American Oil

"There is no doubt about our absolute and complete dependence upon oil. We have passed from the stone age, to bronze, to iron, to the industrial age, and now to an age of oil. Without oil, American civilization as we know it could not exist"--Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior 1933-1946

I found this quotation in The Prize, a Pulitzer-winning monumental history of the oil industry first published in 1991. I don't think what Ickes said is an understatement. There is no modernity without oil--the two are more inseparable than we are with the internet, in my view. For oil, the reigning king of all commodities underlying the lives of us billions on the planet, is the foundation upon which digital technology rests. The hardware is not built without petroleum products, the software not developed without the churning wheels of an economy. 

That black substance permeates everything. It would be futile to try to list its products and their integral roles in daily life. I like how Ickes frames it as a tool, a technology akin to metalworking that defines human activity. Our collective knowledge of manipulating such substances is like a dense, irreplaceable nucleus. 

Shifting away from oil, as we are presently trying to do, is to usher in a new era of history. The renewables revolution is the largest undertaking humanity has ever tried: a concerted, global effort to revamp an engine of incomprehensible scale on the fly. This is hydrocarbon world. To call the task ahead enormous is laughably understated. 

One of my biggest takeaways from this book is how American dominance stemmed from our oil reserves. After the Civil War, this country industrialized like the Europeans & Japanese did, with coal fueling steam engines in locomotives and factories. But once the world's first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania, American industrialization went to a new level. This denser, more-transportable fuel unlocked internal combustion, a superior mechanism with greater power and efficiency than any before. 

I find it no coincidence that the British and Germans had coal under their lands, and they industrialized first. The Americans and Russians found oil under theirs, and they ruled the 20th century. 

With this heavenly gift, the US catapulted to the top of the global power structure in short order. I was amazed to see how early the imperial powers of Europe came to rely on America as the enforcer of their colonial order. The sheer magnitude of this nation, supercharged by flammable liquid, was unparalleled well before WWI rolled around. Even by the turn of the century American industry, American oil, ruled. 

The story of oil in the popular imagination is a Middle Eastern one. In reality it's an essential American one, from the beginning to now, from when we were a dominant producer to a dominant consumer to a dominant producer once more. Oil and America define each other. The story of our country is a story of how oil changed us. 

Material Things

Most of us have too much stuff. The excess is detrimental to the health of our minds and our planet. Though consumption hasn't receded, there is a mainstream rhetoric highlighting the negatives of our vast accumulations; the minimalist self-care movement (really another form of the same consumer culture that got us to this point in my opinion, but not the point here). It's laudable to have less. But the demonization of things isn't the right mentality--the things themselves aren't inherently bad. Our relationships to the world around us is where the problem lies. 

I look around my apartment at my possessions while writing this. The z-shaped console my dad and I built from a plank of wood. The desk I work on. The nightstand I've had since childhood, its drawers and surface sanded and re-painted to fit my evolving style. My cozy sofa and tall stools and firm mattress. In the process of moving, I sometimes view these things as burdens weighing me down. I imagine I didn't have them; a world where I could move freely about without logistical obstacles. 

But these fleeting thoughts ignore the practical, daily, essential functions these pieces of furniture provide me. These objects reflect my individuality and history, ingenious creations with comfort and utility of the highest order. 

Minimizing possessions, decluttering, is a great goal. But this trendy view, popular among wealthy young people in wealthy countries, that the things are blocking true happiness, that its better to flutter about tied to nowhere and no thing, ultimate freedom attainable by rejecting material constraints, glorification and worship of the internal self--I don't think that's right either. 

I see this movement as an extension of Descartes' pervasive, misguided idea of dualism. Separating mind and body created a false distinction between human and nature, the outside and inside, me and not me. Advancements in biology and ecology and physics and chemistry and psychology clearly show this separation is nonexistent. Everything is connected. Diet impacts brain function, polluting the air and water is suicide, on and on. How we treat the world (including those material things we own) is effectively how we're treating ourselves. 

Dualism is how the balance was broken. Defining the self as an independent entity from the surrounding world leads to destruction on moral, environmental, and spiritual levels. 

These objects of mine--they ground me in the physical reality. They're mementos of where I've been and what I've done. I take care of them. I treat them with the respect I treat myself with. I use and enjoy them, and that's a good thing. I strive to have a healthy, loving relationship with my world. Viewing the physical world as inferior to the metaphysical isn't solving any of humanity's problems. 

If anything, these days we should be more rooted in the tangible reality. We have to see our surroundings as extensions of ourselves. Condemning everything beyond our fingertips as a distraction will accelerate disaster. We must rediscover the meaning of health.