I think often of living overseas. I am very concerned about the oil crisis lately. Europe, England, and some previous lands the British colonized have infrastructure that was created before the oil boom. America on the other hand, is a country that won it's power, and was raised to heights because of oil. The difference in highways, cities, and rural areas compared with the majority of the rest of the world is a clear indicator. Though those countries have now much macadam, the underlying architecture in many areas still lends itself more to small communities. You see this still in city areas, but suburbia is a goner. I think we'll still have some electric before I die, however everything we can think of when we think forward--or perhaps just this idiot writing--runs on oil. Some part of it's history, somewhere on the road to potentially available, involves oil, and usually some kind of human slavery. Forty million slaves, roughly, now days--unseen and sequestered from the real world. Did you know that motions that have anything like the word, 'inequality' in their title don't usually get sponsored financially? Christyia Freeland recently wrote a book about it. Take this and scale it beyond reasonable, and you have some idea of the difficulty we face as a species.
The picture of these slaves represent the gold used in making products like the computer I type this on, and the smartphone I'll read this later on. It's the only way these electronic devices work so quickly and cheaply. Gold is a magnificent conductor, so we better get it cheap; but it's hard to claw from the ground after the burst in population (mimics oil use) and the idea that everyone should have it all. So the answer? Subject your own species through fear, and keep it obscure enough that the majority doesn't have a revolt in their consciousness, and we're pretty trapped deep. I mean writing about how it sucks, is being done on a device made through and through with oil (plastics, transportation, etc. etc.) and simultaneously supports slavery. That's my computer...you know, those devices that are more than a passing fad?
Back to the narrative: after Rome, France, Germany, England, then, America grows--and she discovers the use of oil. When this spreads to the other worlds, all reeling from not being the ruling super power anymore (Greece anyone?) then we see oil based empires rise across the world. The old war of Greeks and Persians is today played out for oil, and still uses the reasons we as a species created in the Middle Ages. The turn to Humanism was born from intellectual cross-pollination during the fifteenth century, so all the rampant 'individuality' and 'choice' that people love in their redefined, temporary epochs, would be totally lost without the Muslims that came up through North Africa into Spain. Where do you think St. Augustine and St. Aquinas got their understandings of the Greeks?
As they had workers and slaves, we too have those, just on an international scale thanks to cheap energy. By the way, if you don't think energy is cheap, a gallon is about eleven dollars in India, and three to four dollars in America - then imagine a gallon of Starbucks coffee - it would be like fifteen dollars with current prices of a grande at $1.95 with a personal cup discount. Three to four dollars explains our defense budget almost single handedly when compared with world oil prices--think of it as really cheap liquid...even bottled water at roughly two dollars for sixteen ounces would equal about sixteen dollars a gallon!
The places that have oil available cheaper? We war with them and simultaneously sell them our older weapons; cause you know, oil makes everything you and I take for granted. That hot shower in a tub? More people than not don't have that luxury. Heat? Ever heard of a blanket and suffering through the cold? Even our cancer, horrible, saddening, miserable, disheartening, soul-sucking, and who gives great joy in beating away, is a problem that comes after we've sufficiently secured clean drinking water. It is why THE FRESHWATER is the name of everything I do; it's basic, and a lot of people don't have it. We look upon history and our own parents and wonder why they didn't contribute to the same end--the security of the species--and as we have this thought, we remember to "be the change we wish to see in the world" and suddenly my love of all things Apple makes me complicit in murder. A diamond? Ha! There is one place I've heard of in Canada where the miners aren't basically slaves. In fact, in ninety plus percent of the cases our diamonds come from actual slaves--families held hostage, wives and daughters raped in front of their husbands and fathers eyes who have their eyes held open at gunpoint and threat of death to their other smaller children, limbs cut off, tortured or 'disappeared.' They probably don't think about a heater going out, or a constant lack of money--the idea of even owning to them is lost; they think only of being able to be another day, and some think of escaping (though often found the torture is inflicted even worse upon their homes and extend through generations that are not able to be generative anymore).
You know how we are arguing about social security for the elderly and presuming that our generation will have to deal with the economics of its failure? Well, when it was written, taxes were in the seventy percent for the wealthiest. We scaled personal wealth, but kept the legislated sharing up to the kind hearts of money hoarders; then we convinced everyone--everyone and anyone that we could, in any way that we could--that they should also do that. We became the oil for the markets engine, and the engines of our lives, run entirely on the depleting substance.
So I was born in the heat, and mostly raised in the cold. If I don't make a decision in twenty years, I may be paddling across the Pacific when I'm seventy. The Atlantic would probably be better. The sense of adventure and danger would have to re-enter man.
The Age of Boldness would necessarily be ushered in.
So I think of moving back to the heat, or near the equator. I like the inland not because I don't love the ocean, but I believe the coast is the first to sink. The culture will have to spread inwards. Swarms of culture is an easy way to visualize it.
