On energy thresholds

Ivan Illich mentioned that technologies become toxic to societies when they exceed an energy-threshold. In fact, he talks about two thresholds. The first one is related to ecological collapse and it is quite easy to grasp. You drive a car, you burn fuel and fuck the ecosystems. Not much more to explain.

But the second threshold is the critical one, because it is at a lower level and therefore kicks in first. It is the threshold for social collapse. The tissue of relationships in a society starts crumbling down when using high energy technologies. Social unraveling is most insidious, because it's harder to pin down. And the causal link it has with energy intensity it's even harder to see.

You drive a car, you oppress and risk to kill cyclists at any moment. The car gives you an enormous amount of power (in the real physical sense) that annihilates the possibility of having a peer-to-peer relationship with another road user that doesn't also have a car. No dialogue possible, raw force dictates, social hubris.

Everything touched by fossil energy is commodified, desacralized, dumbed down. You turn the gas switch and you have instantly a fire, you put branches in a machine and you get out uniform woodchips, you press on the accelerator pedal and you are teleported on top of a hill. It looks simple and harmless but you don't see what's behind it. You don't even ask or try to understand.

Today, more than fifty years of fossil-powered society after Illich's books, I believe societal collapse is complete. Powerless, atomized, lobotomized individuals on the verge of ecological doom.

When are we going to sit around a gas powered fire?

Time to shake off our golden yokes and embark into an adventure that we won't regret. Time for a real bonfire, with embers glittering in the night and sparks and hissing smoke. Or even better some explosions...