Bohemian Apocalypse

How to Stay Counter-Culture

After Culture Has Collapsed

The debate is over. The thinkpieces have long been deleted; the servers, sold for scrap metal. Our modern world has come to an end. Whether by warm water tsunami, chiptotle-born pathogen, or predator drone mutiny, it makes little difference; the end is the end. From here on out, everything is different.

Society will be rebuilt, eventually. Everyone must concern themselves with the basics of life: food, shelter, water. You, however, are different from the rest. Though you consume these goods— and voraciously— you will not produce them. Your contribution, inspired by the muses and guided by sensibility, comes from a higher place. You are a bohemian.

While the rest of the survivors band together and work to figure out how to construct driftwood houses or roast grubs or cockroaches for meals, you are to cultivate a rare flower from the old way of life— the counter culture! Bohemians, in their unconventionality, provide a service integral to any society, be it natural, multi-national or post-apocalyptic. Establishing themselves as a subculture, they thereby define the very mass-culture they will soon push against. For would a rose smell as sweet without a li'l stinker to sour your nose? This is the gift of the Bohème.