Why do we need jobs if we can have slaves working for us?
We normally assume that anything that creates jobs is a good thing, but is it, really? Is our current prosperity related to having “jobs”? Isn’t it, rather, the result of the large number of “energy slaves” working for us in the form of fossil fuels? Today, everyone of us has probably more slaves in terms of available energy output than even the richest in the ancient world could have. But, in the ancient world, the rich Roman patricians knew the source of their wealth and practiced “otium” (a term untranslatable in English) intended as the search of pleasure and knowledge free from the needs of everyday survival – with their human slaves taking care of that. In our times, instead, we tend to neglect, or even actively deny, the role of our fossil slaves. We state, and maybe even believe, that our antics (“jobs”) are what makes us live and we engage with gusto in the equivalent of digging holes in the ground and filling them up again as a good way to make us rich by increasing the numerical value of that curious deity we call “dʒiːdiːˈpiː” (or “GDP”). Maybe it is because, deep down, we know that, sooner or later, our fossil slaves are going to evaporate into thin air and leave us.
This is a post by Nate Hagens and DJ White. Rich in ideas and concepts, it is longer than the average post on Cassandra’s Legacy but well worth the effort of reading, savoring each sentence in it. Working drafts copyright ©2010-2017 – Not to be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the authors
This is a post by Nate Hagens and DJ White. Rich in ideas and concepts, it is longer than the average post on Cassandra’s Legacy but well worth the effort of reading, savoring each sentence in it. Working drafts copyright ©2010-2017 – Not to be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the authors
by NJ Hagens & DJ White, EarthTrust
First, some review of relevant points:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
