Rethink Progress

Allow me to rethink progress in an age where progress might be turning into a nightmare on an apocalyptic scale. But first, let me make an introductory observation about this nightmare and its lesser-known counterfactual nature. Maybe the way we perceive our future needs to be revisited with thoughts that deviate so much from how we currently plan and order our world, that it might seem like sci-fi futurism when it is simply drastic measures for drastic times. Let us start with sci-fi stories just to set the scene. It is interesting that so many sci-fi stories talk about a future where the entire human race is divided into a dualist sphere of the rich and the poor – powerful and weak – the haves and the have-nots – I think of stories that are told in movies like “Elysium”, with Mat Damon’s character, who is the hero, and Jodie Foster’s character who represent the elitist anti-hero. But why should this be the case? 

Maybe popular fiction is stuck in 19th-century ideological thinking and our minds are stuck on this dualist, utopia vs. apocalypse theme.  However, our shared experience since the “fall of communism” at the end of the 20th century and the ideological declaration of “victory” by the liberal democratic ideology, today shows us that maybe all universal utopian ideological claims are losing the battle against good old multi-faceted non-utopian common sense human nature. A crucible where global interconnectedness creates a hollowing and emptying effect into which pure human nature is flowing. If this unease with how we see our modern or future selves are depicted the way our stories propose, then why do we perpetuate this dualist fading empire of the mind in our stories? Do we really believe it to be our future or are we simply expected to believe that future?

Why do these sci-fi stories have such shallow heroes only able to save maybe one single and very personal “love relationship” - almost like a mirror of a single organism only saving itself in the closest thing it loves? Why do these weak heroes only disrupt the power status quo on the surface, expecting the evil empire to endure in the end? Why do we not see the real "ecosystem of abundant species of human communities", a multitude of loosely networked politically modern and technologically advanced communities consisting of their own set of powerful and weak people, rich and poor members in one and the same dedicated community, who nevertheless inherently care for each other? Why do we not see the body politic of families and communities that build their own valuable life experiences? A "relationship ecosystem" where all kinds of elites and many kinds of specialists and vibrant energetic technicians/artists act together as smaller collections of various species of natural unities. Communities where, familial, ethnic, religious, cultural, aesthetic, and economic commitments of any individual or group find expression within the network of human interaction. Interactions that are simply “good or bad”, but most importantly... interactions that are still able to be healed and sanctified, turning bad into good or simply improving towards the highest possible human experience. I see this "new redeeming state of nature" as a much better state of progress than the dualistic state still being promoted as part of a forced identity of “controlling or being controlled”.

Maybe our programmed idea of progress is still part of a deliberate vision of purely mechanistic amoral power relationships, that has little place for the real conscious life, life’s healing potential and the abundance of life forms we do experience, regardless of our own socio-economic status. Maybe it is part of the counterfactual ideological fixation on the “mechanistic superiority” of survival specialists like viruses and bacteria that we might even want to mimic in our own mechanistic survival behaviours. While, on the other hand, we seem to be ignoring the amazing ability of consciousness and conscious cooperation of frail, less adapted for survival, complex organisms like us. Even so, we have antibodies and life-preserving systems and mutually supporting ecosystems, and we see it everywhere within our entire biosphere, with or without human technologies to help or hamper… A reality that is consciously cooperating, ever-healing, always sanctifying all life – with all its mistakes and evils – always towards love for each other and towards our love or at least towards our search for God.

With this observation in mind, we have a new and useful scene that might be able to contain a new Idea with which I would like to rethink progress in a very pragmatic and engineered way. It is important to realise that this is a very concentrated vision of a “hybrid non-utopian idea” that might have real-life potential – For now, until I have the time and resources to write this article into a book form, you most certainly will have to “dilute” these concentrated ideas with your own insights about common sense, practical, engineering and social methods at your disposal. 

Let me begin with a guiding principle I borrowed from Machiavelli, (…But, to be open about my misgivings. Even though I think Machiavelli (14th-century) was extremely influential in most of the Renaissance and Enlightenment thinking that created much of today’s scene of progress I am trying to rethink. I am more convinced today than at any time before that Machiavelli was mostly an evil “worshipper of death for power’s sake” like most of his modern disciples… fixating on finding ways to use the power of evils, just because it is part of our reality, like “pathogens always present in all life forms” - both moral and physical “pathogens”. Machiavelli and many modern thinkers actively promote deceit, backhandedness, feigned love, corruption etc. while they underplay the need to acknowledge and act according to the continuous and active systems and natural behaviours that are identifying, suppressing and removing evils, just like antibodies, without us even knowing, always working to overcome “moral pathogens”, healing and nurturing as the core reality of life and abundance that is the ultimate objective of all conscious cooperation – I simply cannot see the processes of death as the Machiavellian and even Darwinian “power of progress” it has been made out to be, mostly since the 19th-century. Machiavelli influenced the Western mind to fixate on fear and death as a controlling force and underplayed life because everywhere I see independent conscious decision makers convincing themselves of this counterfactual reality.)

However, to get over my own biases and be fair to the subject that I want to rethink, let me use the bonafide aspect of Machiavelli’s overall claim that he “take the world as it is” as a guiding principle for this Idea. In fact, to “take the world as it is”, is the fundamental “rule of thumb” used by many political scientists and I will take their lead on this. For that reason, you will find that this Idea actively tries to take the world “as it is”, with all its messiness, illness and predators together with all life-sustaining systems and efforts. I take the world as it is and propose something that might fit right into our own messy world – I propose something humans can do right now because they are already doing similar things today, for good or for ill. Maybe we just need to be reminded about what we can achieve. 

Consider this Idea seriously if for no other reason than you might really want to find some kind of solution for the grave problems caused by the negative environmental impact human progress has had ever since humanity managed to change our environment on an ever-increasing scale.

The core assumption of this Idea: In the nuclear energy age we live in today, no morally defensible argument supports any diminishing access to the energy necessary for all current and future human progress.   

The greatest example of the pernicious indefensible arguments to reduce or diminish human energy consumption is found in the increasing scepticism about our current reliance on fossil fuels as our primary energy source. For this article, I assume that these arguments have no moral justification because of the misery and destruction that is already flowing from a reduction in the most basic energy needs for broad-based human development or human progress. This assumption is further accentuated by the practical reality of the enormous scale of energy that is and will be required (…much sooner rather than later) just to mitigate the most conservative estimates of the expected environmental challenges caused by climate change as well as the known developmental challenges that are facing the current and changing world population.

This core assumption might be the most “concentrated” statement in this article. From a scientific, engineering, economic and social point of view, this core assumption is desperately in need of clarification and justification, however, I propose commensurate “dilution” of the “concentrate” with your own insights or even some of your own trusted and knowledgeable friend’s insights. Simply try to put a hypothetical quantitative value to the actual number of resources and the enabling amount of energy necessary to address climate change and human development, and then you might have sympathy for the core assumption of this effort to “Rethink progress”. Simply put, if we do not have an extreme increase in overall energy availability we will not be able to achieve climate change or developmental objectives. With this exposed counterfactual scene of our times and this core assumption, we can consider the powerful simplicity of the core Idea proposed and elaborated further in this article.

The core Idea: Completely isolate all the supply of heat and electrical energy from all other human activities. 

Yes, as simple as that! The idea is to change the way we think about and achieve energy supply, but in this case specifically only heat and electrical energy in its purest form. The most natural analogy of this radical idea is to isolate our energy supply, almost like the sun is isolated at the centre of our solar system while it supplies, without interruption, energy to our biosphere. But in this case, we isolate our own energy supply from the “ecosystem of normal human economic activities". Apart from that, we eventually try to isolate our own human energy needs from the needs of the biosphere at large to the greatest extent possible – leaving the energy from the sun to sustain our biosphere while we use our own independent, economically isolated and newly created energy supply to take care of all our own activities, our hopes and dreams and our previous, current, and future reckless impact we almost certainly had and will have on our precious biosphere.

How then to rethink progress?

Point one: Get a networked global team:

o  As a first attempt to implement this core Idea and rethink progress, I propose that we create a globally networked community of trusted enterprises with the sole purpose of supplying abundant, proto-commodity*(see Notes) new-generation, clean and baseload** heat and electrical energy, through independent, economically isolated, and trusted supply methods.

Point two: Get energy supply out of the marketplace:

o  The concept of “proto-commodity” refers to the extremely unique nature of this energy supply because it implies that by its mutually agreed nature, it is not a commodity yet. Therefore, it cannot be valued or paid for like a commodity and will therefore be supplied without cost to any human enterprise that needs energy, without exception.  This proto-commodity concept seems to be a logical requirement if we want to successfully isolate the energy supply for human consumption from all other economic activities. (This concept has no traditional ideological underpinning at all – it is not socialist or communist, it actually tries to divorce the supply of energy as far as possible from normal day-to-day human activities.)

o  This independent supply of heat and electrical energy will have to happen through a network of trusted enterprises with complete ownership, protection and operation,*** that is, most importantly, completely isolated from the rest of the world’s economic and political activities. Preferably with a very small physical “footprint” that can be operated and maintained out of sight of most other human activities.

o  This isolated and internally networked community’s sole purpose will be to supply heat & electrical energy to communities as a trusted proto-commodity enabler of all existing and new human activities (…only supply of energy, not the distribution of energy, which should remain part of the normal/integrated economic activities).

Point three: Continuously do the hard research necessary for this singular objective:

o  Reality and taking the world "as it is" dictates that the implementation of this isolated energy supply network, must be phased in as its potential and viability become known to us through a dedicated research and exploration effort.

Point four: Understand and allow the fungibility of energy:

o  This Idea of an independent and isolated supply of energy is critically dependent on the principle of no unwarranted moral or political "strings attached”. It must be, as far as possible, as a fundamental requirement, completely independent with completely fungible energy supply characteristics (the same kind of fungibility that money has).

Point five: Acknowledge the failures of our current approach to energy supply:

o  As justification, this isolated energy supply activity will in principle overcome most of the current deadlocks experienced in human thinking as it attempts to find a “capital investment and monetary-linked solution” to the immense but disputed scale of energy needs for basic human survival and progress. This is another “concentrated” statement and can be “diluted” with your own insights about the inherently poor performance of most publicised climate change mitigation and human development initiatives, like carbon tax etc.

o  The aim is to decouple energy supply from any ideology or social construct or political objectives while in its own sphere, still maintaining all other/normal actively pursued ideologies and social constructs that humans inherently act out and develop over time – it is human nature “as it is” standing apart from the supply of heat and electrical energy.

Point six: Create a global energy actor, standing apart on behalf of all:

o  The allocation of all the raw materials, know-how, technology and work needed for this Independent Energy Supply Community of Trust (IESCoT - 'aɪ-iː-ɛs-siː-əʊ-tiː') must be negotiated, freely allocated from “nature’s stores”, planned, implemented, executed and protected within the same kind of independent global commitments that is found in the moral trust and aspirations intended for something like the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or our existing global monetary system (i.e. The Bretton Woods System…or a new monetary system everyone seems to be looking for in cryptocurrency – who knows?) Except that this IESCoT will deliberately act with only one single imperative, to the exclusion of all others and that is to ensure that any human activity will have trusted access (…or progressive access in the near future) to all the necessary heat and electrical energy required to be, in principle, successful in all its stated or implied objectives.

Point seven: Allow all bickering parties to see the "artificial sun":

o  The proposed independence and isolation of energy supply through an IESCoT do not imply covert, obscure or hidden processes.  On the contrary, it expects complete society-wide communication, and openness of the activities of this IESCoT to all interest groups regardless of their status and relationship with each other. However, only complete openness to viewing their activities, comment on them, and request energy while planning your own economic activities, but completely isolated from any direct control of the IESCoT's activities - A break of independent & trusted supply is the only plane of accountability and direct oversight. This is the seemingly obvious way to ensure its independent status and trust, while all other human interests and relationships can maintain their inherent characteristics of trust, harmony, distrust, and conflicts – law and order – interpretations of Universal Human Rights etc.

o  The IESCoT will supply only heat and electrical energy regardless of any conflicts between individuals and communities or any commercial or state entities, with the effect that normal statecraft, contractual and other legal methods will remain the means of solving or at least trying to solve all issues between nations, state actors, commercial entities etc.

Point eight: Measure the success of the energy supply:

o  The IESCoT will therefore operate on the purest set of physical principles available to achieve its single mandate, taking human nature into account only to the extent that the IESCoT’s actions and intentions must continuously be measured and realigned to all aspects of its single objective - the same healing nature found in all complex human societies.

o  The measure of success for the Idea is that the IESCoT must prove its progressive success with both:

The physical increase in the percentage of the total expected “global quantity and reach of supply to communities and their enterprises” that is also calculated as a function of;

the increasing percentage of energy supplied according to the physical theoretical limit of the current optimal baseload energy source being exploited. 

Ever-increasing and ever-improving energy supply as its only measure of success.

o  During the execution of the IESCoT's mandate to achieve success with its singular objective, potential oversupply of energy should not be considered a disadvantage because the entire IESCoT is isolated from the rest of the economy. It is a fair expectation that the IESCoT can, transparently but independently, plan and control the oversupply capacity and able to have generation units in storage able to quickly deploy, switch on and off the generation units as required by the economic signals received, and transparently interpreted, from any of the networked economic actors being supplied by the IESCoT. (The community at large will always be responsible to generate accurate “economic signals”, for its own purposes as well as for the IESCoT to use in its supply decisions.)

Point nine: Why nuclear baseload makes the best "artificial sun":

o  With these measures and capacity of supply in mind, it logically follows that nuclear fission is currently the optimal baseload source****, with future potential for nuclear fusion energy. This is the case because the kinds and amounts of resources necessary to generate nuclear fission energy are the smallest physical volume of resources known to humanity - it will have by far the smallest impact on our current global store of resources. This small resource footprint is considered to be a critical prerequisite to enable independence and an unobtrusive contained and manageable infrastructure to be produced, deployed, operated, maintained and recycled (i.e. full lifecycle ownership) by the IESCoT.

o  Isolating nuclear energy enterprises in an IESCoT contains the structure of a potential solution to the “control & safety challenges” associated with the large-scale adoption of nuclear energy in our age. Instead of expecting all aspects of our human nature to achieve the necessary moral and ethical fidelity that is reasonably capable of protecting our biosphere from the dangers of nuclear power, you isolate the nuclear energy activities into a community of trust that is completely independent but also completely open for review by all, because it is deliberately isolated from all other human interests.

o  This article does not have the space to introduce the nuclear energy industry, the technology landscape, and current advancements. I will only trust that the logical realities of humanity’s ability to turn mass into energy will be considered part of our moral duty to implement safely and successfully.

o  This IESCoT does not include any nuclear weapons application or other non-energy nuclear applications, for which the current methods of enterprise and statecraft must account, at their own cost with their own methods. However, the IESCoT might be allocated large amounts of legacy nuclear fissile materials extracted from discontinued nuclear weapons to be used for energy supply.

Point ten: Allow clean, independent energy to (not so...) gently shine the light on fossil fuels:

o  The success of the IESCoT will be noticed when fossil fuels, as our mainstream energy source, are successfully isolated in their own sphere.  Almost like an isolated cancer to be eradicated by clean energy supply “chemotherapy”, with the intent of the IESCoT to systematically displace fossil fuel’s energy component as soon and as aggressively as possible – for the sake of our biosphere’s survival. Please note that “fossil minerals”, (…fossil minerals are the same thing but simply not intended to burn.), have extraordinary beneficial potential as complex carbon-based products to be used in many environmental and industrial applications – especially when clean independent baseload energy becomes truly abundant and without cost for being a proto-commodity. Just as an example of the potential to use proto-commodity energy to refine fossil minerals will allow an extreme reduction of carbon emissions and control of its usual polluting effects.

Point eleven: Reward the effort:

o  Because the IESCoT is proposed to be isolated from the rest of the economy and energy is considered to be a proto-commodity, the reward of the IESCoT is humanity’s progress itself, and the people taking part in the success of the IESCoT must receive the independently agreed reward, an equitable claim on wealth in the real economy, based on the overall success as defined above. From a monetary perspective, it might be feasible to have the IESCoT contributors’ monetary reward be in the form of the creation of new fiat money or cryptocurrency or any sovereign/trusted new money. Because of the intrinsic benefit of the IESCoT’s energy supply to the economy, this kind of reward will not contribute to inflation. (This does not imply that this Idea will solve inflation, it simply proposes that it has the potential to be inflation-neutral. Bad fiscal decisions will remain the prerogative of any nation or group.)

Point twelve: Let the minds and hands compete for success:

o  The IESCoT does not exclude internal forms of competitive exploration for better methods of supply within the single objective’s agreed parameters for the Community of Trust. It is envisaged that the IESCoT will operate more like a purely scientific peer review community of specialists searching and executing this single imperative.

The expected effects if the Idea is implemented:

Effect one: Reject this Idea until the next apocalypse:

o  The first effect of this Idea to consider is resistance and rejection by some or even most of society at large – something you might be screaming in your mind at this very moment if you managed to consider my rethink of progress up till this point – However I truly hope that I might be winning you over to the idea. But, to this very probable reality of partial or complete rejection of this Idea, it seems as if the only answer coming from my understanding of human nature in this regard, is that this kind of Idea only gets accepted under extreme duress and real existential fear of destruction – To be certain, it was probably the same conditions of duress and existential fear, during and after the two World Wars of the 20th-century, that led to the creation of this Idea's "classmates" in the United Nations, Universal Human Rights and our monetary system. Therefore, I will still present my Idea to the increasingly hostile, frightened humanity of which I am just one frail member. My sincere hope is that we do something like what this Idea proposes, hopefully before another apocalypse and not when we must deal with a post-apocalyptic aftermath.  With this sombre disclaimer and reality check in place, let us look at some practical effects that might be seen if the IESCoT becomes a reality.

Effect two: Implement the Idea in silos:

o  The first sign of a proto-positive effect might be that the IESCoT might start to be phased in as part of the fear experienced by nation-states, regions or civilizational trust communities. However, the network efficiency of this kind of community of trust will only become truly independent and successful when the IESCoT manages to deliver in a measured way, detached from all human fears and power relations and become isolated from destructive attacks as a result of a universal commitment to its independence and isolation.

Effect three: Clear focus on what to do with energy and not how to create energy:

o  With an increasingly more successful IESCoT supplying ever-increasing amounts of energy, the current enterprises and economies that are plagued by inefficient, scarce, or fossil fuel-based energy supply can actively start to direct their efforts towards actual human and environmental issues, other than energy supply, that needs to be addressed - irrespective of the ideological methods to be used. Because energy cost is in most current economies one of the most significant obstacles to new and ambitious enterprises, it should be very clear that this method of energy supply will create immeasurable large-scale economic opportunities, releasing a potential to have exponential growth of new job creation in virtually any kind of community - simply by virtue of the potential attained from trusted and abundant energy.

o  These efforts include, first of all, the realisation of "good living" for all according to their own definition of "good living", then also enable large-scale initiatives, currently in the human imagination, to solve the real challenges we experience. Challenges, of which hope for the future and redemption from past and future environmental and other errors seem to be the most important for today's communities.  Reduction of man-made greenhouse gas emissions or space exploration or full-scale replacement of earth-bound resources with space-based resources from our solar system or beyond. All efforts to ensure the dedicated pristine future of our biosphere - while we have the good life to enjoy it.

o  Human activity might be released from socially induced energy scarcity and the hopelessness associated with this scarcity through an optimal or inherently optimizing independent process, while the nature and impact of all activities are still maintained according to each society’s own norms and freely developing human nature.

o  Moral imperatives that lead to the reduction of the evil/bad impact of human activities can be achieved without reducing human aspirations and hopefulness for a better future. Possibly, cleaning up and protecting nature can become the most valued commodities and services we desperately need. For instance, the successful reduction of unchecked pollution that might currently not be economically feasible within many of our critical industries.

Effect four: Life will go on as normal, even more so...:

o  Because only the vested interests in global energy supply will be disconnected from all other interests the effect will be that all other interests, associated with any potential use of energy, will remain in the sphere of day-to-day human activities of wealth creation, trust or disputes. Allowing for all the messy opportunities for advancements according to human reality, with or without utopian ideologies.

o  Economies can execute any economic or moral imperative, without the fear or fixation on energy scarcity when the success of the IESCoT becomes apparent.

Effect five: Legacy energy interests can become the "artificial sun" - it is up to them:

o  The opportunity will be created to bring unsustainable legacy energy activities, as can be seen in the entire fossil fuel industry, into the influence sphere of the IESCoT.  Current energy enterprises might potentially be the IESCoT’s major and most committed enablers – regardless of their current fossil fuel commitments and scale of operations. This will allow for a realistic absorption of legacy energy interests into a new isolated sphere of accountability, regardless of initial success or failure – This Idea can remain a realistic objective, regardless of the scale of human interests (investments) currently involved in fossil fuels, to the extent that it is grounded in continuous and conscious decision-making and ability to release resources from unsustainable claims on energy.

Effect six: Anarchic, unpredictable humanity still exists:

o  Human conflict will still happen because of clashes of interests other than energy supply and might allow for much more dynamic moral interactions and collective learning, both good and bad, as experienced from any individual, community or group’s point of view. As an example, there might be conflict based on the perceived misuse of the energy supplied by the IESCoT – This conflict then needs to be sorted out between individuals and communities and not by the IESCoT – who needs to stand apart from what energy is being used for. From my understanding of history, these types of conflicts are usually channelled towards extreme progress in technology, culture, aesthetics and most of the highest human aspirations.

o  The Idea will still have mostly non-utopian effects because our actual human nature will still happen in the normal “deliberately conscious, cooperative, unpredictable (…anarchic), realistic, evil, but ultimately life-sustaining and loving way” it has always happened because the energy supply will simply be put back in the same sphere of abundance and the fungible form humanity has experienced when the energy from the sun was the only large-scale energy source.

Effect seven: Human energy for human purposes:

o  Nature’s own energy systems, like solar, wind and gravitational energy effects, can and in my mind should be dedicated to nature’s own purposes within all natural habitats – not for human consumption. I will always strongly believe that human aspirations should not be energized by “stealing from nature” through solar, wind or even hydro-energy, in as far as humans freely choose to only aspire to live in perfect balance with nature – which I am sceptical about regardless of my own “romantic view” of humanity and nature. The better approach still seems to be to allow human activity to isolate its energy needs from the naturally occurring needs of the biosphere. The biosphere we are responsible for or at least share with other organisms we also consider valuable. 

o  The implicit objective of this Idea is for humanity to supply energy, newly created, for new human activities.

This concludes the rethink of progress and hopefully, now you see what a “hybrid non-utopian Idea” looks like. My sincere hope is that this Idea infused you with many Ideas of your own.

Notes:

*Applying the concept of proto-commodity to units of energy simply makes it impossible to be paid for in a normal monetary system – by broad-based consensus, a proto-commodity is considered not to have a real value yet – it cannot be owned, almost like energy from the sun, while it enables a commodity or service in the actual economy – which can and should be owned and exchanged by free market actors. Therefore, none of the resources needed for the IESCoT energy supply can be paid for from the normal economy… This is only possible when the entire supply chain and operation of this IESCoT is isolated from the rest of the economy. Where the physical resource is considered the property of a specific entity, it must be isolated and freely made available in the proportions needed and become part of the IESCoT’s ability to be successful in its singular objective.

**Baseload energy seems to be a fundamental requirement of this idea simply to ensure the ability to achieve fungibility of supply, i.e. abundant, continuous and uninterrupted. However, while solar and wind might have the potential to become part of the IESCoT. But I am sceptical of “stealing energy from nature” for many reasons.

***Complete ownership includes all operational equipment and services as well as all externalities, like pollution, wastes and other environmental and social impacts, that must be taken care of by the IESCoT. This includes everything from finding resources, mining, manufacturing, operating, and recycling and setting harmless all aspects of the supply.

****Nuclear fission technology and fuel resources are abundant in the form of uranium, thorium and even legacy spent fuel sources from old nuclear plants. Modern new generation modular technologies will be best suitable for an IESCoT to implement and execute over long periods and in many locations across the world.