Human Progress -- To Where?

L.W. Nicholson

1991

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 4th quarter 1991, No. 325

Progress: To move forward, to grow, advance, develop, and to improve.

With this definition, human progress, then, would be the development or improvement of human knowledge creating movement forward, an advance toward a better living condition. Where this progress ends, if it does end, will depend on the future development of human knowledge, the materials we have to work with and the ability to avoid catastrophes, both natural and man-made.

Since the earth's resources are not evenly distributed over the world, it can be expected that some areas would develop faster than others. And as technological know-how advances, one should expect such areas, if not overwhelmed with over-population, to reach a point that plenty could be produced for all citizens.

Over many thousands of years man learned to use the club; this was an advance which added to his protection and assisted in the gathering of food. He learned to use fire, to cultivate plants, and he domesticated certain animals. All of which contributed to his food supply, increased his ability to live in colder climates and allowed his species to increase. Thus, man widened the gap between himself and other species of life. This progression occurred slowly over many centuries, but then faster as his knowledge increased.

This whole progression has increased in speed as a result of each major innovation, and, in areas with sufficient materials, it leaped forward with an amazing acceleration together with the discovery of the scientific method. As a demonstration of this acceleration, perhaps nothing could be as dramatic as the declining percentage of human labor in the total supply of energy required for the operation of human society. When the use of the scientific method began, the contribution of human energy was around 98 percent of the total. Since the introduction of science and engineering methods into human affairs, this 98 percent has dropped to less than 2 percent. Now, in 1991, in the United States and Canada, human energy supplies less than 2 percent of the total required for the entire social operation, while more than 98 percent is supplied by sources outside the human body. At the same time, the total energy used has increased by some 40 times. Energy from coal, oil, gas, falling water and nuclear are now doing most of the work.

This shift from the predominant use of "human" muscle to "non- human" muscle has created an unbelievable increase in the ability to produce. It has allowed the production of hundreds of items, the building of hundreds of facilities, and transportation and communication activities which would have been impossible in the past. After getting under way about the time the U.S. was founded in 1776, the most rapid development has been since 1900. It has occurred so fast that improvements in social control and distribution techniques haven't kept pace, and it is in these areas that humans must increase their efficiency.

This extraordinary increase in the use of extraneous energy, supplying the power for the greatest technological mechanism the world has ever known, has created problems never before encountered by mankind. It has changed the face of the earth; it has expanded the dependence on the earth's resources to unprecedented levels, and it has increased the pollution of the earth proportionally. It has made it possible for more people to live longer lives which consequently requires more resources resulting in more damage to the environment than ever before. This has been one of the major costs of human progress to date.

Such an order of magnitude of physical change cannot continue without major revisions in the attitudes of mankind toward the environment, both physical and economic. Opposition to behavioral changes that required mankind to adapt to new circumstances have been ignored, and this has resulted in much of the environmental and economic degradation now in process. As the human population is increased; as the earth's resources are further depleted, it is absolutely necessary that human behavior be modified to match the physical requirements of life on a finite planet. Progress is not without its problems, and the lack of communication, human inertia and hostility are not the least of them.

It is high time for human consideration of the increasing problems caused by this progression. Intentionally or not, humans have chosen this road, this human progress, and they must determine whether or not it can be maintained and for how long. We can't put the cubic miles of oil or the coal and the gas that we have burned back into the ground in their original state; they are gone beyond usefulness. We can't easily decrease the human population to the numbers which could be supported by the hand tool methods of the past. In the physical world, history is irreversible; it never repeats itself. We have started a progression that we can't reverse; we can only make the necessary modifications to sustain the progress we have made while limiting our waste in the use of non-replaceable resources; this is our chance for survival -- we don't have a choice.

We live in the only world known with the ability to support human life; it is a physical world of matter and energy which operates in accordance with natural laws; and the limits of physical growth are the limitations imposed by the physical character of the natural world. For example, the earth cannot support one person per sq. ft. of arable soil. The earth has only 6.7 million square miles or arable soil, or about 1/7 of the total land area. At present the human population is increasing at almost 100 million per year. This is enough to replace the entire population of the U.S. in TWO AND ONE HALF YEARS. And this is occurring at the same time that the amount of arable soil is diminishing as a result of the demands of an increasing population.

Few people have been taught to understand physical growth in that actual physical world in which we live, and the physical limitations of that growth. Where conditions are favorable for growth, the increase starts slowly then grows more rapidly at a compound rate. Which means it doubles as a function of time. Obviously this cannot continue forever, or this one phenomenon would fill the world, allowing room for nothing else. The rate of growth inevitably must slow, doubling at greater lengths of time until it levels off with no further growth. In fact, a negative growth may then occur. As an example, the use of oil increased rapidly during this century, but as the supply dwindles, the rate of its use must level off then decline. There are limits to the growth in the use of any non-replaceable resource and there are limits to the growth of the human population which requires these resources to sustain life. New discoveries and new technology have allowed population growth far beyond that which could have been possible in pre-technological ages. As the population increases, the use and the wastage of the earth's resources also increases. As the population growth approaches the limits imposed by the limited supply of resources, the population must level off and will probably decline thereafter.

In many nations of the earth the human population is already too great for their existing resources to supply more than a meager standard of living. And with the present degree of knowledge in those areas, any resources supplied by others will only result in a further increase in their population and an even smaller ability to solve their population problems. This means that the fewer who starve today results in more starvation in the future. The areas that have resources in sufficient quantities to supply their own needs but who then attempt to share them with all the deficit nations, will soon be without themselves. Then all the earth's people can starve together.

So the only choice mankind has is to limit population growth in a humane manner. To allow this growth to continue in spite of the deterioration of his environment, wasting natural resources and polluting and reducing the earth's ability to support humanity until the population is limited by starvation, should be seen to be unacceptable. As physical limits are approached, it will be ever more difficult to maintain any population growth. In fact, many of the earth's present 5.4 billion people are hungry and depend on handouts from more fortunate areas to support their present population.

Where are we going? Where will all this progress take us? What is our goal, and how will we know when we get there? It seems that everyone has been so busy attempting to cope with present personal problems, making money for their own personal interests and trying to just stay alive in a dog-eat-dog financial environment, that few have had, or have been willing, to devote the time to determine the direction and the probable destination of society as a whole.

At any rate, one way or another, mankind must progress toward a stable population. Then, after it has leveled off, it is almost certain to decline to some level which will be in a state of dynamic equilibrium with other earth processes and resources. In the future, the wastage of non-recurring natural resources will likely be considered a crime against mankind. It would be so considered today if the limits of physical growth were better understood.

With the discovery of the scientific method, the operating mechanism of the world's people began to split into two different worlds. The parts which had the materials with which to work progressed into an entirely different kind of society, more advanced with better living standards and far less man-hours per unit of production. The areas which didn't have the necessary materials continued operating according to the dictates of what is called a "low energy society."

The people of the areas which presently have the natural resources, the technology, and the know-how to solve their own problems, economic and environmental, must do so. If they can't, or won't, then all the human progress so far achieved will have been for nothing.

The area that has the best, and quite possibly the only, chance to contribute a real solution to solving their own economic and environmental problems is the United States and Canada -- considered as a unified Continent. This North American Continent has 1.6 acres of arable soil per capita, which is enough for the people who live here but not enough to share much with others. The same is true for most other resources. This Continent has the necessary physical requirements, if properly cared for and used efficiently, to eliminate poverty on this Continent, but not the requirements to do so for the rest of the world. When, and if, we have solved our own problems at home, after we have gained the experience required to take care of our own people, learned the economic necessities, we will then, and only then, be in a position to advise other nations concerning humane methods for reducing their population to match their available resources and to create their technology possible according to their physical capabilities. Until we have learned these things ourselves we can't provide effective assistance to other countries; we can only continue to mess up their condition more than it already is. If we don't know how to feed our people at home when we have plenty of food, how can we expect to feed the world which doesn't have the food?

At this particular time in history, the people of North America must concentrate on solving North American problems. This is the best possible procedure for the citizens of this, and all other countries. If the U.S. and Canada can't do this, then the opportunity may be lost for all time. If the U.S. and Canada can't do this, when they have all the physical requirements necessary, then it can only be because they don't have the intelligence to do so. If the leadership, political or otherwise, of the U.S. and Canada can't provide the leadership to do this, then the citizens of these two countries must find a method for selecting a leadership which can. The future, if any, of the human species depends on it.

When a country has developed the physical ability to provide plenty for all it's citizens, no person should qualify as a "leader" who would refuse to allow the elimination of poverty, homelessness, economic crime and hopelessness.

How much of a problem is it to determine why the U.S., the richest country in the world, has more than 30 million people living in poverty? Could this be more complicated than landing a man on the moon and then to return him safely to earth? Could it be more complicated than to build the necessary technology to produce plenty in the first place? How many people are asking their leaders for an explanation for this? Are none of the thousands of citizens working with charitable organizations interested in finding out? Where is the school which provides classroom instruction concerning the requirements necessary for the distribution of the abundance North American technology can produce? Does the person who calls himself the "educational" president suggest forming a committee of educational experts to study the requirements for the operation of a high energy society? Who is responsible for the education of North Americans anyway?

"IF" is sometimes a very large and important word. IF the U.S. and Canada had been able to select an intelligent leadership some 60 years ago, most of the social, economic and environmental problems of these two countries would have been solved before now. IF scientific solutions then available had been used, IF they had not been censored out of the press, IF the citizens of this Continent had been taught to accept factual information as being more important, more accurate than beliefs and opinions, IF society as a whole had been more intelligent, we could now be learning to live rather than lying, cheating, and scrambling for money to buy the necessities of life. And, IF bullfrogs had wings .... However, as much as we may like to look back (rather than forward) to find someone to blame for our troubles, the past really is past and, like the oil we have burned, is gone. The problem now is where do we go from here?

Mankind has lived with a system of scarcity throughout their entire history; they had no other choice in the matter since they simply didn't have the technology or the know-how to provide the needs of all citizens. Now, mankind has the technology of North America, but still does not have the know-how that allows the use of it. This whole system of price, of trade and commerce, of commodity valuation, the entire financial system of banking, the S&Ls, insurance, the stock market, public and private methods of financing physical operations, all are based on ox-cart age institutions that were created in times past to regulate a society of low energy and slow economic activity. None of these will be needed, or will have any place in a system of abundance. In fact the very existence of those institutions are an interference to the progression into a functional society. One can't buy, sell, or trade commodities which are abundant, whether they be made by nature (consider the air we breathe) or if they are made by technology. That is why we buy up farm products to keep them off the market; that is why we pay farmers to produce less, and that is why we waste natural resources in the production of products designed to wear out quickly. That is why we sell, or give away much of our production to foreign countries. We do these things to keep prices up to maintain a Price System. We do these things because we, as a people, have been unwilling, or unable, to make the effort to understand the requirements of an age of plenty. And we haven't had a leadership which could furnish the answers.

The benefits of an age of plenty should be obvious and would be many; there would be no point to many of the legal, or illegal activities now perpetrated for economic gain. About 95 percent of all crime would be automatically eliminated. There would be no poverty; wars would no longer be profitable and therefore would be highly unlikely. Unemployment wouldn't exist and working hours could be reduced as efficiency increased. Living standards would be the highest ever known with the production of plenty for all, rather than according to the amount of money one has. In fact, money couldn't be used in a condition of plenty, because it must be kept scarce in order to have value. The changes required would be many and would probably provide the most exciting advance in human history. But, in the meantime, the citizens of North America must overcome many of the misconceptions they have been brainwashed with for thousands of years. This will not be easy, but if we are to advance into the future, improving our society as we go, it will be necessary. Otherwise, human progress has about come to an end.

The scientific method has already solved the problems of production on this Continent, and it has also solved the problems of the distribution of plenty, and Technocracy is the result of scientific investigations in this field. Technocracy was incorporated in the state of New York in 1933. The Organization was designed to assist the citizens of North America in understanding the physical requirements of human progress and survival. This information wasn't censored out of the press because it was incorrect; instead, it was censored out in an attempt to maintain the institutions of scarcity. From the beginning, Technocracy has stated that this Price System must be replaced to ensure human survival, and in spite of the many efforts to eliminate Technocracy, it is still here. Technocracy's information is essential if there is to be any beneficial future for this Continent and it's people. Technocracy doesn't ask anyone to believe what it says; it asks that it be investigated and understood. Citizens need to consider themselves part of this society and take responsibility for its direction and purpose.