Reply #18: What is natural is people's unwillingness to give up what they have

[IrateCitizen]

To address your point regarding slavery:
Slavery always was, at its heart, about ENERGY. EVERY major civilization in the history of man has made use of it in one form or another. Without forced labor, it was next to impossible to construct the physical structures and projects required for civilization. While this slavery may have existed in widely differing forms -- forced peasant labor in China to build the Grand Canal, "adoptive" slavery in African civilizations, indentured servitude in the early colonies and race-based slavery in the antebellum American South -- the fact is that every major civilization used slavery of one sort or another in order to expand its influence. None of the advanced, western world we take for granted ever would have come into existence without the profits made through the cultivation of sugar in the West Indies -- perhaps the most slave-intensive industry the world has ever seen.

It's no small coincidence that the time that slavery (at least on a widespread, accepted scale) died out was the same time that humans began to harness the power of fossil fuels -- first coal, then petroleum. In fact, if you look at it from a certain perspective -- we replaced the slavery of other human beings with the slavery of millions of years of organic matter. It is upon that slavery that the American Empire has spread its influence across the globe. I cannot help but think that, when easy access to fossil fuels disappears, that humankind will return to some kind of slavery arrangements to fill the void.

It's as if you were saying "My argument is non-political, it's not even an argument, it's the truth."

It's interesting to see words put into my mouth like this, and then be accused of offering a flabby argument. Perhaps my argument was not as well grounded as it might have been, had I taken a significant amount of time to type it instead of trying to fit it in between lesson planning. However, I do not believe what I type is the unadulterated truth -- but I do believe an argument should be presented FORCEFULLY, otherwise it's all just apologia.

Basically, my argument is this: human societies follow a path of a certain inertia, and once the direction of that inertia has been set, it is extremely difficult to push them off that course. Here in the United States, our inertia involves an attitude of entitlement toward a neverending supply of cheap fossil fuels and widespread luxury. Now, if you believe this to be the case (as I certainly do), it becomes incredibly difficult to knock society as a whole in a drastically different position. Society will keep trying to maintain its course, even in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

If that is the case, you need to look for solutions elsewhere. Personally, I believe that such solutions will come from communities and networks formed to deal with the oncoming crisis as it becomes more clear. The challenge to their success, however, will come from the darker side of human reaction -- alternative networks that arise to maintain some sort of privilege, one that is founded upon overpowering and exploiting the other.

Given the general trajectory of human civilization in this regard, let's just say I try to remain optimistic against evidence to the contrary. I do not present this as an unadulterated truth, nor do I force anyone to accept it as such. It's just one person's view of the world based upon studying the past and the present -- take it or leave it.