What do we Do Now? Some Hints--

[Jackpine Radical]

I have been doing a lot of thinking as a result of the leveymg thread in GD:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1529067&mesg_id=1529067

This thread essentially tells the story of how the Saudis are financing a multinational conspiracy of at least 30 years’ standing to control the resources and politics of the western world. I was feeling pretty helpless after reading that thread because there seemed to be no course of action that could deliver us from the clutches of this gigantic criminal conspiracy. As I thought further, though, I began to get some glimmerings of how changes might happen. Let me emphasize that these thoughts are no more than half-formed, and I particularly invite everyone to join in the project of fleshing them out and changing them as seems fitting.

The great battle for the future will not be fought at the ballot box. It will be fought on the battlefield of technological innovation. The bad news is that the Forces of Darkness control the production and distribution of energy. And energy is the most important commodity on earth, the one from which all other resources derive. Their base is in petroleum and in fissionables. That is why Darth Cheney’s first move of significance was to hold his secret energy policy meetings. That’s where they laid out their intentions for our future; that’s where they produced the map of Iraq with the little dotted lines like a diagram of a side of beef.

And speaking of beef, agribusiness is a major branch of, and key player in, the fossil-fuel economy. All the commercial fertilizers, pesticides, and farm equipment fuels are fossil hydrocarbon products. Even alcohol and hydrogen technologies are, at best, slightly more efficient ways of turning fossil fuels into usable energy.

The Europeans are probably not less controlled by their corporations, but their power elites are somewhat cut out of the oil game, and consequently have less commitment to fossil and nuclear fuels. As a result, they’re more willing to contemplate alternative energies and environmental initiatives. In fact, they have traditionally been better long-term strategists, and appear to be positioning themselves for a coming ascendancy in the post-fossil world economy.

So anyway, here’s the plan--

I believe that it is hopeless to take on the minions of Darth Cheney in any direct confrontation. They have the armies, the money, the resources, and the propaganda machine.

What we have is the power of human ingenuity. We don’t beat Big Oil by fighting it. We beat it by stepping around it.

For all its power, the Behemoth is a mentally sluggish entity. They are both armed and burdened with a monstrous infrastructure, and with a locked-in, reality-denying world-view.

They are dinosaurs. We are mammals.

We win by developing new types of energy and new, more efficent ways of doing things, and especially by finding lifestyles in which information is used to replace brute force.

If you have ever studied information theory, you will recall Claude Shannon’s mathematical analysis of signal transmission--the seminal work from which we got the concept of the bit of information. Well that mathematics is the same as the mathematics of thermodynamics; information loss and entropy are essentially the same thing. Entropy, of course, is the reciprocal of available energy.

Energy is information, information is energy. That is all ye know, and all ye need to know. And therein is the seed of destruction of the Evil Empire.

And Al Gore is Obiwan Kenobe.