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Sep. 23rd, 2011 02:14 pmhttp://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/508186-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-german
By starting school toward a 4 year degree, I'm implicitly showing faith that an economic system that allows me to use that degree, or even finish school, will continue to exist. A future decline of oil production is inevitable. Talking about it as something that is sure to cause a global decline in civilization makes me deeply scared. I can only hope that, through the enormous restructuring to post-fossil fuel economics, we don't decline as a civilization, without really knowing how rational or irrational that hope is.
I also have to wonder whether a decline in technology for our race is inherently a bad thing. The reason I've become so interested in sociology and anthropology is because I've come to believe that people are more important than things. If a society that functions at a lower level of technology and advancement is one in which people have as much potential for happiness, is it a worse thing?
We continue to make so many new scientific discoveries. Despite setbacks like the shutdown of the Tevatron at Fermilab and loss of scientific talent from the US to other countries, there are at least other countries out there operating projects like the LHC and the Dark Energy Survey. We've learned that some particles may be able to travel faster than light. We've found earth-like planets out there around other suns. I believe that there's so much out there yet to discover.
And there's a small part of me that believes, in a terribly anthro-centric way, that if it's out there, it's because, somehow, we are, as a race, meant to see and experience it. A society that exists in a world where we have exhausted all the energy in one stage of our development without finding a way to provide energy for the next stage is abhorrent to me. It feels deeply and irrationally wrong.
But, on the whole, when looking at things merely in terms of providing happiness for our fellow human beings, from a rational perspective, it seems like maybe it's not wrong. Perhaps the vastness and content of the universe is not directly relevant to what I feel like should be the goal of our society; a world where everyone in it has the chance to live a generally good and happy life.
I'm terribly torn on this. I don't know with certainty where to stand on much of any of it. For the moment, I guess I just keep going to school and hoping things work out for the best.
By starting school toward a 4 year degree, I'm implicitly showing faith that an economic system that allows me to use that degree, or even finish school, will continue to exist. A future decline of oil production is inevitable. Talking about it as something that is sure to cause a global decline in civilization makes me deeply scared. I can only hope that, through the enormous restructuring to post-fossil fuel economics, we don't decline as a civilization, without really knowing how rational or irrational that hope is.
I also have to wonder whether a decline in technology for our race is inherently a bad thing. The reason I've become so interested in sociology and anthropology is because I've come to believe that people are more important than things. If a society that functions at a lower level of technology and advancement is one in which people have as much potential for happiness, is it a worse thing?
We continue to make so many new scientific discoveries. Despite setbacks like the shutdown of the Tevatron at Fermilab and loss of scientific talent from the US to other countries, there are at least other countries out there operating projects like the LHC and the Dark Energy Survey. We've learned that some particles may be able to travel faster than light. We've found earth-like planets out there around other suns. I believe that there's so much out there yet to discover.
And there's a small part of me that believes, in a terribly anthro-centric way, that if it's out there, it's because, somehow, we are, as a race, meant to see and experience it. A society that exists in a world where we have exhausted all the energy in one stage of our development without finding a way to provide energy for the next stage is abhorrent to me. It feels deeply and irrationally wrong.
But, on the whole, when looking at things merely in terms of providing happiness for our fellow human beings, from a rational perspective, it seems like maybe it's not wrong. Perhaps the vastness and content of the universe is not directly relevant to what I feel like should be the goal of our society; a world where everyone in it has the chance to live a generally good and happy life.
I'm terribly torn on this. I don't know with certainty where to stand on much of any of it. For the moment, I guess I just keep going to school and hoping things work out for the best.
