The Sunburned Exiles

Civilization always moves north.

The nineteen fifties were perhaps the pinnacle of economic and cultural life in the Fordlands. In those days, the factories of those regions all along the Great Lakes churned out an incessant stream of industrial goods, from spacesuits to televisions. This prosperity represented the zenith of over a century of American technological development. Even the immigrants had been chosen for their abilities to work in specific industries. The Upper Peninsula was settled by Cornish, Swedes and Sicilians, all selected for their mining abilities. It was even such that the best creative minds of California would move to Michigan to design automobiles. In short, an entire society had been created to enable America to be the world’s greatest industrial power. It was not to last. The economic and societal dislocations of the Sixties compelled the brightest and most energetic of the Fordlanders to seek a new home in the land of the sun and saguaro. A dearth of support in the Fordlands for pure research also contributed to the outmigration, as the prevailing mentality of the elite was not to think beyond the development of next year’s model. For this reason the great centers of electronic innovation of the twentieth century were not established there. So came the Sunburned Exiles to be.

They entered a strange land seemingly without a past. It was a land of interminable tract homes sprung across the barren desert, and entire cities built from thin air. In these lands, the Sunburned Exiles created a way of life and high culture alien to anything they or their ancestors had known. One of the first industries to take advantage of this new environment was aerospace, and at least in this realm the technical genius of the Fordlander continued apace. The needs of aerospace quickly lead to the construction of the semiconductor factories, and so the American computer industry came to be. However as time went on and those factories were moved across the Pacific, hardware became increasingly supplanted by software, and the tertiary economy began to rear its head across the land. The Sunburned Exiles increasingly drew their earnings from the virtual world. For in the desert, the dream is often a mirage.

The Sunburned Exile did not adapt to his new home, but instead sought to recreate all he had left behind. He planted lawns which couldn’t grow and trees with drying leaves that would slowly die in the burning sun. His houses were air conditioned to replace the cool breeze of the lands he had left behind. His towns and city squares were replaced by massive malls, where all the functions of public life could take place under one roof. As time went on, the Sunburned Exile spent an increasing portion of his life indoors. This mode of life had reached its zenith by the time I first saw those lands. I know those places well. The suburbs of Phoenix are endowed with an unsettling perfection, as various plots of identical houses stretch outwards to the horizon. At the gates of my grandparent’s subdivision there were fountains spurting water fruitlessly into the air. One could travel for ten miles in that place and have no idea where one was.

In recent years the sun of the Southwest has begun imperceptibly but surely to set. As the political situation in the border states becomes increasingly unstable, the Sun Belt can no longer make good on its promise of a stable society. With plans for large-scale desalinization stymied by regulation from California, a solution to the worsening water shortage is unlikely to materialize for the foreseeable future. As the canals run dry, the infrastructure necessary to support an advanced civilization will cease to exist. Meanwhile, the Fordlands offer considerably more than they did even a decade ago. The price of land there is low, and even the climate has become more salutary. In the smaller towns and rural districts crime is rare.

For these reasons do I recommend that the Sunburned Exiles and their descendants return to the Fordlands. Their talents and energy, long wasted in the creation of useless software and increasingly debased mass entertainment will be redirected to physical innovation and the development of new culture. This will be critical for initiating the next Heroic Age of Invention. It is also apparent from even a cursory reading of history that the center of gravity of Western civilization has moved steadily coldward and stormward, from Athens and Rome to London, Paris and Berlin. This can be explained by progressively harsher environments leading to progressively greater responses. For this reason it is my prediction that the next great chapter in the history of our civilization will occur on the Great Lakes and the great boreal forest beyond. The terrain is varied, and divided by lakes, bays and inlets, resembling the geographic arrangement of Northern Europe more any other portion of North America. It therefore lends itself quite nicely to the development of free trading towns, not unlike the landscape which gave rise to the Hanseatic League. The late twentieth century shift to the Sun Belt will be regarded as a temporary sojourn, as the stay on the Island of the Lotus Eaters was for Odysseus. However, such an island can never truly be home to the drivers of civilization, since it cannot provide the necessary impetus for greatness. Today, the Fordlands are subcritical, in that they do not possess enough of the necessary individuals to be a true center of innovation. However, it is not far from becoming one, as the influx of only a few more of the right sort of people will make it so. This problem can be illustrated by the obstacles placed in the way of plans for a spaceport in the far reaches of Upper Michigan for the purpose of polar orbital launches. Hence the path to the stars may lead not through the beaches of Canaveral, but rather through the boreal forests of the Interior Periphery. I now ask all such Sunburned Exiles: Can you leave the island? If you listen, the Odyssey calls.

NOTE: This picture is not generated by artificial intelligence. This is the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, one of the best places in the Upper Peninsula. If you are a traveller in the region, be sure to go here.