Original article
Wolfgang Sassin,
Dr-Ing, Independent researcher, formerly Senior Scientist of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Lecturer of Technical University Vienna, Austria
Address: Jochberg 5, 6335 Thiersee, Austria
E-mail: w.sassin@aon.at
Article ID: 020210216
Published online: 5 November 2019
HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/thebeacon.2.020210216
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.2.020210216
Quoting (Chicago style): Sassin, Wolfgang. 2019. “Deja Vue?” Beacon J Stud Ideol Ment Dimens 2, 020210216. https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.2.020210216
Language: German
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In the 21st century, "humanity" is confronted with itself for the first time in history, as a consequence of an increasingly existential global crowding-out competition. „Nature" is more or less destabilised and needs human "help" because it can no longer sustain itself and at the same time "carry" billions of people. In such a critical situation, the future development of human societies must be reconsidered. Europe needs an autonomous vision of its possible role and place in view of foreseeable global challenges. Its interest must be carefully redefined in the emerging first truly global civilisation. This is especially true for self-proclaimed global vanguards such as Germany. This situation is discussed in the paper. Key words: Industrial Civilisation, agricultural values, renewable source of energy, fossil energy, homo billionis, homo sapiens, German energy policy, Europe’s future
Earlier civilizations were dependent on the wide availability of biomass, hydropower, wind energy, human and animal labour. That was true until modern times. The industrial revolution and modernity relied on coal, later on mineral oil and natural gas. Fossil energies seemed almost inexhaustible at the beginning of the industrial revolution. This „revolution“ was, strictly speaking, the second major energy revolution since the beginning of agriculture at the end of the Stone Age. It expanded human possibilities in an unexpected way. Starting from England, first Western Europe, later the United States, Russia and Japan finally began to exert truly global influence with the help of the new civilizational means that became accessible by ever new powerful energy forms. The prerequisite for the emergence of overarching large power structures was no longer the spatial expansion of a system of rule with the aim of attracting additional human labour for civil and military projects. The growth of industrial civilization needed access to fossil energy deposits, which are rather unevenly distributed globally. To a lesser extent, the same was true for those raw materials that were or are necessary for the construction of the material infrastructure and the technical artefacts of an industrial civilization: ores, phosphates, etc.
Today’s industrial civilization is essentially a hybrid between classic great empires and a society based on mechanical slaves. In the multipolar world of the present, great political “empires” are confronted with each other in an existential competition. The substructure of these “great empires,” i.e. their “mechanical slaves,” feed on technical energy. The reproduction behavior of this substructure is similar to that of ants or termites. As with the “queens” of these peoples, there are only a few large production complexes that can generate such modern slaves. The greater the number of slaves that are necessary to fuel a state, the lower the reproduction rate of these slaves.
The well-being and the performance of modern “queens with court” in “developed” countries therefore determine the sustainability and the level of power these empires can exercise. In this context, it cannot be indicated clearly enough that the transformation of the world into industrialized and developing countries and the resulting power gap only arose through the transformation of a few agricultural societies into industrial societies.
Modern Europe need be clear enough about which of the mutually exclusive civilization states we want to join and what the consequences may be, because it's not just about technical decisions, such as an energy turnaround or the survival of certain currencies. Rather, the question is whether European countries can start such a basic experiment that cannot be stopped halfway through, and which will determine Europe’s chances in a world that usually does not tolerate mistakes. In this paper the possible outcomes for Europe and in particular Germany are analyzed on the basis of ideologies and civilizational choices adopted thus far. The fact that our civilization is faced with a decision which at first sight seems purely tactical, as it once did when Publius Quinctilius Varus decided to control „wild“ Germania with his troops which were dependent on a highly efficient infrastructure, must in fact shatter the foundations of the dominant political powers of today. A functioning and technically controllable energy infrastructure form the indispensable foundation of every form of modern civilization.
Because of the basic prerequisites for a redistribution of the planetary bases of life according to scientific models, the goal of which is to maintain certain climatic conditions and self-regenerating biological cycles, the following highly unusual conditions must be considered by Europeans politicians in the future: 1. Existential advantages and disadvantages on Planet Earth could no longer be defended or corrected by military actions. Instead they had to be compensated by peaceful transfers of energy, raw materials, knowledge and by resettlement of populations. That would not be an economic exchange via markets, but by a forced altruism to be planned centrally and ultimately accepted without resistance. 2. Efficiencies in the use of production factors would have to be monitored just as strictly as monitoring consumer goods and its strict ecological control. That will inevitably require ideocracy. 3. Individual freedom in shaping the way of dealing with the natural foundations of life and the need to protect these foundations in favor of global use, are mutually exclusive and would simply have to be accepted as a welcome intellectual compromise.
The inevitable conclusion therefore is:
1. The global population is too large to ever restore a pre-industrial natural status or even maintain the basic structure of the present culturally modified ecosystem, including climate.
2. For this reason, there is no point in striving for global political unity in order to pursue an unattainable goal.
3. Those who have the means to adapt to the changes in the ecosphere that are already underway must organize themselves accordingly. A global “watering can principle” will only fuel regional and global conflicts instead of dampening them.
© 2019 Wolfgang Sassin. Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
