AIR

John Berge

1989

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 4th quarter 1989, No. 317

Different pairs of eyes can look at the same thing and see that thing differently depending on the level of education, experience or mental ability of the owner of those eyes. The report to others of what was seen can vary too, depending on the viewer's emotional state and, then too, on his estimation of the ability of his audience to understand. Not long ago, John Glenn said one vivid experience as an astronaut was his realization that the atmospheric envelope that surrounds the earth was so very thin. He might well have stayed on that topic, perhaps throwing a little light on society's desperate need to better understand a few physical facts about the precarious position of all life on earth.

Perhaps that revelation of John Glenn's came to him because, in his experience as an airplane pilot, he had grown accustomed to thinking of distance -- great distances that could be traversed in a very short time. But here he was, as an astronaut, traversing a great distance in a vertical direction -- and quickly. It didn't take but seconds to leave the blanket of our atmosphere and then to be in the sterile realm of space.

Fifteen or twenty miles horizontally is perceived by most of us as a small distance, but that same small distance vertically seems great. Perhaps that is why we have blindly assumed that our air is a great, endless, sewer-like receptacle into which we can safely continue to pour our noxious gasses forever. But such is not correct; that receptacle is becoming plugged; it does have limits, and it is the same air that we must breathe to live.

Air is not brand-new, manufactured and guaranteed new and fresh for us to breathe. Instead, it has been here for millions of years, recycled over and over by nature and given to us and to all life to use and enjoy, but there isn't the abundance of it that we first thought. How we use it is up to us, and we must taste, smell and breathe the result of our management of that limited resource -- air.

Because we have gotten accustomed to the rules of the Price System, over the long centuries, we have not questioned those rules except to insist upon modifications and reforms that are really merely different applications of the same old thing. Communism, fascism, socialism and other brands of the ancient Price System have been tried with the same result -- they do not meet the new situation that is created by technology. They were brought into existence to distribute a scarcity, but are incapable of operating technology satisfactorily in today's conditions. We may have to learn this the hard way -- by literally choking on it.

We must awaken to the fact that the cause of what we choke on is created by the Price System, and no token reform by politics or business will be sufficient to avoid the dangers involved in its perpetuation; it will rob us of life itself if we let it.

We can abandon our inept handling of technology by adopting scientifically managed social system -- we can then live our lives with the enhanced opportunity for a better life, instead of in a foolish pursuit of profit. We can do this, but only if we realize what it is that we must do to embark upon a course of action that intelligently manages those factors that give us life. One of those factors is air!