More on rebuilding culture
A couple weeks ago, I posted a question about which ten works you'd choose to rebuild culture after most of humanity is gone.
One thing I find interesting about almost all the resulting lists I've seen: almost all the works on them are from Western European cultures. Regardless of why that might be, I'd like to propose a variant:
What five works of fiction or art from non-Western-European cultures would you want, in addition to your previous list of ten works (which may already have included some non-Western-European works), after the apocalypse when these are going to be the only fiction (or art) available to your surviving population of 1000 people until they start creating new works? And why pick those particular works?
I confess that I don't have the cultural background to answer that question. (And note that I cleverly avoided answering the original version as well.) But I'm hoping that people who are more familiar with such works will have some thoughts.
I think the meta-questions here are at least as interesting as the question itself. What is the goal of rebuilding culture in this way? Are you trying to reshape literary/artistic culture to match your beliefs? Are you trying to bring as much of the existing canon through the apocalypse as possible? Do you want to try for cultural diversity in the descendants of a group of 1000 people, or do you want to try to shape the new world into a monoculture for shared goals and ease of teamwork? (Of course, a lot also depends on who those 1000 are—are they randomly chosen from around the world? Do they have the same cultural backgrounds as each other, or different ones?) Do you want to save the finest works, your favorite works, the most interesting ones, the most controversial ones, the most inspirational ones, the funniest ones, some mix of those options? Several of you already essayed answers to such questions; thank you! Further discussion welcome.
Feel free to post answers in your own journals, of course, but if you do, post a comment in mine with a link to yours. (If you're reading this on LJ, as always, please follow the link to my journal page and post any comments there.)
