The two things we humans are always, compulsively, trying to get our hands on, are cheap energy and cheap love. “Cheap” in the sense of doesn’t cost us much – energy to get energy in the first case, love to get love in the second. You could just about tell the whole history of life on earth through the prism of it.
On one hand, cheap energy was the holy grail of life long before we came along. All living cell processes are primarily oriented to the capture, storage and controlled release of energy – without the ability to harness physical energy rather than just be subject to it, life can’t survive even for an instant, let alone grow and make a life for itself in the world. The fundamental agency of life is oriented, therefore, to the acquisition of energy. But you have to expend energy to acquire energy, so obviously the amount of energy you expend has to be less than the amount you acquire – hopefully much less. As cheap as possible, in other words.
Humans, well, also being life, at first we just continue the same MO – everything we do is oriented to cheap energy acquisition – we gasp and grasp for air to breathe and food to eat, because, like all life, our cells need them for energy to survive – but with us there’s an amazing X-factor which turbo-charges the whole affair. We are, uniquely, self-conscious, and, being self-conscious we develop practical arts, then science, technology and industry, which allow us to mercilessly exploit external energy sources in nature – sun, wind, water, gravity and, most importantly, fire. Gradually we get the idea we might not just be able to survive, but thrive; not just thrive, but dominate.
Yes, self-consciousness is our X-factor, our evolutionary edge – it gives us the capacity to exploit nature for all the cheap energy we can possibly want. But now, in the 21st century, we live in the dire, unintended consequences of our X-factor edge – burning fossil fuels (so abundant, so “cheap” to acquire) for energy causes global warming and poses a threat to our entire planet. Should we have seen it coming? – maybe, but mainly we are victims of our own success – the human population on earth is now so large that turning the whole thing around is almost unimaginably difficult. It’s what we always wanted – cheap energy on tap at the flick of a switch – it’s what life has always wanted – so we only have ourselves to blame – we are all responsible for global warming. Will we pull ourselves out of the death spiral before it’s too late? Hopefully, maybe. But there’s a sense, as you can see, in which it goes against our very – i.e. our biological – nature.
This is where that other thing we’re always trying to get our hands on – cheap love – comes in. As it turns out, our little fetish for cheap love is the one thing that can give us hope – give us half a chance – of not destroying the planet.
Cheap energy is the ultimate “biological necessity”, common to all life. Cheap love, however, is the ultimate “psychological necessity”, every bit as compelling as its biological counterpart, but unique to humans. It’s the other thing we get from our evolutionary X-factor edge self-consciousness, the flipside of the same rather bent coin. As well as mighty power to exploit the life out of nature, we get a hole in our hearts which only cheap love can fill – pathetic, embarrassing, shameless, shameful – but it opens up a vulnerability in us which might eventually be our salvation.
A “hole in our hearts” – how so? The “awakening” to full self-consciousness is such a shock – we experience an aching vulnerability, a sort of cosmic, existential loneliness, which sends us ever spinning off in search of connection, completion, identity, respect, admiration, esteem, happiness ….. – for, in a word, love. Philosophers, mystics, gurus, writers, artists have been pointing this out forever, but I think we all know it deep inside. It has to be cheap (the love), because at first we don’t know how to give it, just know we have to get it. But gradually we grow up, and learn that the best way to get love is to give it. Hopefully we grow up, both as individuals and as a species. Hopefully.
Human life is therefore (this is the history thing) propelled forward in a sort of madcap dialectic between these two necessities – biological and psychological – it’s “a tale of two necessities”, you might say (sorry for the cheap pun). We’re essentially, uniquely, divided creatures, always in two minds about things. But it’s our dividedness that gives us hope. Just imagine any other animal species, somehow becoming the dominant species on the planet in the way we have, and then stopping themselves from eating us all out of planet and home, and destroying any other species that got in their way – they just couldn’t stop themselves, because they wouldn’t be capable of being aware of what they were doing. You can’t stop yourself from doing something that’s instinctive, part of your nature (i.e. biological necessity), unless you can become aware of what you’re doing!
But humans, uniquely, can be aware, so we can hesitate, think twice, before we rush over the precipice – if we are the only species that really has the capability of destroying the world, we are also the only species that has the capability of not destroying it! So there’s hope – amazing hope. But what will it take?
I’ve described it as “growing up”, and the first thing I have in mind is, indeed, the time-honoured thing of thoughtful, loving parents gradually teaching their naturally self-centred little child to share, to consider others, to sometimes “put themselves in others’ shoes” – to be sources of lovingkindness, not just sinks. Then there’s an extrapolation of this towards an attitude of consideration and care for all things, for “the world as a whole”, not just the people close to you whom you hope might give you love in return. And then a further extrapolation for, in some sense, everyone, all of us together, developing this attitude.
Sounds a bit utopian, Pollyanna-ish, pie-in-the-sky, but the “climate emergency” is actually forcing the issue – forcing us to grow up faster than we ever planned to or imagined we could – because what’s required is co-operation on a global scale, all-in. It’s a funny moment we’re in right now then – just when friendly relations between the nations are most urgently needed, a new east-west “cold war” is starting to heat up. But this confrontation – this clash of ideologies and economies – is itself fundamentally about cheap energy (who controls the resources?) and cheap love (who controls the people?).
The big question is, therefore, can we transcend psychological necessity – can we overcome our addiction to cheap love? My notion of extrapolation, of an ever-widening circle of inclusion, makes it all sounds so smooth, so easy; but it almost certainly isn’t. Environmentalists imagine a “Great Turning”, a “shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization” – you can read the great article about it at ecoliteracy.org – but how can such a radical cultural shift possibly occur, before it’s too late?
If all we had to rely on were ourselves, with our famously poor track record, you’d surely have to be pretty gloomy about prospects for the future. So why amazing hope, as I so cheerfully claimed above? Because the essential groundwork—for the radical cultural, psychological shift in question – has already been laid. Laid in a tomb slightly less than 2000 years ago. Radical shift, extrapolation? It’s more like a quantum leap. From industrial-scale selfishness, a mindset of exploit-the-world-for-every-last-speck-of-cheap-energy-you-can-get-out-of-it, to one of caring, nurturing, life-sustaining – the two mindsets are on different planets, a million miles apart, as far apart as death and life.
The word is “stewardship”: the original call in the Genesis story, what God said he created us for, to tend the Garden, to care for and nurture the Creation. So, what went wrong – why didn’t we heed the call, why have we so often been merciless exploiters instead? I think you know the answer: human sinful selfishness, the whole sorry history of it. What’s the solution? I think you know the answer to that as well.
Yes, the essential groundwork has already been laid – in a tomb, though vacated three days later 😊. Cheap energy, on the other hand, our biological addiction to it – what’s the solution to that? I think you know the answer to this question as well: renewables, our continued development of the science and technology of. But tell me this: given the miracle that occurred back in the day—the groundwork laid, the tomb vacated – is not our rapidly developing ability to conjure energy out of what amounts to not much more than thin air, itself a figure of a similar miracle to come for all of us and all creation? Tell me I’m dreaming, for surely I am!
September 2023