All systems, natural and man-made tend towards stability or equilibrium. This is the probable explanation for the importance that human beings place on the concept of equality, which means the same thing as equilibrium. A challenge can be made, however, to the tendency towards equilibrium, when the benefit is perceived to be gotten from the lack of equilibrium, by those that gain this benefit. When this happens a conflict is created between the natural tendency toward equilibrium and those that want to keep the system from moving toward that position. I believe that this is the conflict that mankind has faced for centuries, and is currently facing, as the systems we have tended to create, have been created with the intention of bringing benefit, not to everybody, but only those that create and maintain them.

As of 1998, it was estimated that 20% of the human population, and as the report put it, those that live “in the highest income countries” a synonym for the countries of West and Central Europe, and the lands of the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which were created through the violent ransacking of the Europeans, consumed about 86% of the earth’s resources 1  Since the benefit of use is with these people and the fact that this scenario has persevered for centuries suggests that group(s) amongst the Europeans, and when I use the word Europeans, I refer also to the European satellites of the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have tried to make sure that the tendency towards equality is hindered.

That the maintenance of any system requires some method(s) that offer it the leverage of control raises the question of what could the control systems that ensure this inequality be.

The first one that comes to mind is the fact that people have been separated from each other, which some refer to as the atomization of people. This atomization means that people do not commune with each other and as such are not privy to the experiences of others, and in most cases see others as some kind of “different” species to them. This is probably why people easily accept sufferings of the others, without having the desire to remove the source of the suffering. So if for example, a report published in 2006 stated an estimated 654, 965 excess deaths, or 2.5% of the Iraqi population, directly attributed to the invasion of Iraq 2, it elicits hardly any response, more from those that are directly responsible.

This isolation of people happens not only between regions but inside them as well, as most societies, today have the caste system of the haves and have-nots, with the possessive item that defines whether a person has or does not being money. The thinking that people have towards money is what, I believe, is the second system of control. The current thinking of money has transcended its purpose as being a mere means of exchange. In almost every society, its possession determines how well someone lives, as all items, including those that are needed by the human being to survive, are exchanged for money. This means the lack of money could mean, and is, in a lot of places, the difference between life and death. The implication of this is that there is a scramble to possess it, which means going to the people who possess it, who invariably are again those same Europeans. The game of money is such that someone that possesses it, can acquire anything they want, even when they have no other physical item to exchange for what they get.

The game has created a fight to possess, which the roots of all wars could be traced to, with the victors of those wars being whoever has the strongest weapons. As it is, those with the strongest weapons tend to control the realm, with either the use of or the threat of using those weapons – the third system of control. It is interesting to note that the countries that possess what nowadays is referred to as weapons of mass destruction, and who try as much as they can to hinder others from possessing the stockpiles that they themselves have, also tend to, in the main come from Europe and its antecedents. These are also the same people that have their gunboats, frigates, and aircraft carriers plying all the seas of the world, which when asked respond that they are there to ensure “ their vital interests”.

The fight for equality does not seem to have cared much for these controls as peoples in other regions intend to be able to use the resources of the earth in much the same manner as the Europeans have been using them, or at least free themselves from the shackles of control that they had been bound to for a very long time. As an example, China with almost 20% of the earth’s population, and India with over 17% are declared nuclear powers, complete with both the developed technology and the means to deliver them. This implies that the threat to use such weapons against them would not work, as much as it could on a country that does not have them. In addition, they are also luring a certain amount of the money that is concentrated in Europe and its offshoots, with their production of hardware and software, which moneyed Europe has become dependent on.

The struggle for equality is one that is not only waged in China and India but also in other regions. In some of these regions, the struggle has been championed by elected governments, as is the case in South America, with the notable example of Venezuela’s use of its oil for the development of its social infrastructure. In other cases, it is being led by groups that have no ties with the governments, but whose voices have begun to emerge, rather unfortunately through the use of violence, from the subjugation that they have been under. Examples of this are the Palestinian suicide bomber who choose to kill themselves to resolve the problem of their demand for their land that is being occupied by the state of Israel, and the young armed groups of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, where young armed men, in small groups, have chosen to take on the multinational oil companies, with the demand that the oil that their communities benefit from the oil that has been taken from their lands for over half a century.

The implication of this is that a wind of change is blowing that promises to alter the pattern of the monopoly of the use of resources. This would mean that the energy consumption would most likely be distributed to places where it was not available, and in quantities that probably the earth cannot produce, using the current usage. This would demand a new approach to both energy consumption as well as the sources from which the energy comes from. Again with this issue of energy consumption comes a fight, as though there are a number of other methods in which energy could be generated, the Europeans whose vehicles, as of 1998, accounted for 87% of the world’s vehicle fleet 3 depend on the consumption of fossil fuels, which as at 2005 accounted for about 86% of the energy that is consumed by human beings 3. This is also another situation that one could say people are enshackled to, as there is a limit on the number of fossil fuels, yet efforts to develop other more sustainable means up until now, have tended to be thwarted.

The admittance of China and India into the energy consumption club, and the current dependence on fossil fuels, as well as the agitations in those places that produce the oil, such as Venezuela, where the government is using more of the resources for its local population, and Nigeria, where the actions of the armed youth groups have affected the production of oil, are probably what has led to the recent increases in the price of fuel across the world. This increase, no doubt affects the general population of Europe and its offshoots, who not only have to pay more for the fuel they have grown accustomed to using and depending on, but it also affects the cost of the food they buy, which are hardly produced locally, but from the resource suppliers and as such subject to transportation, which again is something that depends on the combustion of fossil fuels. As such a strain is put on the general population of Europe, one that is not anywhere near what people in the resource supply regions have to go through on a daily basis, it must be said.

Though there is this strain on the general population, it is not one that is felt by all, as the companies that have been anointed to “own” the production and who in that sense are a monopoly cartel of the oil companies, such as Shell, BP, Mobil Exxon, and so on. For them, life could not be sweeter, as they continuously fulfill what they were created to do, which is to make profits, which go to their owners, who tend to be a very infinitesimal part of the European population. For them, the only change is that there is an addition to the regions to which they bring suffering to people. This addition is the inclusion of the European, albeit at a minute level, to the ranks of the rest of humanity, which have had to undergo mass slaughters, starvation, degradation of their environment, and the attendant crimes that unequal societies have to face up to, as a result of bringing about profit to these organizations and their owners. There was a point, in the past when a choice had to be made. This was about who used the energy that the earth produced. At that time, the path that was chosen by those wielding power was to limit it to only a small segment of humanity. This is a choice whose repercussions are being felt today, and which was based on elevating the individual over the consideration of the whole. We are at a similar crossroads now, if we are able, as a species, to survive the effects of that choice. The issue that faces us now is how we proceed from here. Do we continue with isolation, which encourages the differentiation of people, and with the inequality that leads to a lack of equilibrium, or do we choose to have equilibrium at the back of our minds when we make our choices, which would mean formulating policies that would apply equally on all human beings, including energy consumption, and which also takes into account that we also have to be in equilibrium with the other species with whom we share this planet? That, I believe, is the choice we face, and what we choose is up to how much we can agitate in our little corners for the world that we would like to live in.

References

1. Consumption for Human Development, Human Development Report 1998 – Oxford University Press 1998
2. Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey – The Lancet, 11 October 2006
3. Quantifying Energy, BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2006