A couple more podcasts

Both of these podcasts deal with elements of the new world. In the first, I explore some possibilities for repurposing old world technology for a newer, more beneficial use in paradise.

In the second podcast, I describe what appears to be a shift in the general attitude towards the idea of eternal human life and offer some suggestions on how to help someone overcome a fear of forever.

The Paradise Trap

It’s been interesting, over the last few years, to see how the climate of JW fiction has evolved. Before I wrote All Things New, I’d read some short stories by other Witnesses about paradise and the resurrection. Some were only a page or two, while others went on for a few thousand words. (To my knowledge, there were no full-length paradise novels available prior to 2013, but if I’m wrong about this please feel free to comment below.) Since 2013 however, a whole slew of JW authors has emerged, each with their own take on what life in the new world might be like.

Despite the increase in authors, though, it seems that many paradise stories fall into a similar pattern. It goes like this: a character shows up in the new world (the Guest) and is introduced to  various aspects of paradise life by a personal guide (the Mentor), who explains why and how things are the way they are.

The reason for setting the story up this way is obvious: the Guest becomes a stand-in for the reader, who has been thrown into this fictional version of paradise, and whom the writer assumes must be curious about each aspect of life, and thus the writer goes about explaining things as carefully and as detailed as possible, doing so through the Mentor.

Yes, this is precisely what I did for my first novel. Mitch Hanson was the Guest, and the various characters he met and interviewed along the way became his Mentors. And no, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this premise. In fact, you’ll find the same set-up in much of popular and classic fiction.

But there is a trap, so writers beware. Because if the author isn’t careful, the book can easily turn into a lengthy exposition about their version of the future. Instead of a story, it reads like a series of small essays in which the author explains why he or she feels paradise will be a certain way. Instead of focusing on the story, the characters, and the underlying themes, the writer finds himself or herself contriving all sorts of scenarios in order to shoehorn in various conversations about why the resurrection has occurred in a certain way, or why technology does or doesn’t exist, or why some other element of paradise life has defied common expectations.

Again, I speak from experience. When I wrote All Things New, I knew that there were some ideas I really wanted to talk about, and so I went about squeezing them into the story via dialogue between the Mentors and the Guest, or debriefings, or found documents, or whatever else I could think of. And at the time, this felt novel and exciting. Looking back, I realize this is pretty much the go-to for stories set in paradise. But can these lengthy forms of exposition be sufficient to hold up the framework of the stories they are trying to tell? Sometimes.

This isn’t to say that these stories won’t find readers; I believe they will. I think Witnesses will always enjoy reading about various versions of paradise, regardless of how compelling the stories at their cores are. However, it’s my suspicion that many readers have begun to tire of novels and novellas that are beginning to feel a bit like soapboxes for the authors’ personal visions of the future.

I think one of the most difficult challenges of writing is not knowing what to write, but what not to write. Over-exposition is the demise of many a budding author. It can be painful to cut and trim and edit out beloved chunks of dialogue, explanation, background info, and all those other bits that spent so much time marinating in the author’s head. But for real, grounded stories, cutting and trimming is exactly what must be done.

So if you’re writing a paradise novel, here’s my challenge to you: just tell the story you want to tell. Refrain from explaining and defending every aspect of your version of the new world. Try not to build your story around explanations.

Remember, even though this is all based on future realities, we’re ultimately writing fiction.

So you want to build a house?

Designing and building your own house is an aspect of the New World that many of us look forward to eagerly. In a world where poor quality, environmentally harmful, and otherwise hazardous building materials (not to mention corner-cutting building techniques) have become the norm, this is completely understandable. Just think, one day soon we'll actually be able to design and construct the house of our dreams!

But what, exactly, goes into actually building a house? While we have no idea what kinds of houses we'll eventually be making, it's likely that somewhere along the line we'll learn how to re-purpose materials directly from the natural environment. Truth be told, these types of homes typically last much longer and require less insulation (and are thus cheaper to heat and cool) than the ones most of us live in.

Still, building a home from natural materials is no small task. It requires a plethora of skills (tree felling, woodworking and carpentry, masonry, brickmaking, etc etc) and much forethought. The result, though, can be breathtaking.

Check out this video below from someone who's actually done it:

A description from the uploader of the video:

This is a documentary movie uncovering the process of building a wooden house with hand tools from local materials starting from forest till the living space.

I built my house from trees that I felled with an axe and two man crosscut saw in my own forest. I did it following the research of old carpenter's calendar that coniferous trees should be felled in January's first days when the new moon rises and the deciduous trees should be felled in the winter time during the old moon. In winter time trees are sleeping and the juice and moisture content is very low in them. As time passes timber felled in winter becomes light and strong.

In the building process I used mostly traditional carpenters hand tools - axes, hand saws, timber framing chisels and slicks, old Stanley planes, augers, draw knives and mostly human energy. All the ground work for fundaments and the basement earth digging was done by hand with shovels. The foundation consists mostly of bigger and smaller rocks and boulders. Lime, sand and concrete mixture are using only in small amounts - to hold the boulders together. The visible part over the ground level - boulder mosaic has been masoned with hand split local granite.

The House has been built based on the western part of Latvia - Kurland/Kurzeme (German influence) historical wooden architecture typical technique - Timber Frame construction with sliding log walls between the posts. House is two carpentry technique union - Timber Frame (that is typical in France, Germany, Great Britain, North America and other countries) and traditional Latvian log building technique, between the logs using moss from the local swamp.

In the walls, timber frame and roof construction there I used only wood joints and wooden pegs to hold the main construction together - no nails, screws or steel plates. Walls are insulated with 250mm thick dry pine and larch shaving layer (leftover from the local cabinet makers workshop). Overall exterior wall thickness is 50cm. In the walls (except wind vapour breathable membrane over the roof) has not been used any plastic or modern synthetic materials.

To preserve the wood from the spoiling, fame posts, sills, top beams and final cladding boards are treated with fire and pine tar mixed with Tung oil. This wood preservation technique was adapted from the Japanese traditional wood preservation technique Shou Sugi Ban (焼杉板).

Exterior cladding boards recoating each 10-15 years Tung oil and pine or birch tar mixture, the house can last more than 500 years. As an example is taken Norwegian stave churches that stands more than 500 years until nowadays.

Roofing is three layer white oak shingles (each 10mm thick, 120mm wide and 720mm long) laid in two directional technique. Overall amount of shingles used is 15 000 pieces. Roof walls are insulated with ecological wood fibre wool and wood fibre panels. Over the wood fibre panels are plastered natural plaster - mixture of sand, clay powder, lime, linen fibre, salt, wheat flour. Overall thickness of the plaster is 20mm and over all amount of plaster used on the walls are 5000 kilos. It works also as thermal mass and improves energy performance.

Exterior measurements of the house is 6.5 x 13 meters. Living space in both floors are 120sq/m. The house is being heated with clay plastered brick bread oven and smaller oven made of clay tiles in the kitchen. To heat up both floors of the house, when outside it is minus 10 degrees (Celsium) only small oven is heated once a day. When freeze gets below -15, -20 C, we heat up the bread oven. Once it is heated, because of it’s thermal mass of 5 tons, it keeps the warmth 2-3 days. To heat up all the house (120 sq/m) in the winter time we use not more than 4 m3 of dry firewood. This is 2nd winter we are living there and we still heat up the house with the leftovers of lumber from the building process. And it will be enough for 3 more years.

I have fulfilled my vision to a build natural, ecological house with high thermal efficiency, low energy consumption, sustainable, using local materials such as - wood, stone, old and new clay bricks, moss, linen fibre, clay, water, lime, wheat flour, salt and wood shavings.

--Jacob, carpenter, craftsman and founder of John Neeman Tools.

The New World

( I've been writing some children's poetry lately and thought I'd share a sample. Enjoy!)

In the New World,
What will you do?
Will you sail the seven seas?
Will you learn to play the flute?

In the New World,
What will you be?
A carpenter? An architect?
A zoologist trainee?

In the New World,
Where will you go?
Across the endless oceans,
Or to the depths below?

In the New World,
What will you eat?
The sweetest rhubarb pie?
The coldest ice cream treat?

In the New World,
Where will you live?
On a mountaintop?
In a field of katydids?

In the New World,
Who will you greet?
A resurrected ancestor?
Someone from down the street?

We cannot be certain,
Exactly what’s in store,
But the New World will be amazing
Of that, I am quite sure!

Your Future Home...

In the New World, what kind of house will you live in?

This has always been an interesting question for me to ponder, and for a variety of reasons. First, as someone who appreciates design and architecture, I often wonder how our homes will look on the other side of Armageddon. It’s likely, I suppose, that in the beginning we’ll build homes with standardized designs. This will make things somewhat more efficient. (It’s also possible that we’ll use modular construction methods, similar to what we’re seeing with recent branch and Kingdom Hall construction.) But as times moves onward, I’d expect to see more creative and innovative home and structural designs.

Secondly, I often wonder about what methods and materials we’ll use to build our homes. In preparation for writing All Things New, one of the research topics that I really delved into was eco-friendly architecture and construction methods. There are some really amazing things being developed these days, and I suspect that some of them may carry on into the future. I thought I’d write about them here in a post, and share some of the images that I think could be glimpses into our future homes.

Bioconcrete
Concrete is the world’s most popular building material, and for good reason. It can be made easily, formed into all sorts of imaginative shapes, and, if maintained properly, can last for decades. But even concrete is no match for the natural elements. Eventually, with enough exposure to moisture, cracks will form along its surfaces, leading to corrosion.

Henk Jonkers, a microbiologist of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, believes he may have a solution to this problem–bioconcrete.

Bioconcrete is mixed just like regular concrete, but contains an extra ingredient, a special bacteria. The bacteria lies dormant in the dried concrete structure until cracks form over time, exposing the inside of the concrete to water, which breaks open biodegradable plastic capsules containing calcium lactate, the “food” that the bacteria needs to feed on. As the bacteria germinates, it feeds on the lactate, combines with the calcium, and forms limestone, binding the concrete back together.

So, theoretically, we could use bioconcrete or something like it to create structures requiring little maintenance that could last for centuries. Cool, huh?

Solar Paths & Roads
We’ve drilled the Earth for gases, oils, and minerals, much of it in the name of satisfying our need for energy. The result, as we all know, has been untold harm to ourselves and the Earth itself. We’ll need to find a solution to this problem, and it might be solar power. It’s free, clean, and available practically everywhere. The problem, however, has always been surface area.

The reason we don’t see things like solar cars, motorcycles, and planes at the consumer level is that the amount of space needed to soak up enough energy from the sun’s rays is usually much larger than the thing needing to be powered. (As an example, Solar Impulse 2, the plane that recently embarked on a trans-continental flight relying solely on its solar-chargeable batteries for power, had to be designed with a wingspan of 236 feet to accommodate the unwieldy solar panels, and it can only carry a single pilot. By contrast, an Airbus A380, which relies on jet fuel, has about the same wingspan, but flies six times faster and can carry about 500 people.)

Of course, I’d imagine that with time, solar panels will become smaller, more efficient, and easier to produce. But one interesting solution we may see in the New World are solar paths and roadways. Instead of climbing onto our grooves to install solar panels, the panels would be on the ground. Potentially, we could build a house anywhere along the roadway and “plug in”. Voila! Instant, free energy. Other benefits? Imagine roads with built-in LEDs, which would light up when you walked along them at night, or sensors built into the panels to give warning signals regarding road dangers up ahead. A cool idea indeed.

The only problem? With current technology, manufacturing solar panels requires toxic chemicals and other polluting factors.


Organically-Shaped Pipes
A tremendous amount of electricity is spent on water pumps. Pumps must work especially hard getting water to travel up to the top floors of high-rise apartment buildings, but the energy is wasted in other ways, too. One of those has to do with the current design of pipes.


Computers and machines tend to favor straight lines. Mathematically, they are easier to work with and produce. As a result, the machines we build are often based on boxes and rectangles. However, in actual physical application, things with curves tend to perform much better. (Think aero/hydrodynamics) As time goes on, many of the physical things we use (cars, airplanes, and even clothing), have begun to take on more organic, natural shapes. But other things are still stuck in the rigid ways of harsh angles and straight lines. Pipes are an example of this.


At first glance, this may not seem like much of a problem. After all, pipes turning at right angles make things much easier for architects and manufacturers (again, the math is simpler this way). However, much energy is lost as the water is forced to turn at sharp angles. This also puts extra strain on the pipes themselves.

By contrast, the branches and stems of trees never grow at right angles. The degree is much slighter, which maximizes the efficiency of the energy spent in getting the water to move. This is a engineering element that I hope to see eventually implemented in our New World pipes.

Harmonious Architecture
This one deals less with the technical aspects of building and more with its aesthetics. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with one of the project overseers at Warwick, who offered all sorts of insights into the building processes being used there. There were lots of amazing details, but one that really stood out to me was the decision made to build much of the furniture used in the Bethel apartments from the lumber cleared from the original site.

How smart is that? Instead of selling the trees to some lumber company and having them hauled off, why not turn it into something useful on-site? It only makes sense that this is how we’ll build in the New World, as well. Less waste, with much focus made on reuse and recycling.

I would imagine, too, that this will eventually be reflected in the architecture itself. Homes will complement their environments in terms of materials used, colors, and styles. It’s an exciting thing to think about, and for me, makes the New World that much more real. Check out the images below for some neat examples of what future architecture may look like…

Language in the New World

Language is a dynamic, living thing, constantly in a state of flux. Just compare British English and American English, and you'll quickly notice how many differences there are in pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and slang. And those are just two dialects of the same language, with the American counterpart only having developed for about three centuries!
And if you go back further than that? Check out this passage from Luke 8:1-3 from the Wycliffe's Bible, published in 1384:

¹And it was don aftirward, and Jhesu made iorney by citees and castelis, prechinge and euangelysinge þe rewme of God, ²and twelue wiþ him; and summe wymmen þat weren heelid of wickide spiritis and syknessis, Marie, þat is clepid Mawdeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten ³out, and Jone, þe wyf of Chuse, procuratour of Eroude, and Susanne, and manye oþere, whiche mynystriden to him of her riches.

I know what you're thinking: Huh? Sounds like a foreign language, right? Although I'm no expert on languages, I'd guess that non-English languages are the same, constantly evolving with the flow of time.

Of course, this poses a lot of interesting questions when it comes to life in paradise. There are currently about 6,000 spoken on this planet, and many of these language groups can't communicate with each other without learning at least a little of each others' language. Clearly, in the new world the language barrier will be a thing of the past. But how? There seem at present to be two possible scenarios: 1) Jehovah will miraculously unify the languages sometime after Armageddon, or 2) We will be required to study and learn a new language.

When I started mapping out All Things New, I quickly realized that I would need to choose one of these premises and stick with it throughout the course of the novel. It was an important element to decide early on, since it would affect a lot of the minuter details in Mitch's story. If you've read that book or The Unrighteous, then you'll already know which option I went with. (Hint: language classes were not part of the reconstruction work.) This blog post will explain why I leaned this way.

Please keep in mind: I am in no way dogmatic about this stance! And truthfully, it doesn't really matter; it'll all work out in the end. But since, from time to time, I do get emails asking why I chose this particular scenario, I thought it'd be worth writing about.

So, why is it that in the novels, everyone miraculously speaks a unified tongue right after Armageddon, you ask?

Well, thinking back to the days directly after the Noachian flood, we know that man spoke one language (or perhaps some dialects varying slightly from the original language Jehovah created Adam with). This, of course, enabled Nimrod to organize the people at that time to build a tower. The purpose behind the tower (to make a god-like name for themselves, and perhaps, as the Insight book points out, to survive a future flood), was in direct opposition to Jehovah's purpose, so he did something no one could have fathomed: he created a host of new languages. The results were immediate: chaos erupted, construction halted, and the people scattered.

Based on this account, it seems that Jehovah used the new languages to, in a sense, 'curse' the unrighteous people of that time. The results have plagued us down to this day. (If you've ever tried to learn a new language, you'll know that sometimes it truly feels like climbing an insurmountable barrier). The question is, Would it make sense for Jehovah to leave this barrier in place after the destruction of this wicked system of things? Or would He reverse the 'curse' from Nimrod's day, miraculously restoring our ability to communicate? To me, the latter seems more likely.

Another reason that I went with this scenario is that He's done it before. In Pentecost 33 C.E., when the Christian congregation was established, an outpouring of holy spirit resulted in the miraculous speaking of foreign tongues. Those first century Christians didn't need to study grammar or write flash cards–they could suddenly speak those tongues fluently, and this was done to facilitate the preaching to foreign-language Gentiles in Jerusalem at the time.

Under the subheading Language in the Insight book:

So, it appears that, when Jehovah God confused the speech of those at Babel, he first blotted out all memory of their previous common language and then introduced into their minds not only new vocabularies but also changed thought patterns, producing new grammars.

Indeed, language and thinking go hand in hand. Mastering a new language thus takes decades, since it requires the learner to reshape their thinking process. (New learners in a foreign language congregation will often lament that they can only give comments 'like a baby'. In fact, from a neurological stance, that is exactly what they're doing: learning the thought process and word formation from scratch, starting at the most rudimentary level and working their way up, as a child does.) And in the end, no matter how fluent the learner becomes, it rarely connects to the heart like their mother tongue.

So, for these reasons, it's my guess that scenario #1 is most likely. However, I am fully willing to be wrong on this point and many others!

Did I miss something? Is there another scenario I'm leaving out? Think we'll study the new tongue instead? Leave your feedback in the comments!