Dematerialism and Energy, March 24, 2008
The prevention of competition for wealth and power is a necessary and sufficient condition for Universal Sustainable Happiness. Any method whatever for achieving this is dematerialism. (This change in the Fundamental Principle was inspired by the possible necessity for one or two hard-and-fast laws to subvert the most maladaptive aspects of human nature*.)
Table of Contents
On this Page
Status, Materialism, and Dematerialism
Can resource dominance be eliminated from human behavior?
The Demise of Business as Usual
Hyperlinked to this Page
Complete table of contents of this website
On the Preservation of Species (full 600-page book in one file)
On the Preservation of Species (full 600-page book in a zip file)
On the Preservation of Species (table of contents hyperlinked to individual chapter files)
Social Problems and Solutions (many important ideas from the book – 56 pages)
Useful Concepts from On the Preservation of Species
Energy and Population Hyperlinks
Open People, Open Source, and Public Domain Hyperlinks
About this Website
Its Purpose
The purpose of this website is to answer the questions I asked in the Mission Statement of the Yahoo group Running on Empty Politics: What can be done to prevent widespread misery in the wake of Peak Oil? If we are not satisfied simply to be one of the few survivors of Peak Oil, what should we do? What policies should we advocate? Should we support social-economic-political change? What changes should occur? How are they to be initiated? By whom? What sort of society do we hope for after the Petroleum Era has ended?
To the Reader
I know that your time is limited, and you can’t read everything. In my opinion, the best way to read this website is to read the three parts of the copy of my wiki on Dematerialism (hyperlinked below) and the three papers on Energy (hyperlinked below) in the order the hyperlinks appear on this page in 16-point headings. Read as far as you wish, and glance through the rest. If you are looking for something else, return to the Table of Contents and browse through the rest of this page. If you still don’t see what you are looking for, go to the Complete Table of Contents, which serves as a sort of index. I hope this is satisfactory, but feel free to suggest changes.
What’s New
Today I met research chemist Xuening Jiang who just started at the University of Houston’s Center for Materials Chemistry. The following is written to help bring her up to speed on Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity, Overshoot, Crash, and Dieoff: I would like to suggest here that she begin by reading Albert Bartlett’s paper at http://www.oilcrisis.com/bartlett/reflections.htm and Dmitri Orlov’s PowerPoint presentation at http://energybulletin.net/23259.html, after which she might read the next paragraph.
Xuening, I enjoyed meeting you this afternoon. Perhaps you could read http://dematerialism.net/wiki.htm all the way through and then continue to read at http://www.dematerialism.net/#_Toc172928973. Write to me at twayburn@wt.net as soon as you get an email address.
I wish to add three links from Denis Frith to the Other Useful Links section:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/jaymz/download/Gaia_and_Us-Denis_Frith-jun07.doc “What went wrong? The misdirection of civilization.”
My paper “Wayburn contra Hanson” can be found at candobetter.org too. (See http://candobetter.org/blog/18.)
Beginning in August, 2007, http://www.justpassinthru.com/users/home/twayburn/
will mirror this website except that a few large files will be zipped and the
DOE’s Annual Energy Outlook for 2005 will be omitted. The
justpassinthru.com website is recognized by this sign: 
See the journal entry for July 30th for some preliminary calculations on carbon dioxide emissions during the solar cell production cycle.
See the extended journal entry for July 27th on “Communism and Some Idle Thoughts on the Excesses of Capitalism”. This and the entries of June 9th and June 16th have been pulled together in a discussion of the differences between War Socialism and the Natural Economy at http://dematerialism.net/hanson.htm. Thanks to James Sinnamon, this is available at http://candobetter.org/blog/18, my new blog on candobetter.org.
Lately I have been working on the model railroad the development of which is recorded in a series of MS PowerPoints that are linked to http://dematerialism.net/railroad.htm, which clearly has nothing to do with dematerialism or energy except insofar as the Union Pacific coal mining operation in Southern Wyoming was one of the most egregious examples of the violation of both humanity and Nature. Also, for later pictures, see http://dematerialism.net/screensaver.htm.
Mincius Soda
Andrius Kulikauskas has made a number of wiki workspaces available for the work of his laboratory Mincius Soda, which means “Orchard of Thoughts” in Lithuanian. One can reach all the others from:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dematerialism and
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?TomWayburn
Additional Webspace
In case this website is unavailable here is a complete list that includes the site you are reading:
http://dematerialism.net/ where all of my web documents can be found
http://www.justpassinthru.com/users/home/twayburn/ where all of my web documents can be found
http://geocities.com/twayburn/ where an older version of this homepage can be found and a few other things
Hyperlinks inside a given root directory may point to a root directory that is not available, in which case simply replace the bad root directory with one of the above.
Ethical Use
Readers who consider this material important may want to download copies in case something happens to me. Make free use of anything written by me in accordance with the guidelines hyperlinked to the Ethical Use logo.
Dematerialism
Dematerialism is the process. Natural Economy is the goal.
Status, Materialism, and Dematerialism
Any method whatever for unwinding materialism is dematerialism. The purpose of this section is to explain my version of dematerialism – Dematerialism with a capital D. Status, Materialism, and Dematerialism
A Natural Political Economy
This is a list of the principal features that would be incorporated in an intentional community designed by a dematerialist. If the thesis of On the Preservation of Species is correct, the features of a Natural Economy might be adopted by an entire geo-political entity such as the United States – perhaps after a long period of struggle. A Natural Political Economy
Can resource dominance be eliminated from human behavior?
It seems that every half-baked pseudo-intellectual who reads Pinker or Dawkins grabs onto evolutionary psychology to justify every sort of bad behavior! Just because we have inherited a gene for a maladaptive atavistic trait like barnyard aggressiveness or resource dominance does not excuse the incorrigible behavior that results from lack of self-control in people of goodwill and voluptuary pleasure in evil for the rest, unless, of course, it is impossible to resist the demands of the gene. This raises an Investigatory Question that addresses the principal objection to Dematerialism, namely, the notion that resource dominance, as evolutionary psychologists would term it, is hard-wired into the universal human character and cannot be overcome by any means whatever. Can resource dominance be eliminated from human behavior?
Energy
Nowadays, the two greatest problems of humanity are population growth and resource depletion. The consumption of fossil fuels will diminish because of decreasing availability and the perceived damage to the environment their use entails. The most important resource that we are running out of is the environment itself. For these and other reasons energy studies have become the thrust of my efforts. The first paper I wrote on the subject when I was very new at energy systems analysis was “Thermodynamics, Availability, and Emergy”. You can look at that paper, which has some nice sentiments, if you have the time, but the next three papers represent the most important work I have ever done.
Energy in a Natural Economy
This was a study to get a quick estimate of how much effort and energy is wasted in the pursuit of money in the United States. Energy in a Natural Economy
The Demise of Business as Usual
This is a summary of the long paper “On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario”, which was written for energy analysts who need mathematical proof that, within Capitalism, no amount of conservation is sufficient to provide a sustainable economy. Therefore, the good beginning provided by an Apollo project for energy must be rescued by changes of a political nature within about twenty years. In the paper, various political economies of an increasingly progressive nature are analyzed. The best possibility is the Natural Economy referred to above. This is not necessarily an ideological conclusion, as it is reached mathematically. The Demise of Business as Usual
Energy in a Mark II Economy
This is an educational paper with a working computational simulator. It was written to justify multiplying quantities of money entering the economy by an appropriate Energy over Gross Domestic Product ratio (E/GDP) to determine approximately the increase in the national energy budget associated with that transaction. That technique was used in “On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario” and “The Demise of Business as Usual”. In addition, in “Energy in a Mark II Economy”, I determined the ramifications of six types of Energy Returned over Energy Invested ratios (EROI) upon various political economies when sustainable primary energy technology replaces fossil fuels. The usual criticism of this useful concept is that no one says what is included in the Energy Invested term. That objection is no longer valid. Begin by reading the Executive Summary.
* Footnote to epigraph: On February 4th, 2006, I wrote, “My critics believe that evolutionary psychology provides irrefragable evidence that, regardless of any moral consideration, our propensity to acquire resources in as great excess as possible - which is a hard-wired adaptation that arose during the Pleistocene, our Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, due to its usefulness for survival - cannot be suppressed in any manner whatever. I believe that it can be transcended through persuasion, education, indoctrination, diversion, and/or coercion. It would not be important except that the fate of the human race (extinction or not) depends upon who is right”. Formerly, I wrote the Fundamental Principle in terms of voluntary abandonment of the pursuit of wealth, as many people, myself included, abhor the activity in themselves and others; however, initially, at least, there will be a large residuum of people who must be required by law to desist from competition for material wealth. Why should they not be so restrained, as the practice is just as harmful to its victims as murder, which is unlawful in every society; and, the class of victims includes every living thing!