. If my partner or her grandchildren need liquidity in the future, they will be there. You don’t want to become commodity poor. It is like being land poor but without the ability to grow crops. We were land poor back in Washington before we moved to France and even if we hadn’t fled the US, we would have had to sell out and downsize. We got a better deal by moving to France. Sweat equity wins in the end, dontcha know.
In a collapse scenario, you will be able to buy food with silver coins when you cannot barter or come to some sort of labor-sharing agreement. As I say so often, “Even the people who hate you will take silver and gold.” Coins are preferred because of the milled edges. (The standard preventive against shaving. Imagine my surprise when I got 25 Austrian Philharmonics and found out they do not have milled edges.) Back when I was a market gardener, I would have taken silver coins in exchange for food. I did get a bitcoin once, back when it was worth $15. I used it for online poker. (Yes, I should have kept it, but who knew? I thought it was a fly-by-night scam. Some investment analysts still think so.) Some commenters on the blogs I frequent are dismissive of using silver after collapse because they think the survivors will be as stupid as present day whackos and go-along-to-get-along types. What people see online and even at flea markets is a biased sample. And not in a good way! Reminds me of a Roches song from 1985, “Weeded Out.”
There are all kinds of coin dealers in the US and UK. Fewer in Europe, but they are here. If you want to buy online you can do that too. However, it is a good idea to build a relationship with your local coin dealer. Buy a coin or two and then stop in occasionally to see what he/she has gotten in. The silver market is notoriously volatile, but the variance is not your enemy. You can use the macro view and buy the dips on the micro level. Right now, silver is necessary in the solar panel industry and for wiring in missiles, both growth industries. It is also a source of liquidity for over-leveraged hedge funds AND there is currently a short squeeze in the London market. Any silver coins you buy now will likely go up in value against a debased dollar, pound and euro PLUS you have them in case of collapse. This is an example of the short-term, mid-term, long-term paradigm. Look for solutions/adaptations that have benefits in the short-, mid- and long-term. Stashing away a few silver coins fits this paradigm very well.
If you look at the $ to oil price , oil is cheap roughly 43 barrels of oil to 1 oz of gold that is the highest on record and tells you the value of the dollar to commodities is dropping ( inflation ) . Silver is a” industrial” metal used in all sorts of things , it volatile but not as bad as gold .
The other thing is that if you buy coins that are currency , old us silver dollars , old UK half crowns , silver six pences , they can not be confiscated by governments and melted down , that is illegal .
Good points. When the US declared gold ownership illegal in 1933, it depended on voluntary cooperation of citizens turning in their gold to banks. This worked because the US was a more cohesive society, unlike today. The same seizure is unlikely today because the world is not on a gold standard and the logistical problems are much greater. Also, silver was not seized. When Gerald Ford signed a law allowing US citizens to own gold in 1974, it was a big yawn. China gains a large measure of decentralized social security by encouraging the “gold bead” phenomenon. It is possible to buy very small amounts of pure gold in the form of beads as a form of savings and it is a hip behavior for young people to do this. They even keep their gold beads in a jar on the living room coffee table as a sign of social status. There are a few paranoid videos on YouTube about gold seizure, but the conspiracy theorists are mostly focused on seizure of digital assets. Of course there is the old saying, “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” LOL Here is a very good blurb on this topic.
https://colemetalsgroup.com/what-really-happened-in-1933-and-why-the-government-isnt-coming-for-your-gold/
If I still lived in the US, I would be buying as much junk silver (pre-1965 silver coins) as I could find. The value of this in a collapse scenario is well illustrated in James Howard Kunstler’s World Made By Hand series (2008-2014). Kunstler was a journalist critiquing the development of suburbs before he delved into dystopian analysis and science-fiction, so he brings a good structure to his novels. His writing is a bit lurid sometimes, but his underlying theses are sound. As I say, I go back and forth between Kunstler’s Long Emergency (2005) and Greer’s Long Descent (2008) in my projections for the future. A Small Farm Future fits into this interstitial dilemma. I cannot get a Kindle version of Finding Lights until November 11th, so I will see how it fits in to my own projections then.
20 years ago you could still find 50% silver quarters in your change , there is still the odd one about but very rare now , the currency is now so devalued that copper pennies are now worth three cents scrap value , they are being withdrawn and replaced by copper dipped monkey metal of unknown heritage ,probably the dross from a steel works .
Just like Rome the devaluation of currency will end up making it worthless .
A news article from the mid east .
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/qatar-may-halt-lng-exports-to-eu-over-excessive-red-tape/
The EU is tying itself up in red tape to the point it can no longer function . It seems that they have managed to find enough jobs for incompetent relatives that like all other empires they drown in red tape .
Buy wood . lots of it !
Ha! Yes, modern US pennies are zinc with a couple of microns of copper plated on.
There was precedent for zinc pennies during WWII when all copper was sequestered for war use.
Quarters and dimes are mostly zinc now too.
About 10 years ago I bought a bunch of pre-1964 half dollar coins for around $7 each.
I stopped buying them when the price went up to $8.
I told myself that I would have made a good investment when each coin could sell for $20.
That happened last week.
I don’t quite understand why gold and silver coins in particular are supposed to be so valuable in a collapse or crisis situation. I am sure liquid currency is useful, but why those metals rather than shiny rocks or pretty bits of shell or weathered glass? My understanding is that currency only works if people think it will continue to hold value, but why do people think silver will hold value but a particularly shiny rock won’t? I have been saving bits of copper pipe I find by the side of the road, though. Copper isn’t as valuable as silver or gold and it’s harder to carry a length of pipe in your pocket, but it’s hard to beat “free” as the initial investment.
When I was studying in Aberdeen I heard tell of a man who bought a bottle of whisky whenever he could, and sold a bottle whenever he was short of cash. Whisky is a bit harder to carry around than a coin, or even a length of copper pipe.
When I got married the older ladies at my church were astonished and very worried about our decision for me not to have an engagement ring. It wasn’t just for show, they assured me: the point of having a ring with a big valuable rock in it was that if I were jilted at the altar, or if we later fell on hard times, we could sell the engagement ring rather than having to pawn our wedding bands. But the second hand market for jewellery is not exactly in the realm of the kind of money that would get us out of trouble if e.g. my spouse were to be unemployed for period of time.
Rarity value , wether your currency is yuan , pounds , dollars or euro , its paper and therefore can be printed at will , gold silver or any other metal can’t be whisked into existence by a government treasury . Yes it is worth something because people believe it is worth something , in Weimar Germany people lost faith in paper and used it for lighting fires , Zimbabwe ended up with ten trillion notes that were used as toilet paper .
The US dollar is ” backed by the full faith of the US people ” that’s what it says on it , until its not , then its toilet paper .
If you had bought a few gold sovereigns , or Kruger Rand’s , there value has gone up in comparison to the pound sterling , you can still buy a savil row suit for a gold sovereign, the same price in gold as it was in 1900 .
Sure — but why gold and silver in particular? Just because people already expect them to be valuable?
Does that expectation change if we are in a situation where a Savile Row suit isn’t particularly useful?
Why gold and silver , because they are rare , found in very small quantities .in hard to get at places . As Walter says gold can be tested for purity , that is what is called the ” touch stone ” from long ages past the touchstone was used in trade to ensure the purity of gold , it cant be faked . silver was tested by weigh very very accurate weight . and they did not flinch from removing the hand of whoever tried to fake it .
The savil row suit is just a example , you could buy one for $20.57 cents in 1900 today it will cost $4250 . that’s inflation in action .
Yes Kathryn, you are exactly correct.
Gold and silver are valuable only because we believe they are valuable.
‘Money’ exists only in our minds. And there have been, and doubtless will again be situations where potatoes are more valuable than gold, and then the money economy breaks down.
And since money only needs to satisfy our imagination, scarcity and durability are not requirements. See paper (or digital) money.
One historically common theme with money has been to use a commodity that was relatively uncommon, but got used up and replaced at a more or less constant rate. I think it might have been fun to live in the cacao bean economy, for instance. And I can imagine a dystopian fantasy where bullets serve as currency.
But overall, I have a bad attitude about money generally. It seems to me that aside from the possibility of creating ‘wealth’ from thin air, the main benefit of money is that it makes your valuable stuff much easier for the powerful to steal.
” . . . why those metals rather than shiny rocks or pretty bits of shell or weathered glass? My understanding is that currency only works if people think it will continue to hold value, but why do people think silver will hold value but a particularly shiny rock won’t?”
Gold and silver have been around for a long, long time and proven successful. Therefore people trust them. As for shiny rocks; obsidian, flint and pipestone were valuable trading commodities in pre-Columbian America. A rare, durable metal for currency trade requires a complex society. If we are bombed back to the Stone Age and living in disconnected tribal communities, then we might be using barley again, which was the first currency in Sumer. Or even bits of scavenged copper. So keep collecting those bits!
Bottom line. If you were to walk up to my door and offer me a 1 ounce silver Brittania for a half-bushel of potatoes, I would be happy to make the trade. Am I so unusual? Maybe right now in the stupid world we currently live in. But not after collapse. There will be plenty of people willing to do the same kind of trade their great-great-grandparents did.
There are ways to check the purity of gold and silver, but a silver coin with a milled edge purchased from a reputable dealer is likely to be the real thing. After collapse, there will likely be crooked traders and you will have to be careful. But then again, you will have people you trust and people you don’t – just like now.
@Walter Haugen
David Graeber in Debt: The First 5000 Years says that it is tax that creates the demand for any currency.
If you have to pay (unavoidable) tax in silver coins (minted by TPTB as a monopoly), then you have an incentive to accept them as payment for goods or services.
I am no fan of David Graeber as an anthropologist, although his work as an activist with Occupy Wall Street was admirable. But then I am critical of most analysts in all fields of study. I haven’t finished Dawn of Everything yet, but so far I find it to be a rationale for the state. The review of DoE in the New York Review of Books was quite good. Wengrow didn’t like the review and his reply is worth reading too. Graeber’s book on anarchy I found lacking. Nowadays the mention of his name confers instant credibility, the way Lewis Binford’s name used to in the 1960s. I don’t buy it. Debt is on my reading list but not prioritized.
Tax creating demand for currency is too simplistic. One could also say tribute creates demand, but then tax as another form of tribute rears its ugly head from the feeding frenzy of first causes. Then you are back to the inherent violence of the system again. Contract creates demand too. The orientation towards first causes is a mine field.
My three points for raising the silver issue were:
1) People who cannot get access to land can still do something for their future.
2) Silver stacking has a low entry point and silver is readily available. For the price of a restaurant meal, you can buy some.
3) Considering silver is – in itself – a paradigm shift. The change from the investing mindset to the preservation of resources mindset is a big deal. Most investors buying silver don’t get it.
We are in deep shit. The reason we call it a polycrisis is because interactive variables stifle solutions. (Or adaptations if you buy into the false dichotomy of problems/predicaments.) Once someone grasps the concept of using the easily available resources right in front of them, they have increased their strength and confidence. Silver as paradigm shift.
An add on to my reply. If you are walking along in the Yorkshire Dales you are likely to get sheep shit on your boots. Only a small problem because of the minimum effort needed to clean your boots. If you fall into a manure lagoon on an industrial dairy farm, you have exponentially increased the scale of your problems. We are now in the exponential phase.
@Walter Haugen.
Silver and gold are only viable if they are exchanged for currency.
I’m not sure a car dealership, say, would accept silver coins as payment on a vehicle.
It’s “The State” that creates the value/demand for any currency.
Gold and Silver coins need to be standardised for people to have faith in the metal content and it’s acceptablity by others.
It’s the power (violence )of “The State”, with it’s monopoly on coin (currency) creation, that creates the conditions for Gold and Silver as a means of exchange.
Tax being the ultimate driver of uptake.
We went away from the gold standard because, golds scarsity, became a hinderance to economic growth.
As “The State” fails, I’m not sure the conditions will allow for the viability of gold and silver as a means of exchange.
I can see a gallon of petrol having much more purchasing power.
Gold and Silver were in abundance in Peru. But the Inca never used either as currency. They had a system of knots (quipu) to keep track of transactions.
Gold and Silver was used for their asthetic qualities and the the Inca found the Conquistadores lust for gold baffling.
I’m a big fan of David Graeber. I’ve always found his writing optomistic, in a way.
Give Debt: The First 5000 Years a go. It’s a mighty tome if you can find the energy to wade through it.
John Adamas – I started a new thread at the bottom of this post in reply to your latest comments. See below.
You might want to pay more attention to those older church ladies who were alive in the 1950s when Britain was still rationing. (Up until mid-1954.) They have survival skills – physical, mental and spiritual – that most of us can only dimly comprehend. I suspect they have a sovereign or two hidden away.
Not one of these particular church ladies was born before 1950, they grew up in unprecedentedly good times and were told about bad times by their parents. Most of their wealth is because they bought property at a point when the cost of a house was three or maybe four times their and their husband’s combined annual income. They may well have some silver coins stashed away somewhere, but habits carried over from previous generations aren’t necessarily the same thing as survival skills; it depends on context.
I am lucky we have neighbors who remember the Nazis. One of them died last year just shy of his 100th birthday.
And just a an add on to the gold discussion , if all the gold ever mined on the planet were put in one spot it would make a cube seventy two feet square . That’s it all there is , and gold does not degrade rust or evaporate , gold buried centuries ago comes up dirty but complete .
I grew up in the immediate post 2’nd war period , with rationing still ongoing , the good times for blue collar did not really start until the mid 70’s , . Dads first car was a 1936 Austin seven , bought in 1964 , I grew up on canned sardines and baked beans , fish and chips were a real treat , my first job paid one pound seven and six for 45 hours . coal was rationed to 112 pound sack a week which mother did all the cooking on .
Hello!
I am wondering if you could make your book available on Australian Amazon to enable people in Australasian areas to buy this without paying enormous freight prices? It may not be possible…
Many thanks
Zoe
Hi Zoe, thanks for that, I’ve asked my publisher about it – I’ll get back to you once I’ve heard from them.
Message from my publisher in response to Zoe’s query:
We supply books to Australia via our US warehouse, so it’s usually about 6 weeks from US publication (as the books have to be shipped over). But it’s already listed on Amazon Oz:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Finding-Lights-Dark-Age-Sharing/dp/1915294738/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._GMhFVd8AgdUZvgUVnE-THs6Uu1YC6Eb18tWisUWxm1JUkoKk8Sp_nlebACng8ryhs-ZBX7bjl9Cc0P5pdMGhtklO9TJMhfSWC7XOWyVIjTnFqWKNvycKOiHG90eFU0gVWKV4tkRffT66QF5Kh7sbXLykbMAk1nOjIBIdnM3bXK39hJz-nwWw_zgshDgUZ2CIZZxsPusz39kSFBmNPpvkx7n2xgfUzzgNcTGBlA-P6P9TxAV8fdTnmlS45HtsjgEJcyNP9tO5dDsMvikd1sihHXUjbrhZNES4wKUgY2ZKH8.w3NwfioAtn-943ObtaxfKiS12gOTE9sePxU3EjEzkxk&qid=1761569695&sr=8-1
Many thanks Chris!
Those in the US can now purchase “Finding Lights…” from the publisher’s website with a “45% off everything” discount code, through October 23.
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Thanks for the various discussions above. Sorry, I’m a bit short on time atm to keep up with comments.
I found the gold/silver discussion interesting. I wonder if anyone has any further comments on using useful agricultural commodities as currency, and the relationship to centralized politics. In ‘Finding Lights…’ I mention briefly the Appalachian whisky rebellion … whisky as a peasant currency, meeting Hamilton’s implacable opposition as an alternative power to the state. And also the sub-treasury idea of the North American populists around the turn of the 20th century. The potential of grain to work as a sophisticated store of value and means of exchange, if it can be kept out of centralized state hands … which maybe it can’t.
On Graeber, well I’m a fan. I can’t really see how DoE can be viewed as a rationale for the state – perhaps something worthy of debate. I wrote my own review of DoE here, which touches on some of the same issues raised by Appiah in the NYRB: https://chrissmaje.com/2021/12/from-the-dawn-of-everything-to-a-small-farm-future-a-review-of-graeber-wengrow/. But Appiah’s ‘we will not find our future in the past’ view needs a lot of critical unpacking!
I very much like Walter’s sheep shit vs slurry lagoon comparison. Of course, you won’t find a lagoon of sheep slurry – one of many reasons to speak up for sheep against their current demonisers…
…talking of which, I see that Mr Monbiot is still writing about cutting animal products as ‘the best dietary decision you can make for environmental, humanitarian and public health purposes’. Which is probably true, but as I see it the more pressing need now is to try to preserve the livestock diversity our descendents will need to get by in the future.
On the merit of whiskey currency. In my review of FLIDA I did mention Alf Hornborg’s book Liquidate where he proposes different currencies for different spheres of circulation, to reduce the commodifying tendencies of money and markets. Did you read it Chris?
Dear Chris, congratulations to the book. I have just published a review in Swedish, https://tradgardenjorden.substack.com/p/postkollapsisk-utforskning
I hope I have made justice to your comprehensive book. Obviously I could not discuss all the aspects of this rich text. I did point to, and elaborated a bit, that
1. collapse is taken for granted without too much detail.
2. You have a very humble and open attitude in your writing about what could happen and what is best, even if you in the end have some main lines of thoughts.
3. You confirm that humans are complex animals who are not inherently good or bad and that the future will (also) be messy.
4. You point towards distributism, agrarian populism and immanentism and some other concepts which will be ”new” for many people (even if not new for followers of your blog). This will challenge some readers and hopefully make them question some of their perspectives.
5. You claim that the left and right in Western countries are still based on the same exploitive logic of liberal modernism and a view on the individual as independent. They also have a similar view of the virtue of “development” at the expense of local livelihoods.
6. You present the foursome, families, households, commons och communities as major, complementary building block for the future, as they have also been in the past. There you also ”rehabilitate” the family from its rather tarnished rep among “progressives”.
7. You emphasize the need for safe tenure (although I think you don’t use that term?) of land while also reject the modern day view of private property as exclusive and some kind of human right.
8. You also discuss that there will be states, trade and money, but that these will have considerably different roles.
Some reflection :
On point 1, I understand and agree that you couldn’t spend 50 pages on explaining why the current ”civilisation” is bound to collapse. My concern here is that how this collapse will unfold and which factors will be most prominent probably has a big impact on what comes afterwards as human societies and minds after all are fairly “path dependent. Any comment by you on that? (this was not mentioned in my review)
On 6 and 8: As far as I can understand you envision a technosphere (no cars and no solar panel, I believe) that is much smaller and trimmed down and uses a lot less capital. The question is how and who will organise things like mining and iron works so that you can get a scythe? Will there be hospitals and what kind of treatments could you expect them to accomplish? Do you see this as endeavours of the states, the cities, monasteries or some kind of commons. And how will they be financed”? (this point was mentioned in the review). And how do we safeguard so that the needed superstructures don’t develop into new centres of power, control and exploitation.
Thanks for that Gunnar, I appreciate you writing a review! To your Point 1, my answer is that I’ve already written a lot about the forces driving collapse, especially in ‘A Small Farm Future’ – the first in a loose trilogy, to which ‘Finding Lights’ is the concluding book, so I didn’t want to rehash all that, especially because it draws one into debating all sorts of minutiae with ecomodernists, techno-fixers and opti-progressives which I’ve grown tired of. So I just wanted to write a book that assumed collapse from the outset. But I agree that a lot depends on how collapse happens, how fast, what drives it etc. I didn’t want to get too hung up on projecting particular scenarios for various reasons, preferring to focus on some wider generic issues. But of course more specific scenarios would also be interesting.
6 and 8 are fascinating questions which I think perhaps I should come back to in a later post. Basically I envisage states offering less and less of these things to most people, which therefore requires them to provide them for themselves, inevitably at a much lower material quantity and quality than we’re now accustomed to in the rich countries. But possibly not that different from many poorer people in poorer countries, drawing what they can from an economy that gives them little buy-in. Hence scythes rather than cars, since the former are a lot easier and cheaper to make. But I’d be interested to push this thinking further in due course, and I’d be interested in other people’s thoughts. Likewise with safeguards against the superstructures – part of the point of my stranger king arguments touched on in the next post!
John Adams: I am going to start a new reply since the Reply function gets so attenuated. Hope you can find it. I am going to critique your last reply.
1) “Silver and gold are only viable if they are exchanged for currency”
This is just wrong. Currency is not the only measure of viability. Imagine a world where fiat currencies are worthless. What are you going to use for trade? Labor and gross commodiites are unwieldy. It is likely (>50%) trade was one of the selective pressures that facilitated the mutation for larger brains in the human species. It is also likely trade was critical to the Homo erectus expansion out of Africa around 1.85 million years ago. In short, humans NEED trade to survive. That will become more apparent in a blasted world of stranded assets and ruined civilizations. I am confident that in a post-currency world, gold and silver bullion will have a place – because they already exist. Coins that were already used for currency are more convenient than scales, touchstones, pinging, etc.
2) “I’m not sure a car dealership, say, would accept silver coins as payment on a vehicle.”
There won’t be car dealerships.
3) “It’s “The State” that creates the value/demand for any currency. Gold and Silver coins need to be standardised for people to have faith in the metal content and it’s acceptablity by others.”
There won’t be a “state” as we know it in 2025. But there will be clans, tribes, bands, chiefdoms and other unknown-as-yet ways to organize human societies. And a 20-franc gold Napoleon or silver 5-peseta coin from 1873 was standardized long ago. Bullion in the form of bars and bits will likely be viable too, but they will need weights and measures, just like they did thousands of years ago.
4) “It’s the power (violence )of “The State”, with it’s monopoly on coin (currency) creation, that creates the conditions for Gold and Silver as a means of exchange.”
That is just wrong too. States don’t create conditions for currency. They exploit what is already there. The need for trade creates the conditions that the states exploit. People use what they have. If there are surplus stores of grain and other food crops (like cattle), they become a means of exchange. The Highland clans in the 16th century did just fine using cattle. Until John Knox sapped their will. In the blasted post-civilizational world, there will be leftover coins and piles of worthless paper money. The coins that will have value for trade will be those that can be melted down and still retain value for artisanal and industrial use. Copper coins would be worth something too, if there are any still around.
5) “Tax being the ultimate driver of uptake.”
This is a meaningless sentence to me. I assume it comes from Graeber. What is your meaning of “uptake?”
6) “We went away from the gold standard because, golds scarsity, became a hinderance to economic growth.”
Not true. Nixon went off the gold standard in 1971 because of the deficit funding of the Vietnam War. Johnson created the problem but Nixon would have had to stop the War in order to rein in the exponential increase in deficit spending. It was easier to default to a fiat currency than actually admit that the War was immoral and we were losing anyway. France precipitated the crisis in 1968 with their excessive demands for exchanging dollars for gold, but they didn’t create the crisis. The US was hoist on its own petard. And of course, us “dirty hippie commie pinkos” were demanding an end to the War and Nixon couldn’t stomach admitting we were right.
Keep in mind that the financialization and weaponization of fiat currency is a relatively new phenomenon. It only got going after US President Clinton greatly expanded globalization. The use of a gold-backed currency did not hinder economic growth in the 1960s. And besides, it is no longer about economic growth. The post-WW II growth model is dead ‘n stinkin’. The smart economies are transitioning to managing contraction. (Why do you think so-called “degrowth” or “décroissance” is such a hot topic nowadays?)
7) “As “The State” fails, I’m not sure the conditions will allow for the viability of gold and silver as a means of exchange.”
You don’t have to be sure. The question is, “Is it a good bet?” As someone who survived on his poker skills in the past, I think I qualify for judging a good bet. Gold and silver bullion in the form of coins is a good bet. Of course, “Pocket aces doesn’t always win the pot. But that’s the way to bet!” This does NOT mean you will not occassionally suffer cracked aces.
Don’t forget the short-, mid-, and long-term aspect. If you want to sell your silver coins because you have a household emergency in a couple of years, they will likely have kept up with inflation in value. Meanwhile, you can add to your stack on the dips. When I posted my original comment, the price of silver was 54 USD per ounce. Now it is 48 USD. That is a buying opportunity. If I had more cashflow, I would be buying. I will probably buy a couple of silver coins after my next social security check.
8) “I can see a gallon of petrol having much more purchasing power.”
There won’t be petrol in the post-collapse world. This is where the Mad Max scenarios fall apart. Internal combustion engines need a massive distribution system to be viable. And gasoline (petrol) degrades quickly.
9) “Gold and Silver were in abundance in Peru. But the Inca never used either as currency. They had a system of knots (quipu) to keep track of transactions. Gold and Silver was used for their asthetic qualities and the the Inca found the Conquistadores lust for gold baffling.”
An anomalous case does not prove an argument. The Incas had the wheel too, but they only used it for toys. The environment favored llamas and alpacas. The Incas did not have chattel slavery either, but they had forced labor called mit’a, which was a form of corvée. I have gone round ‘n round on whether corvée was slavery or not, so I won’t subject you to that.
10) “I’m a big fan of David Graeber. I’ve always found his writing optomistic, in a way. Give Debt: The First 5000 Years a go. It’s a mighty tome if you can find the energy to wade through it.”
As I say, Graeber’s Debt is on my reading list. After I finish Dawn of Everything and Lyn Alden’s Broken Money (2023), I may give it a shot. But then there are many other books that interest me. My current read is on how Germany made the Great Depression worse. It is titled 1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler by Tobias Straumann (2020) . Here is part of the advertising blurb on Amazon, which is pertinent to our discussion.
“The origins of the collapse lay in Germany’s large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold-backed currencies, which condemned the German government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As political resistance to this policy of austerity grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default.” Keep in mind that the excessive war reparations imposed on Germany by France and the UK were one of the reasons Germany collapsed, NOT the use of a gold-backed currency. Hitler took advantage of a situation that already existed, similar to what Trump is doing now.
The infamous bottom line. You obviously don’t buy the idea of preparing for a post-collapse world by hoarding a commodity that has proven itself over thousands of years. Not a problem.
Footnote from my third book:
“Trade is number five on the list of the ten major advances of the human species. These signal achievements are: 1) bipedalism, 2) the opposable thumb, 3) culture, 4) fire, 5) trade, 6) grotesquely enlarged brains, 7) language, 8) agriculture, 9) complex societies, and 10) writing.”
A review of the new book:
Building an Agrarian Localist Present: A Review of Finding Lights in a Dark Age
A vision of the future.
Hadden Turner
November 7, 2025
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2025/11/building-an-agrarian-localist-present-a-review-of-finding-lights-in-a-dark-age/