The Wheel of history (standard:Editorials, 1107 words)
Author: Tanada	Added: May 10 2007	Views/Reads: 3191/2022	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
History doesn't repeat itself, human nature does!

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


It is too soon to tell. 

That has stuck with me ever since I heard it because upon thinking about
it I realized something. China has been Authoritarian for 6000 years, 
and very very stable. Not always smart, not always wise, and certainly 
over run several times in war. The people and the culture however have 
persevered through all of that time, educated modern Chinese can still 
read what their ancestors wrote thousands of years ago. Western 
civilization has risen and fallen several times in that same period and 
the language and culture have changed in wild and strange ways. 
Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Charlemagne, Mohammedan, 
Catholicism....All were Authoritarian and all had their era of triumph 
in the last 6000 years in the West. From time to time briefly there 
were flashes of Liberty culture, but they never lasted for very long. 
The most recent flash, an outgrowth of the Renaissance and Protestant 
reformation happened to reach full flower just about the time Benjamin 
Franklin invented his stove. 

What does that have to do with anything you ask? Well the Franklin stove
over and above its other virtues has one shocking technological 
advantage over every earlier home heating/cooking system. It can safely 
burn coal in your home for heat and cooking without nasty fumes or soot 
creating havoc. That was the real start of massive fossil fuel use in 
the World, the Chinese had been using Coal for industrial forging for 
centuries, but wood was the main source of cooking and heating around 
the world even so. 

The rest, as they say, is history. Once the common people were able to
burn coal instead of wood in the average home and they had a Liberty 
culture to build with, well the first generation could see how much 
better off technology and invention had made their lives and so they 
sought out more of the same. 

Now we are at the apex of that culture, in terms of convenience and
energy density per unit volume fossil fuels have every other chemical 
energy source beat hands down. Their are more energy dense chemicals, 
but they are not nearly as safe or easy to handle. 

Well this post is massively to verbose for most to bother reading by
this point and it is getting late so I will sign off by asking....Now 
What? 


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