6. Energy and Wealth

There is no energy that man has produced that does nothing other than give a short-term fix - including his own. Oil, gas, electricity, nuclear - all have one thing in common: they give instant power which can be transmitted in heat, light, motion. But the realities of an energy source just disappear and all that is left if there is anything left, is just waste which in most cases is either a nuisance or is harmful. All that earth's energies bring are intangibles in the sense that they are not touchable, i.e. we use reality and get no reality in return other than trash. However, what energy brings with it is capability and man has used this capability to his advantage, but he has to be ever mindful that the sources of energy are finite. So when we hear governments talk about energy resources being secure "well into the next century", how long does that mean? We have to be careful in the use of earth's resources that we do not develop human lifestyles so totally dependent upon energy resources that when and if there is a conflict of interest in using resources, there is not a breakdown in society, i.e. we have to build for the future, not take away from the future. Taken to extremity all energy is harmful and taken to the furthest extremity as with nuclear power, it becomes a self-defeating phenomenon. In fact in energy terms, nuclear power represents the culmination of the value of self-interest its use is so formidable that its effect is damaging to the self-interest of those who might consider using it: it is in other words uncontrollable power and self-defeating both in the long and short term.

I am going to transfer the notions about physical power into notions regarding wealth as wealth is the power over reality. In recent years lives have become dominated by wealth and in particular commercial wealth. As I demonstrated earlier in the book, wealth and wealth creation dominates commercial life and market force acts as the servant of wealth, carrying revenue and goods to the consumer and taking revenue back to wealth. The effect of this is to compound wealth so that wealth grows and its power over reality grows both at home and internationally. In effect wealth has assumed a life of its own and such is the construction of companies that they are merely forced to keep compounding it. In effect, wealth has become the artificial equivalent of nuclear power. Realities, energy, money, labour are drawn as fuel and such is the hunger of wealth that it consumes all the earth has to offer at an alarming pace. Wealth's only discharge into life of benefit to man is constructed goods which depreciate and services which depreciate, i.e. man picks up the trash. The ever-imposing way that wealth has of pervading its power over us is the source of today's dilemma regarding the threat to ecology, the environment and the true quality of life. I do not believe the quality of life is measured by how many things you can buy. The pressure to return on capital employed by a company forces it to seek ever-expanding outlets for products and different products in order -to give it market scale to satisfy wealth. This in turn breeds consumerism. Wealth has got to be stopped. It is dominating life and has to be redirected. It is necessary to consider how to do this but we have to do it in a way that it will take pressure off both reality and energy. In effect we need a kind of watershed whereby money is directed away from a need to accumulate itself for its own sake, to where markets for commodities are, in unit terms, managed to keep pace with population. We need to take money out of wealth creation and put it into human security. We have to try to construct what the earth and natural energy shows us is the best energetic path and create a cycle of wealth rather than one of directional wealth: wealth in a straight line. Once an energy has assumed a straight line it has defied the natural order which exists. There is a cycle within wealth creation but it only supports a one-way drive and is parasitic and isolated from reality. We have to get to the stage where wealth becomes fuel for the use of human power - not the reverse as it is at the moment.

Notes: The following two chapters of the book are pure philosophising and have within them a lot of reasoning for suggesting that man in his life has to seek balance in all things with a propensity towards less rather than more. The main work is about man in relation to time, and what time really is.

There are then suggestions of how this affects us in 20th century life, what the dangers are and what we need to avoid.