J.Z. Colby's Blog: NEBADOR News, Youth Futures, and Deep Learning Notes - Posts Tagged "personal-power"

Although they are not talked about until chapter 35, the map uses very common symbols. Can you see where the first chapter takes place? Hint: the small lake where Ilika rinsed his boots is almost exactly in the center of the map.

There are many hints in the first chapter that Ilika is from somewhere far away, and has never been in this place before. How many can you find?

Ilika's way of dealing with the angry stallion is unusual. How would most people react? How would YOU react? What does Ilika's response tell us about him?

What is Ilika's "state of mind" soon after the stallion leaves? How long would it take most people to get to that state of mind?

What assumptions does Ilika NOT make when talking to the rabbit, assumptions that most people would make?

This chapter clearly shows that the story is going outside the usual boundaries of human behavior. A "normal" person, in the medieval culture portrayed, or ours, would experience great fear in Ilika's situation with the stallion, flight or aggression to solve the problem, and then face-saving behaviors. Later, with the rabbit, most people would display some form of disrespect, perhaps capturing or killing the rabbit, or at least talking down to it. Ilika's non-typical reactions set the stage for his unusual origin.

Until about 300 years ago, people had only the same sources of energy they had always had: sunshine to grow food, human and animal muscle, and firewood. Suddenly, coal appeared, and about 150 years ago, oil. All other sources (hydro-electric, nuclear, etc.) are vary small in comparison.

With this new wealth of cheap, plentiful energy, we made things. Most things we use today require large amounts of energy to make, or are literally made from oil (all plastics). Also, we made people. Three centuries ago, the human population was about 1 billion. Now it is more than 6 billion. We made 5 billion extra people because our energy wealth allowed us to grow more food and move it around. A typical meal in the USA takes 10 calories of energy (mostly from oil) to grow and transport, for every 1 calorie in the food, and it traveled 1200 miles to get to your house.

Unfortunately, both coal and oil are non-renewable resources. There's a certain amount in the Earth, and when it's gone, it's gone. Oil production peaked in the USA in 1970. In other words, even though the price went way up, the amount we could find and pump out of the ground went down. Oil production in the UK peaked in 1999. Both those countries, and most other countries, have been importing more and more every year from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, and a few other countries.

It is too soon to know for sure, but world oil production has been flat since 2005. It may have peaked. It will take a while to be sure because some countries keep their production records secret.

For about the last 200 years, people who study the economy have mostly ignored the influence of our almost-free sources of energy. They saw the economy growing (most of the time), saw that people were getting richer and richer, and assumed that growth was a good thing that could go on forever. They didn't bother to stop and realize where that growth was coming from.

Now some economists are starting to realize that the "great recession" that started in late 2007 was not caused by a few poor people defaulting on their home mortgages. That was just a side-effect. It was caused by oil prices. They had been rising for years, peaked at $147 per barrel in 2008, dropped low for a few months as demand dropped, and were quickly back up to $70 or $80 a barrel.

What will the future bring? Except for a few people who will always fight (or try to cover up) change of any kind, most geologists and economists are trying to figure out if coal and oil production will decline slowly, over the next 100 years, or more quickly. Every time there is a jump in price, or a fall in supply, our civilization will be "shocked" and have to make adjustments.

Young adults can begin thinking about a world with less (and more expensive) energy, and how that will effect them. Some philosophers anticipate that we will travel less, make things (including food) closer to home so it doesn't have to be shipped so far, and live closer to the land. (Before energy became cheap and plentiful, about 90% of the people were farmers, fishermen, and others who produced food. Now, in the USA, about 5% are.)

This is a paraphrase of a question from William, 17, a Nebador citizen. Here are my thoughts, without claiming to really know the answer(s) to this question.

We are creatures of habit, and don't like change. We usually hope the future will be like the past, especially if the past has been pretty good (and for the last 2/3 of a century, it has been very good). Most people have learned how to prosper and be happy in the "status quo," the conditions that have been around recently, and the future always threatens to change those conditions, and so upset our prosperity and happiness.

Also, I'm sorry to have to say, there is money to be made, and power to be wielded, by NOT solving our problems. Some people take great pains to position themselves to profit by bad times, and those people often have great influence in our world. That is just one aspect of living in a relatively free society.

But a large part of the reason we aren't very good at solving big problems is just our human limitations. The world is very big and hard to understand. We have been managing cities and little countries for a long time, with fair success. Large countries, with political and economic influence all over the world (called "empires") are harder to manage, and our only long-term success story so far has been the Roman Empire at about 500 years. Persia, England, the USA, and Russia have also tried it, with less success. China avoided many of the problems of empire by sticking close to home.

Now some of the problems on our horizon are global in nature. We have NEVER done anything on a global scale, and have no idea if we even can. The United Nations, the Olympics, worlds fairs, and many other events, are all venues where we can talk and exchange culture, but have no real problem-solving power at this time.

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel seems to be a good example of human limitations. Someone tried to build a tower to Heaven, and the project failed largely because of communication problems. Today, when dealing with global challenges, we still have about a dozen major world languages to deal with. Meaning is easily lost in translation.

Please let me know if you think of any answers to this question that I have missed.

J.Z. Colby's first non-fiction book, "Standing on Your Own Two Feet: Young Adults Surviving 2012 and Beyond," is available without charge to (or for) any young adult at http://www.nebador.com/TwoFeet.html

Much of it was drafted in blog posts on GoodReads during 2010 and 2011, and in conversations in the Dumbledore's Army group during 2011. Cover art and illustrations by professional artist Rachael Hedges (who also did the Nebador book covers) bring the book to life, and short 2-page chapters make it easy to read for nearly anyone.