WEBVTT

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This is a film about energy
which is variously defined as

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British Thermal Units (BTUs), calories, foot
pounds, electron volts, kilowatt hours.

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It\'s also a film about the way we
think about things. To some of you,

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the questions that will be asked may
seem strange at first. It\'s only because

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in our everyday lives, we rarely bother to
ask them out loud in our rational voice.

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But we do ask them, in our
dreams, in our frustrations,

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and in the way we live. One of the
questions we will consider is

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why do we use energy the way we do.
Is there some pattern,

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some ancient genetic code that guides our
behavior and therefore the way we use energy?

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The other side of that question is how
does living in a high-energy world

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affect our behavior? We don\'t mean
to answer or solve these questions

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in the traditional sense.
What we are really asking is,

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how does one thing relate to another, that
in turn to another, what are the patterns

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that connect our lives with other lives?

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[music]

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In ancient China, there were whole
villages that made pine porcelain pottery.

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It was a tradition to prepare and
store the clay in case for the future

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\'cause the aging process may declare
a stronger and easier to use.

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The clay is not used the next year, five, or ten, or
even twenty years later. Instead, they used the clay

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that had been made by their
great great great grandfathers.

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The clay they made would be used a 100 years
later by their great great great grandchildren.

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That\'s real different, isn\'t it?

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Are you listening? You know
what\'s really different?

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I mean, even in my lifetime. What?

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There\'s so much more power and speed,

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you can\'t guess what a difference that
makes. Things even have different meanings.

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I bet we use a 100 times more energy

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than they did in the old days
before machines. Maybe 200,

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you got to melt all this stuff down to get
it out of the ground. Then those machines

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and ground on, assemble, transport,
and sell, that all takes energy.

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Then we get to burn up, you know,
whenever we\'ve got to burn up.

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The kind of energy people had
before machines was natural.

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It was like, the energy they
got from the food they ate,

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not from oil. Well, what\'s
so natural about oil?

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It used to be sunshine and plants, and most
of the food we eat is grown from tractors,

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and fertilizers, and pesticides.
And they are all made from oil.

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Yeah, and more energy goes into growing it then
ends up in it. What? It\'s true, there\'s about,

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you know, ten times more energy that
goes into growing, and processing food,

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and ends up in the food. Really? Really.
It takes ten calories away only

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to get one calorie of cornflakes.
Ten times? Minimum, it\'s even more

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if you drive the truck to the store. Well, you
still haven\'t said what\'s so natural about oil.

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Well, it might be natural enough but
the way we use it isn\'t very natural.

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What do you mean by natural then?

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Well, I guess what I mean is that we came
into our existence in a particular way,

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a natural way, and for
two, three million years,

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we only used the energy that our
bodies made from the food we ate.

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And that kind of energy is
the basis for our evolution.

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The way we were reflected, the way the world
was, we were connected, we were part of it.

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What\'s natural then is what evolved with?

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Yeah, and that natural low energy
world is a basis for everything,

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even things like love and hate, and greed, aggression.
All our emotions evolved in that low-energy reality.

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Our emotions evolve? Yeah,
right along with their brains.

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We know that place very well, we came
from the there. Now we are here.

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[sil.]

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A gallon of gasoline contains about
as much energy, as that we can have

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off a person\'s fine diet of about
31/2 or 3,000 food calories a day,

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which is more than most of world\'s people
get. A fast car will go through that gallon

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in about ten minutes. A Concord SST will
burn it up in about of tenth of a second.

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Melania were consumed in
putting the gallon together.

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We have to learn to see energy, not just gasoline in the
tank or like electricity when you flip the light switch.

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But stakes, paper, bottles,

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steel, the film, everything, we can\'t value a
commodity whose presence we don\'t perceive.

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Okay, okay, this is going to be 75.
Now, it\'s seen

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two pitch five, take one, Catherine
(inaudible). Is that thing working?

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Okay, Catherine, anytime.

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The things that make life work, basic
things like breathing, blood circulation,

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nervous systems, emotions, and thinking.
All these things were worked out

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in an extremely low-energy world. Living
things evolved on their personal energies,

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so many calories a day through
the leaves or through the jaws.

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Life was closed circular
system that ran on sunlight.

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There wasn\'t a filling station at the bank
of the river. If we think of a system

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as a closed circular process, we could
also say that a system sees itself.

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In other words, it sends information from
some parts of the system to other parts.

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A system has to be able to respond to its
own signals, so it can control itself.

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There needs to be some stability and
repetition. There need to be patterns,

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the patterns that connected all together.

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[sil.]

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Then somebody discovered the high
energy store. That changed everything!

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[sil.]

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We made a break in the natural system.

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What the system sees in a high-energy
world, just seems crazy.

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Because it monitors, its eyes, we are made
to see in a natural low-energy world.

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There is no control, no
stability, no pattern.

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It\'s like going on vacation without a map…

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[music]

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on a strange planet.

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[music]

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Using so much energy puts strain
on our social systems too.

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Because democracy and the use of energy
can grow together only to a point.

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A certain amount of energy let\'s us create
the conditions for social progress.

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But at some point, more
energy means less democracy

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because large centralized energy
systems mean that fewer people have

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control over that energy. A
true participatory democracy

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would have to develop low energy
diversified technologies.

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[sil.]

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Did you hear they are making people

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get rid of their old cars? If a car
is just sitting in the backyard

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without a license, they can
come and hold it away.

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Well, if you can\'t keep the junk around for
parts, you can\'t keep the old ones, right?

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You have to buy a new one. People must
have the right to keep their old cars,

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especially if they need them for parts. They are
not sure about this, but I think the notion

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that we\'ve got it right is an illusion.
What about laws?

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Well, laws get passed \'cause somebody
wanted something more than somebody else

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and that changes. What about the
declaration of independence?

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The people that wrote that were
saying, \"Tell the king, forget it,

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to care of our own lives.\"
They were all going to stop

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but what accounted was that they
got together and they wrote it,

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they don\'t need rights. Yeah, they didn\'t
even have rights until they wrote them.

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Well, it still applies.

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Now if we want to lead our own lives,
we want a neighborhood or a community.

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We do it, we make it, and we
live in it, Governments can\'t.

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That\'s too much to expect people in government
or business to give us rights anyway.

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Yeah, they got their own
rights to worry about.

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[sil.]

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Leo Tolstoy said, \"I sit on a man\'s back,

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choking him and making him carry me.
And yet, assure myself and others

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that I am sorry for him
and wish to ease his lot

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by any means possible except
by getting off his back.\"

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The Chinese calculated that

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it took the labor of 30
peasants to keep a person

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in the university for one year. A
four year program would require

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a 120 peasant years labor,

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the equivalent for a PhD would
be 240 peasant years labor.

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[sil.]

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The people who plan things, the managers and
bureaucrats hold a unique position in our society.

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They function in a high energy state.
They are energized,

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the solutions to their problems are
energized. And a high energy life causes

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a high energy fantasy to be
projected on to the real world.

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[music]

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[music]

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Don\'t you think the faster things go,
the harder just to do what\'s right.

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Probably. For one thing it\'s harder
to be honest in the hierarchy system

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and at the same time, it\'s lot more
important. Why is it more important?

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Well, the purpose of honesty in any system is
that all the parts can know what\'s going on.

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But if they get a wrong signal,
a lie, that won\'t work,

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probably work against the system. So
if our body gets the wrong signal

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and it makes the wrong responses, its functions
are thrown out of (inaudible) or headaches,

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the heart stops, cancer
starts, nothing works right.

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So why do we have to be more honest in a
high-energy system? Things happen faster.

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Which means there are more signals but
less time to respond to each signal.

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And everything is much more unstable
because each signal affects more things

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and has a lot more power.

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[sil.]

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Then a lie in a high-energy world will get in
more trouble than a lie in the low-energy world.

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Yeah and even though we
need to be more honest,

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the high-energy world seems to encourage lying
\'cause it\'s more complex and faster things are,

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the less accountable we are.

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There are just more places to hide.
Well, some of it\'s economics

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and how many people can afford to be accountable
who work for government, or corporation,

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or even universities. Well,
they need to keep their jobs.

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Albert Einstein said that
almost all scientists

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are economically completely dependent. So few
of them have a sense of social responsibility

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that they can\'t determine
the direction of research.

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If that is the case, then how do we find
low-energy solutions to our problems,

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when the people who do control research are
true believers in high-energy solutions.

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It\'s not odd that the people would believe

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the same thing for hundreds of years. They believe
something from one generation to the next

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almost as a matter of faith. And
finally, a generation will come along

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and decide that what was believed just
simply wasn\'t believable anymore.

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So they\'ll start to believe
in something else.

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And then that would go on for generations.
You mean things like God and science or art?

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Yeah, people would believe certain
things about the meaning of life,

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or the origin of life, or what
art was, for hundreds of years.

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And then, they\'d change their minds and
they go off believing something else.

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But the really hard thing is, as
people began to use more energy,

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they began to change their minds faster.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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Do you think energy makes
us think different too?

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Sure, it does. Three (inaudible) coming up.

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[sil.]

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Well, we used to think more about
the process of how things happened

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\'cause our lives depended on it. Well, a
high-energy system can let us forget the process

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sometimes and does something else.

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It makes us more aware of some
things and less aware of others.

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A high-energy system just seems
to amplify certain things

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better than others.

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Like a tape recorder. Why? When you
record something and play it back,

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it sounds different \'cause some parts
just sound better than the others.

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Yeah. The same is true of ideas and
emotions. In a high-energy system,

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things that are fast, and violent,
aggressive just seem to amplify better

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than things that are gradual in general.

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Yeah, like sometimes you\'re really
different when you are driving. Me?

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Yeah, remember the time you didn\'t have
mufflers? That only happened once.

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But you still drive crazy.
I don\'t drive crazy.

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[sil.]

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You don\'t suppose, that
a high-energy system

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amplifies a question \'cause the
question uses more energy.

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That would be weird. It\'s
like getting a donkey to go

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by hanging a carrot in front of it. More energy would
make us more aggressive, so we could use more energy

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so we could be more aggressive.
You know what that means? What?

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Sooner or later, we would
blow ourselves up.

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Maybe if we understood how… We
could stop following the carrot.

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Yeah, like sometimes when you figure out why you have
been doing something, you don\'t need to do it anymore.

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Yeah, and sometimes you
keep on doing it anyway.

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[sil.]

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The social values that fuel
the high-energy society

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are all too apparent today.

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The values that could make a low-energy society
work are deeply rooted in many cultures

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but they may need to be rescued for
like societal adhoc and dust it off.

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Whatever happened to thrift, to
neighborliness, craftsmanship,

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the notion that the esteem is merited more about
conspicuous simplicity than by conspicuous consumption.

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Recycling values like that could help us to achieve growth and things
that really count rather than things that are merely countable.

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[sil.]

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H.T. Odum, considered to be one
the fathers of modern ecology

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has made some interesting
remarks about the relationship

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between energy and human cultures.
The survival in ecosystem

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depends on maintaining an efficient energy
flow. If this is also true of human cultures,

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then surviving cultures
tend to develop patterns

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that maximize their energy flows. These
patterns are reflected in the beliefs

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and values of the culture and lead to
decisions that are help in survival.

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We call these their ethical patterns,
religious morals and folk ways.

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Now when conditions change,

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what is required of the culture will change. During
periods of growth, one type of ethics is required,

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during steady state, another.
When it is possible to grow,

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there maybe an emphasis on military expansion
and the culture develops with this basis.

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When energies are lower, there maybe
a de-emphasis on military expansion,

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each in turn depending
on energy availability.

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We have at present, a culture which is
based on unlimited supplies of fossil fuel

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and with a recent history of growth.
Growth is regarded as necessary and right.

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But the routine with in our system,

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sub-cultures, whose life support mechanisms
are based essentially on solar energy.

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It\'s an interesting thing

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that within in our larger systems, we retained the
very ability that maybe necessary to generate

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patterns for the future.

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Life is after all, a matter of doing
one thing instead of another.

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If we can accept that, then
deciding which things we do

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is very important. And we should pay some attention
to the process of making those decisions.

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Not paying attention to the process is
what gets us into the most trouble.

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Paying attention means thinking and ideas.
People who don\'t think

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and who don\'t have ideas are in for a bad
time of it because they will be manipulated

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all of the time, instead
of part of the time.

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How much freedom anybody has
is always changing, isn\'t it?

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Yeah. And if we had more energy,
we get to have more freedom.

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And at the end, maybe we need more
freedom in order to use more energy.

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So we can have more freedom,
so we can use more energy so…

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Similar to donkey cart and carrot system.
But sometimes,

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
less freedom can get us to
use more energy too. How?

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
Well, energy tends to flow as
effectively as it can in any system,

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
planet\'s people or animals. From the process that gets the
most workout of the energy is going to be the most successful.

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
So sometimes, we use new values,
in this case, less freedom

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
to get more work out of the energy. It\'s
kind of like we\'re using a machine.

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
Yeah, in war time or anything
that restricts freedom.

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
We discipline ourselves to focus
more work on winning the law.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
Even an artist has to be disciplined to produce
enough to make a living. So more work,

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
less freedom and therefore
more energy gets used.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
If you get too much stuff,

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
you have to spend a lot of time and energy taking
care of it. Our heads have take care of it too.

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
Then after a while we
have less enough freedom

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
\'cause we have to protect our staff.
So energy does control our values

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
to that point anyway. Because
planning means seeing into the future

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
and if you are faster,
you get to see further.

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
That\'s simple enough. The more power and
speed we have, the more control we\'ll need.

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
[music]

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
All the centralized energy sources

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
demand highly predictable people. Safety
of the security, repair, we put a check

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
on our celebrities and our freedoms.
Governments that are trying to make up

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
our minds for us about technologies
with received hazards that are exotic,

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
disputed, unknown, maybe unknowable are
very tempted substitute we the experts

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
or we the people. The leader\'s
technocracy for democratic process,

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
over-centralized, over-specialized energy technologies
can be very expensive, not only in money,

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
but in human freedoms. At some point

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
in the growth of an industrial society, the cost
of maintaining social order may increase faster

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
than the other areas of the economy. The
business and bureaucracy of social control

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
is already a major industry in the US.
If we are unable to reduce

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
our energy consumption, the major
work of this society will be devoted

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
to maintaining social order.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:33.000
[sil.]

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
[music]

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
In what ways do you pay for
your high-energy habit?

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
Today, very few people are directly involved in the
activities that provide food, shelter, and clothing.

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
And even these have become mechanical jobs. As
our work becomes meaningless and repetitive,

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
we seek diversions from boredom
and booze, drugs, and TV.

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
We understand less and less about
ourselves. And we become more and more

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
out of touch with the natural
low-energy reality of our bodies.

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
We don\'t understand, we can\'t understand, the
high-energy reality we live in the midst of.

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:33.000
[music]

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
If we define ourselves through
our work, and if our work is

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
meaningless and repetitive, then we will discover
that we too are meaningless and repetitive.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
[music]

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
It is important that
everyone produce something,

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
rather than a few produce a great deal. What
is important is that people are able to work.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:13.000
[music]

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
Pope Pius XI said, \"Bodily labor

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
which even after original sin was decreed
by Providence for the good of man\'s body

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
and soul, is in many instances changed into

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
an instrument of perversion. And from the
factory, dead matter goes forth improved,

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
whereas men, they are
corrupted and degraded.\"

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
[sil.]

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
And Mahatma Gandhi said, \"Every
machine that helps every individual

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
has a place. But there should
be no place for machines

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
that concentrate power in a
few hands and turn the masses

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
into mere machine minders if indeed,
they do not make them unemployed.\"

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:10.000
[sil.]

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
Underlying our energy choices is
a difference of perception about

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
mankind and his works. Some people
who are impressed and fascinated

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
by the glittering achievements of the technology say
that, \"If we will only have faith in human ingenuity,

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
their\'s, we will witness the
second coming of Prometheus

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
bringing us undreamed of freedom and
(inaudible).\" Some other people say that

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
we ought to play on something more modest, unless we
find instead some undreamed of tyrannies and perils.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
And then even if we had an unlimited energy
source, we wouldn\'t have the discipline

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
to use it wisely. Such people are
really saying that energy is not enough

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
to solve the ancient problems
of the human spirit.

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
In our energy choices today, we have a
chance, maybe our last, to start to foster

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
a greater humility, one that springs from
an appreciation of the essential frailty

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
of the human design.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:28.000
[music]

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
Long ago, people saw the world as a magical
place. They knew that everything was alive,

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
like it had a spirit. The rivers, trees,

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
rain, and the wind, even
leaves on the ground.

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
Everything was to seem very alive.
Now where are those?

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:18.000
[music]