On the Preservation of Species:

A Logical Argument in Support of a Rational Basis for Community including Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Sustainable Happiness for All Sentient Beings in a Hypothetical World

1989 - present

Thomas L Wayburn

The copyright has been removed from this book in recognition of the principles of Open Source and Anarchist philosophy. I expect that decent people will not abuse the content to change the meaning or intent. The reader can determine what I mean by ‘decent’ by reading the book.

Table of Contents

Preface

The Preservation of Species

A New Political Philosophy Is Needed

Political Theory

A Vision of the Future

What Freedom Means to Two Very Different Types of People

Chapter 1. Toward a Rational Social Contract

On Government

On Philosophy

References

Appendix A. The Case for Rational Anarchism (Libertarianism) or Why We Hate Government and Wish to Rule Ourselves

Appendix B. The Definition of The Ruling Class

Chapter 2. Emergy and Economics

Abstract

Introduction

Odum’s Theory

Emergy Analysis of Economies

Conclusions

Important Questions

References

Chapter 3. Toward Axiomatic Morality

Appendix: Why Taking Drugs Per Se Imposes on No One

Chapter 4. Philosophical Assumptions or Articles of Faith

Introduction

Existence in General and the Universe in Particular

The Human Condition

On Knowledge

A Minimal Proper Religion

Chapter 5. Materialism

Models of Society

Artificial Economic Contingency and Materialism as a Model of Society

Two Lists of Unacceptable Aspects of Materialism Particularly Capitalism

References

Chapter 6. Tyranny

Introduction

How Money and Trade Are Used As Tools of Depredation

Leadership

Management

Examples of the General Principle that Tyranny Is a Necessary Adjunct to Business

References

Appendix. Inequality and Alienation

Chapter 7. Geophagy

Introduction

Issues Other Than Population

Relation to Population Size and Growth

Immigration

Direct Harm to the Environment from Competition for Wealth

The Difficulty of Eliminating Pollution Altogether

The Environment as a Business

Mass Transit

Additional Notes on Mass Transit

A Parable

My Personal Experience as a Chemical Engineer

The Preservation of Species

During the last fifty years it has become apparent that man is capable of ending all life on Planet Earth. The extinction of the human race is a natural consequence of the exponential growth of Man’s population beyond the Natural Carrying Capacity of Earth. However, no species has had it in its power previously to so despoil its environment as to jeopardize the posterity of every species. The band-aid measures proposed by single-issue environmental activist organizations have no chance to prevent this from happening. The intention of this essay is to present proposals for the consideration of the reader as to what must be done to preserve all species for which it is possible to account including homo sapiens. This will require fundamental political change.

A New Political Philosophy Is Needed

Ironically and tragically, most Americans are embracing obsolete ideas about society, politics, and economics – grasping with hysterical religious fervor ideas that are failing catastrophically. We are approaching rapidly the time when the average wealth available for consumption will be no more than the minimum wealth necessary to live without unbearable misery. Thus, wealth must be shared unless we wish to introduce horrible suffering – more suffering than mankind has even dreamed of. No amount of prayer in school will have the slightest effect upon this problem and the hundreds of difficulties associated with it. It is clear, too, that additional social change must accompany wealth-sharing to prevent repetitions of the past and achieve what was originally sought by the last generation of idealists. It is incredible that almost no one sees that the time has come to dispense with government and leadership as we have always known them.

I believe in the possibility that some of the answers have occurred to me. Yet I am not a charismatic man, not even a particularly good teacher. I wish to influence a few people who are capable of teaching others in ways of which I am incapable. It takes a special sort of person to learn from me. But, such people exist and I have found a few of them. This essay is my way of communicating with those people, who, as they say, are separated from everyone in the world by at most six degrees. The difficulties I expect to encounter and my best expectations are presented below. Please give me the benefit of the doubt until you have heard the entire argument in favor of reforms that may seem preposterous in an initial encounter.

Political Theory

To evaluate the desirability of a proposed political action, one must understand the vision of the person or group proposing the action. If the success of the proposed action depends on a large number of people embracing the vision, it is essential that the vision be based on a derivable theory. For example, Marxism is a promising theory, although not a scientific theory. Marxism addresses inequities in wealth, but does not address the accumulation of power, except obliquely. The theory proposed in this essay supplants Marxism; thus Marxism may continue to be an economic-political-social system that has never been tested – regardless of the false reports that it has been adopted by some of the nations that the United States has seen fit to oppress for its own selfish purposes [1].

The vision of the future described here depends on the thesis that continued competition for wealth and power in all of its aspects, including employment, trade, markets, “free” enterprise, acceptance of rewards for what we do or give, hierarchies in business and government, whether appointed from above or elected from below, must inevitably lead to a totalitarian Orwellian nightmare or the complete annihilation of mankind and many other species, whereas voluntary abandonment of competition for wealth and power will lead eventually to the highly desirable future to be described momentarily.

The vision of a desirable future described below is based on three simple moral axioms, namely, respect for the freedom of oneself and others, respect for the environment, including plants and animals, and respect for truth. [Perhaps, the word “freedom” should be replaced by the word “autonomy”. Nowadays, the word “freedom” is routinely abused whenever the speaker or writer wishes to represent repression, tyranny, slavery, or worse as something desirable that only we (Americans) possess. – Chomsky] These moral axioms are based, in turn, on our innate judgments of aesthetics and reasonableness and our experiential judgment of utility. One may suspect the author’s aesthetic judgment and reasonableness, but he shall deduce scientifically the consequences of avoiding the recommended reforms. The theory can be sustained on utility alone. In this way it becomes a scientific theory subject to falsifiability. These ideas will be seen as utopian by those who are the true utopianists, like the man who won’t quit smoking because by the time he gets cancer a cure will have been found.

It can be shown that competition for wealth and power (or, what amounts to the same thing, inequality in wealth and power) leads to tyranny, the destruction of the environment, and all types of falsity, including repression of dissent and Orwellian doublethink; whereas equality of wealth and power is beautiful, it is reasonable (every other arrangement can be shown to be unreasonable), and it is practical (inequality causes poverty, crime, war, and other modes of human misery). Without equality freedom is impossible and without freedom sustainable happiness is impossible. In Chapter 1, happiness is given a technical definition, following the behavioral psychologists Deci and Ryan [2]. This technical definition is in reasonable accord with ordinary experience.

We should not expect to get out of the mess we are in now without replacing the traditional institutions of money (paper wealth) and trade (particularly trading the time of one's life for money), the idea of “working oneself up”, leadership, law, government, and even the sovereign state itself. What social activists ordinarily call change is no change at all. I am talking about real change.

A Vision of the Future

I now wish to describe a state of human society that might be approached after a long series of small changes. These changes are necessary and sufficient conditions for the sustainable happiness of all of humanity. First and foremost, the population density should be steady near its optimum. Since we Americans must reduce our use of energy by 84% or more, people should be living in small decentralized communities with everything within walking distance except for a few light links to nearby communities to effect economies of scale. Mankind should live in harmony with nature with the compositions of the atmosphere, the oceans, and the soil varying only slightly about desirable steady states. We must hope that renewable energy technology will supply the equivalent of one kilowatt per capita of high-grade energy, otherwise the future of most of mankind will be grim. The extinction of the entire human race is a distinct possibility.

Economic enterprises, including the collectives of applied mathematicians who plan the economies, should be owned in equal shares by their participants who are all of one class. Communicators within the enterprises should be chosen randomly; decisions should be made democratically or by professionals who enjoy no special power or privilege. These isocratic enterprises will follow the economic plans of their choice. We should create institutions to encourage enterprise without economic risk. (Why should we encourage gambling in industry when we deplore it elsewhere?)

Our vast systems of law are ridiculous. Laws should be replaced by a few simple moral axioms from which right action can be derived easily. We should embrace rational morals that anyone can follow as opposed to religious superstitions and sexual and pharmacological prudery that no person of spirit can live by. Dissent should be tolerated and even those who do not accept our rational morality should be accorded the dignity of sovereign heads of state. Government should be nearly nonexistent except for a few randomly selected spokespersons. In a planned economy it is crucial to prevent “natural” leaders from arising. To break the endless cycles of leaders coming to power, becoming corrupt, and being replaced by new leaders after war or revolution, we should abandon the institution of leadership. Isn't that obvious by now?

People should enjoy contrasts between positives rather than paying for a few days of leisure with weeks of drudgery. (Presumably, Einstein enjoyed playing the violin without drudging at physics.) People should not be concerned with what's in it for them, but, rather, with what is interesting to do (to be effective and, therefore happy). This will liberate for useful endeavor the huge class of working people (perhaps as many as 90% of the working class if we neglect health professionals) who currently are concerned exclusively with how the pie is sliced up – salesmen, marketers, dealmakers, corporate executives, etc. – and those who serve them. We would have a smaller but better tasting pie. Generosity, equality, freedom, and intrinsic motivation would replace greed, hierarchy, tyranny, and fear.

Instead of trying to accumulate the most costly economic goods, rational people would be trying to consume as little as possible. Thus, the need to ration scarce and desirable items with a finite money supply would disappear and with it the need for money. Money would be obsolete. Can you imagine how much more leisure you would have if you did useful work but did not have to be concerned with money (and an accounting problem that never ends associated with every aspect of life)! No checkout lines, no tax forms, no insurance, no checkbooks to balance, no comparison shopping, no commercials on TV!

No one should have to work at something he hates to “earn a living”; that is, one’s livelihood should be non-contingent. No one should hate his job. Under these conditions of autonomy (necessary for happiness), we can expect tremendous variety in opportunities for involvement to accommodate everyone's need to be effective. The arts and science ought to flourish. Unpleasant jobs ought to be made into interesting activities or be eliminated, perhaps by robotics. We should treat everyone the same with no celebrities, except, possibly, posthumously, and no awards or phony distinctions. We can respect excellence without idolizing those who manifest it.

What Freedom Means to Two Very Different Types of People

Most people think of themselves as great lovers of freedom, with the usual proviso that my freedom ends at your nose. However, among these champions of freedom we shall distinguish two distinct and antagonistic types: Type Z seems to be in the majority nowadays. He believes in freedom, in particular his freedom to accumulate power and wealth – normally by placing a number of his fellows in a position of accountability to himself according to the most binding species of what we call employment he can get away with. He provides what we call a job with material remuneration to people whom he expects to do his bidding and to place his interests ahead of their own for a significant portion of the weeks, months, or years that constitute their period of employment from his view and the very time of their lives from theirs.

He defends his “right” to do this, which does indeed impose upon the freedom of those who have sold their inalienable right to liberty, and which most certainly extends his freedom to make his own decisions well beyond the tips of the noses of those so bound, because the wage slave has entered into slavery – the antithesis of freedom – voluntarily. But, as we all know, the wage slave really has no choice. The miracle is that wage slaves continue to believe they are free – unless they see the world as it actually is. Therefore, most wage slaves are themselves Type Z. This is really quite strange as they spend most of their waking hours under the command of a boss. Why should such a person imagine that he is free! Yet he is as enthusiastic about freedom, in the abstract, as a Type S person. He imagines that he would die before he would surrender it, yet he gives it up without a thought every weekday morning. Man is an amazing beast.

One would not expect employment to engender much in the way of loyalty; and, with few exceptions, it does not. Normally, the wage slaver shares one peculiar characteristic with the chattel slaver: He expects the slave to live, more or less, according to the moral code of the class of people who are sufficiently powerful to exploit their fellow man. Normally, he supports laws that prohibit taking interesting drugs and engaging in interesting sexual practices. Whether he, the employer, does or does not respect such taboos, he expects his employees to live by them - willy nilly. Type Z has everything precisely backwards, which would be funny except for the catastrophic circumstances attendant upon it. Would that I could make Type Z appear ridiculous – especially to himself.

In stark contrast to the Type Z person, the Type S person recognizes that the freedom to employ others and to engage in the competition for wealth and power is tyranny thinly disguised and is in violation of every principle of freedom. Moreover, he understands that a person who cannot follow his personal moral code and is ruled by taboo morality, which quite generally prohibits whatever is interesting or fun, is essentially a serf.

March 1, 1998

Revised July 5, 2004

The Plan of the Book

In the first chapter, we discuss the building of a philosophy to provide a basis for a rational social contract upon which nearly everyone can agree. Eventually, nearly everyone will recognize the folly of our present course; however, Mother Nature may have to intervene forcefully to ensure that society does indeed recognize its folly. She will force social changes upon mankind some of which might be decidedly unpleasant for most of the survivors. Chapters 2 - 5 are all that are required to elucidate this “new” philosophy. In Chapters 6 - 8, we shall interpret the fundamental evils that torment almost all of humanity according to the principles espoused in this essay. In Chapter 9, we shall prove that if one of these evils is present all of them will be present (perhaps after a short time lag); if one of them is missing – for a time sufficiently long that we may safely assume it is not on the way, none of them will occur. This means that we must change one thing only – not a host of little things. In Chapter 10, we shall be able to prove a number of interesting and sobering results at least as well as social theorems are ever proved. In Chapter 11, we discuss a hypothetical reformed society and we indulge in some harmless speculation concerning what its institutions might be like. (Personally, I would have liked to employ more graphics to illustrate my futuristic daydreams. Perhaps, someone would like to produce a movie on this imaginary stage.) Finally, in Chapter 12, social change, and how it might be achieved, is discussed.

Appendices I, II, and III are the last three items in the book. Please do not confuse these with appendices to chapters, which are “lettered” in chapters with more than one appendix, e.g., Appendix A, Appendix B, etc., but which are not lettered in chapters with only one appendix. Appendix I is a mini-course in thermodynamics. This, along with the material in Chapter 2, is useful to understand the Environmental Axiom elucidated in Chapter 3. Appendix II, which began as an attempt to catalog all the world’s evils, is really little more than a list of social evils sufficiently complete to convince one that society has real problems worth addressing. In Appendix III, some serious objections are answered, hopefully in a manner that many readers will find adequate. I hope that some readers will look at the appendices. The third appendix probably will attract many skeptics – and I hope we are all skeptics. The second appendix requires only a glance, but the first appendix employs some mathematics.

Note on equations. I wish to pass on some remarkable advice that I received (by way of the written word) from Roger Penrose, I believe. (If, due to a lapse in memory, it turns out to have been written by someone else, I wish to express my apologies to Dr. Penrose and to that “someone else”. What I remember with a fair degree of certainty is that the purveyor of this advice was a person of no mean mathematical attainments, which is what struck me as very remarkable indeed and accounts for the impression it made on me.) The advice is this: “Whenever, while reading, I encounter an equation I do not understand, I simply skip it and continue reading the text. Sometimes, after reading the text, I begin to understand the equation without additional effort. On the other hand, whenever it seems appropriate to do so, I return to the equations later and see if they don’t make better sense to me at that time.” Now I have quoted so loosely that the words are virtually mine; but, I assure the reader, I got the advice from someone else and I merely retail it. Naturally, I endorse it. In this book, especially in Appendix I, many equations are encountered. I wish to take a moment to assure the reader that they are not formidable; but, for the first reading anyway, just take the advice I have attributed to Prof. Penrose. If it’s good enough for him, it’s sure as hell good enough for you and me. In any case, you won’t miss much if you actually skip the equations because the text explains everything I want you to know.

I hope you will assess the validity of my ideas without prejudice. Also, by now, you may be deciding for yourself whether or not our progeny will have a chance to enjoy a future without unbearable misery. Be critical and think for yourself. Don’t take my word for anything. I am fallible. As far as the future is concerned, all I can do is make guesses based on my education, my experience, and, of course, my dreams. No one can predict the future.

Additional Remarks

On Method

In a book like this, filled with controversial claims, normally one would expect to find reams of statistics. That will not be the case for three reasons: First, I do not trust statistics. “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” In this essay, as far as I am able, I shall rely upon macrofacts only (very generally believed and easily verified facts). The second reason that you will not see tables of statistics is that I believe that I can arrange my arguments so that the exact or approximate number of cases in point is not important. The third reason for avoiding statistics is that I am unwilling to do the work to collect them. If I cannot make my point with logic, common sense, and very general facts with which most readers would agree readily, I will have done the best I can under the circumstances.

In Chapter 2, “Emergy and Economics”, I have employed more statistics than elsewhere. Emergy, with an m, is an energy-based measure of value that is adjusted to account for cost and/or usefulness, measured in emergy costs of production or, in case of fuels, for example, in the amount of reversible work that can be extracted from them. For example, if 1 kWhr of 110 volt 60 Hz AC electrical energy were taken to be 1 emergy unit (MU), 1 kWhr of fossil fuel would be worth only one-third of an MU because it requires three units of fossil-fuel energy to produce one kWhr of electrical energy; but, one kWhr of work would be equal to exactly one MU. If a manufactured object can be produced by an efficient process with an expenditure of X units of emergy, we say that the object itself is worth X emergy units. Actually, to account for usefulness, we employ a thermodynamic quantity called availability that accounts for energy and entropy simultaneously. These concepts will be discussed in Chapter 2 and Appendix I.

The arguments in this essay advocate the abandonment of social institutions, such as elected officials, laws, and money, and their replacement by other institutions, such as randomly selected messengers, internalized morals, and intrinsic motivation. Each argument has two main parts: First, I must show that the existing institution is immoral and/or does not satisfy the criteria of aesthetics, reasonableness, and utility. Second, and usually most difficult, I must show that we can do without the institution and/or that the institution I wish to replace it with is practical and, perhaps, ideal. Clearly, to a moral and reasonable human being, the first part is enough; i.e., if I prove that the laws against drugs are immoral, they must be repealed; but, for the pragmatist, I must show, in addition, that repealing the laws is feasible, practical, and desirable. I would like to perform experiments (or allow others to perform them) to show that the replacement institution will work; but, like the great American experiment in democracy, it may be impossible to perform the experiment without instituting the proposed reform. In the case of the experiment in democracy, after much debate, it was decided to perform the experiment on part of society – excluding women, most non-Whites (I believe), and, also, non-property-owners (again if I am not mistaken). Clearly, the experiment has failed after two-hundred years of increasing success, but enough of the nation has survived that another great experiment could be performed, this time with a great deal more compelling evidence, if not absolute necessity, in its favor.

Difficulties

Beyond the Comfort Zone

I am struggling with a number of difficulties as I attempt to write this book. First of all, there is a huge gap between what needs to be done and what most people consider “reasonable”. Liberals typically propose social changes that do not exceed the public’s “comfort zone”. For example, liberals are against foreign wars, but being against war is, as Kurt Vonnegut said, like being against glaciers. One needs to be against competition for wealth and power, but that takes one’s arguments beyond the public’s comfort zone and one risks being labeled a nut. I don’t think we have any real choice, though, between (A) advocating changes that are considered “reasonable” by the public (even if they do not favor them – most Republicans think Socialists are evil but not crazy) if those changes are guaranteed to have no effect or even the opposite effect intended and (B) advocating the changes that we really need even though even Socialists might consider us crazy. We must simply tell the truth (defined carefully in the chapter on axiomatic morality) as we see it and expect to encounter serious difficulty in gaining acceptance even if our arguments be irrefutable. (I am holding myself to higher standards of proof than are generally encountered in public discourse. Of course, I cannot attain mathematical certainty, but I have stated my assumptions, defined my terms, and derived my conclusions as rigorously as possible.)

Saying Everything First

The second difficulty, related to the first, is that books are linear media; the ideas have to be presented in a sequence. I must choose the order of this sequence carefully. It may be unwise to begin with bold promises. If I promise the reader that I shall invalidate every American social institution (from the Academy Awards to the Bronx Zoo) within these pages and propose replacements that are guaranteed to remove every social problem in a manner that is within the power of ordinary human beings to implement, even though that is what I personally believe, the reader may stop reading. (One ought to be suspicious of anyone who promises a panacea for all of our social problems, although no one has ever proved that a simple solution to our difficulties cannot be found.) In Appendix II, I shall provide a list of defects of the American system and, in a very few cases, indicate why I think that particular feature is a problem. Sometimes, usually in the more obscure cases, I shall indicate why I believe the reforms suggested by me will solve the problem without introducing unacceptable consequences. At one time I had great plans for Appendix II, but the best I have been able to provide under the exigencies of the real world is not much more than a list.

Anger

The third difficulty is my own state of mind. I am constantly at war with my own frustration and anger. This is bound to come through on the printed page, but it will not facilitate reasoned discussion. It is unlikely that I will be able to disguise my rage, so I frankly admit it. Presumably, I am influenced in part by the disappointments of my own life.

Changing My Mind

The fourth difficulty is that this essay is being written over a long period of time and, during that time, the author’s viewpoint is changing. This could result in inconsistencies, which may annoy or disappoint the reader, but I hope that none of them proves fatal to the author’s main thesis. A final version will be sprinkled liberally with notes in proof correcting and amending older ideas.

Disparities of Scale

The fifth difficulty is that, if I invalidate a social institution such as money itself by a short and incisive argument, the disparity in the scale of the argument and the scale of the social changes implied by it will offend the reader’s sense of proportion. I would like to appeal to the reader’s good sense and open-mindedness; but, if I rely too much on “common sense”, my argument will lack rigor. I would like to supply as much logical rigor as one ever sees in discussions involving humanity. I hope that common sense will overcome the strangeness of arguments that fly in the face of conventional wisdom; I hope that rigorous logic will convince the careful reader that the defects in the conventional wisdom are real; and I hope that common sense will help the reader accept counter-intuitive conclusions despite the disparities in scale. Logic is a lever with which the world can be moved if one can find a place to stand, which brings me to my sixth difficulty.

Not Being Famous Enough To Be Heard or Read

My sixth difficulty is in getting a hearing for these ideas. Part of this is due to the disappearance of free and democratic discourse in the United States and, perhaps, in the rest of the world. While people of ordinary ability with no special qualifications interpret the events of the day on television, it becomes increasingly difficult to be heard if one is not famous. A movie star can get a large cash advance for a book on cosmology; but an unknown scholar, regardless of the effort he (or she) puts into his work, will have difficulty getting a reading and a fair criticism, let alone widespread publication. This is the source of a great deal of frustration. As I write these words, I honestly do not know the extent of my hopes for this work.

I have made no effort to publish this book, which is still under revision; nevertheless, for the convenience of interested parties, I have decided reluctantly to post parts of it at least on the Web. (Although the cost of downloading from the Internet, both in money and time, can be significant, the book will be free.)

I have had remarkably little success in convincing my friends and colleagues to pursue my theoretical ideas in detail. Even though I have made claims for my theory that ought to get the attention of any serious person, no one has read all of my essays. What is going wrong? I believe the answer lies in myself. I am a Very Unimportant Person and I do not possess charisma, therefore everyone assumes that what I have to say is not worth hearing. (Also, I am under five foot seven inches in height, which places me in one of the most persecuted classes of people in America, namely, short men – Ross Perot and Milton Freidman not withstanding.) Also, I think people have a predisposition to avoid the solutions to their problems. This “death wish”, if I may borrow Freud’s worst-case term, manifests itself in a number of ways. I remember a cartoon of William Steig, the famous New Yorker cartoonist. It depicted what appeared to be a carnival with performers standing on platforms distributed throughout a large crowd. These performers were juggling, swallowing swords, etc. and each had a large crowd surrounding his platform. One platform, however, had no crowd surrounding it. The words of the man on that platform, which formed the caption, were “But I can cure you.”

Since I was born before the ideas presented here were accepted by my parents, teachers, and others who influenced my development, I suffer from an irrational desire to have my, presumably, superior ideas recognized by the general public. However, I am not so egotistical as to have lost every semblance of rationality. If I am able to bring my writing to the attention of intellectuals, I might have the opportunity to witness the triumph of reason within a narrow circle. That would please me exceedingly, but I shall never be satisfied until the entire world attains equality, freedom, happiness, and reasonable expectations of permanence. Of course, I don’t expect relief from injustice during my lifetime. Even if my hopes and dreams were completely unworthy or hopelessly impractical, I would continue to write. I would write for the sake of writing.

Probably, most of us have experienced the unpleasantness of writing something and several years later finding it embarrassing. A former colleague visited me a year or so ago. He asked me if I had a collection of his papers. Well, of course I did; I had asked him to send me everything he wrote, some of which I had reviewed even. I pulled out a huge stack of reprints from scientific journals. He said, “Wow, I had no idea I had written so many papers. Now, if I could just write one that won't embarrass me two years later when I reread it.” Well, that used to happen to me when I was his age, but I didn't publish anything I wrote then. Now, when I read something I wrote five years ago, I say, “Wow, did I write that? That's good!” The bottom line is that, whatever anyone else thinks of it, I enjoyed reading an old essay of mine yesterday. Not publishing until after you're fifty won't make you a famous intellectual, but it has a great deal to recommend it. I began reading Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced like “purse”) recently [4]. Almost no one had heard of Peirce during his lifetime. (He died in 1914.) You may not know who he was yet; but, William James, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell knew who he was; and they took advantage of it, which, significantly, did not bring his work to the attention of the general public.

Bias against Visionaries

The following observation is troubling me in my dawning comprehension: I am reading many authors including highly respected philosophers from the last generation: Russell, Popper, and other writers (who are not philosophers by trade) including Günter Grass. These people are extremely leery of the man with the “Big Vision”. They refer to him as a utopianist, which, apparently, is a bad sort of person, although they don't say why; and I get the feeling that they expect him to turn automatically into Hitler or Stalin on cue or disappear into nothingness as most of us, vision or not, seem to do. I believe that the people who raise such objections consider themselves well-off and are afraid of what will happen if we are to see an improvement in the miserable lot of “the wretched of the earth”, although they are certain to deny such a serious accusation. They wish to avoid doing anything to solve the problems of humanity. (The problem is inequality; therefore, the solution is equality. But, these famous writers do not wish to set things equal, which, in my opinion, is not only absurd, it is wicked and cruel.)

I refute Popper in Chapter 1, but dozens of writers incorporate similar viewpoints into their works. Obviously, I can’t discuss every error that finds its way into print. But, I think I have identified a new feature of our old nemesis, “the conventional wisdom” – or mass hysteria even, since we were so badly burned by Hitler and Stalin. Clearly, the activities of Hitler and Stalin prove nothing about “Big Visions”. Perhaps, what we already believe about the acquisition of raw power has been corroborated once again. My “Big Vision” rejects the accumulation of power just as passionately as it rejects accumulation of wealth – even fame. I will not become famous; I must avoid fame. That's one of the reasons why I submit so little of my work for publication. (Maybe another reason is the fear of rejection from which I may not suffer even. I may only suspect myself of indulging in a childish fear of failure simply because I know that it is a common failing of better men than I.)

Let me hazard a guess. These great men reject “Big Thinkers” because they suspect that big thinking (by someone else) might create an intellectual or political climate in which they must join the battle to end the misery and evil in the world or admit their own hypocrisy and cowardice. Neither alternative fits in with their plans to live a comfortable self-satisfied life. They are doing well because of their privileged positions in the intellectual elite and they don’t want to take any risks or be placed in a position where they will lose their self-respect if they don’t take risks. Actually, when the students began to protest America’s criminal invasion of Viet Nam, every intellectual immediately became an active anti-war protester or a pro-establishment creep. When a famous Courant Institute professor lied to the students shortly after Cambodia was bombed, a student knocked him flat. This is not an outcome he anticipated when he elected to cooperate with the war criminals to protect his job. Richard Courant, although he was an enemy of tyranny, refused to help the students during the student strike of 1970 because he was “too old”. Perhaps he was. Also, dealing with the Nazis must have taken a lot out of him. A well-known professor emeritus with whom I have corresponded confessed, “I get a nice pension from ‘X’ University and I intend to keep it.” [quoted loosely]

Let me ask you this. You probably agree that the major problem in the world (population aside) is the great disparities in property and income. Now tell me how you can eliminate inequality without establishing equality. This is tautological! Why won't Noam Chomsky say it? Why won't Ralph Nader say it? Why won't Kurt Vonnegut say it? Why won't anyone who can get the ear of the public say it? We expect commonplace, “party-line” objections: “We have just seen the proof that communism doesn't work.” Remarks like these can be refuted easily: “Proof? What proof?” I shall continue to insist that equality of material wealth is essential to the continuation of the human race – in this book and wherever I am allowed to present my views.

[Note in proof (9-22-98). Suppose the population of the earth consists of eight billion souls each of which, to make the exercise simple, requires precisely one potato per day to stay alive and nothing more. If he does not get a potato on a given day, he dies. Suppose further that the earth for thermodynamic reasons is capable of producing precisely eight billion potatoes per day. No more and no less. If a man contrives to consume ten potatoes today, he has virtually murdered nine people. As we shall demonstrate in Chapter 2, this is essentially the situation on earth except the potato is a certain amount of emergy. All true wealth is emergy. A person who consumes 30 kW of emergy, for example, is a murderer. Clearly the excess consumption in the United States causes starvation and other horrors in the Third World and elsewhere – even in the U.S.]

My Expectations

It is customary to ridicule the dreams of the idealist. No doubt the ideas in this essay will receive their share of ridicule – if they receive any attention at all. It is certainly true that the schemes of idealists have not fared well in a nonideal world. When idealists band together to separate themselves from the nonideal world to actualize their vision, they soon discover that among themselves are found the very defects from which they have attempted to separate themselves. Being an idealist doesn’t make one ideal! So, how can the vision put forth in this essay be useful?

In the first place, the usefulness of the ideas presented in this essay had no bearing on the writing or not writing of the essay. The essay was written because I felt the need to write it. Creating the manuscript of the essay will please me. Even the publication of the essay is secondary. Thus, in this respect at least, I am practicing what I preach. My motivation for producing this work has been for the most part – intrinsic. Nevertheless, I think it might be useful to others.

In this essay I have pointed out certain intolerable aspects of modern society that, if unchanged, will lead to the destruction of the planet or the reduction of life for most people to a level not worth living. Thus, anyone who thinks we can muddle along as we have been doing for centuries is the one who is indulging in idle dreams. I remain – a skeptic.

Later, I shall discuss a generic world-bettering plan the first step of which is the general agreement of society upon an ideal world worth pursuing. It may be true that society will never agree upon an ideal world. I will discuss designing a path of constant improvement from our world to this ideal world in a later chapter. I won’t discuss how to convince the entire world that my theory is correct because I don’t know how to reach the entire world. For now, I would be satisfied to convince one other person to pursue the line of thought I have introduced, to make me explain the proof that the abandonment of competition for wealth and power is a necessary and sufficient condition for sustainable happiness, or to prove that my thesis is incorrect. Obviously, it is insufficient to ignore this thesis merely because it does not correspond to one’s preconceived notions. Often a correspondent answers these ideas with “Oh yes, I would like to live in a world like that, but no one else would. I don’t believe it is possible.” Does anyone else see the irony in this? Sometimes I think that if that particular person believed it was possible, it would be. When someone says, “Yes, of course society would be better off without competition for wealth, power, and fame, but it will never happen,” my answer is, “I am only asking you to agree that society would be better off without competition for wealth, power, and fame.”

I began by referring to any system based on competition for wealth, power, and fame as materialism. I, then, wrote for awhile calling it competitionism; and, in addition, coined the term artificial economic contingency to make the idea clearer. I now feel that materialism is the best term to use and corresponds most closely with ordinary parlance. We say that acquisitive people are materialistic. (Also, I have retained the useful expression artificial economic contingency. All three terms are synonymous in this essay.)

Of course, we intend to treat material things with even more respect than ever now that we finally grasp the concept that the earth is truly finite. Moreover, in my short essay “On Space Travel and Research”, I go a long way toward proving that exploitation of other heavenly bodies is the worst conceivable response to that finiteness. Perhaps you can do nothing to eliminate materialism from society, but I believe that you are responsible to understand why it should be abandoned. Understanding the solution to social problems is important. I have never heard or read the solution offered in this essay except in Jack Nicholson’s character’s off-hand remark in Easy Rider (quoted in the epigraph). Correspondents in debate on social issues behave as though they do not understand the solution. Whenever I hear people talk about the need for more jobs, I know they don’t understand! On the other hand, sometimes I think that many people believe these ideas are correct, but they are so afraid of the ruling class that they won’t get involved.

It may be true that, even if a large number of people were convinced of the validity of my thesis, powerful forces would prevent us from embarking upon a path toward that goal. But, activists and humanists will continue to attempt to improve the intolerable conditions in society and alleviate the suffering they see all around them. If they do this, they ought to have a vision of the future they are trying to attain. If they do not have a vision of a reasonably ideal world, it is possible, even probable, that they will make conditions worse in the long run. Many activist organizations replicate the evil in the world within their own organization on a smaller scale by competing among themselves for what they value, namely, status. These organizations are likely to do more harm than good. This is the typical indictment of “do-gooders”. It is conceivable that, if I were in danger of living forever, I might live to regret writing this book. In all probability, if Jesus were alive now, he would regret abandoning carpentry.

The possibility exists that progress directly toward an ideal world could take the world into an improved situation from which an ideal could never be attained. This might be the view of Marxist socialists who expect to see social conditions become so intolerable that the average working man is willing to take up arms and rebel. Thus, it is conceivable that things can only get better by getting worse. This view is rejected in this essay on the basis of faith in an inherent harmony in nature including man. I don’t believe that it will ever be possible to establish scientifically which is actually the case.

In order to reject completely the possibility that mankind can become sufficiently well-educated that nearly everyone can agree upon a rational society, one would have to prove the impossibility of that occurring. It is insufficient to deem the idea absurd and move on. May I suggest that the ideas in this essay, or better ideas, could be propagated from person to person and from people to their children and students in one-to-one conversations and in small study groups such as the one I have put together in Houston. We are not trying to change the thinking of the entire world suddenly, but rather change the minds of a few people close to us one at a time. Moreover, we do not agree among ourselves. People who wish to see the human race survive and attain general happiness ought to debate these issues in a concerted way and, in addition, search for new ideas.

To summarize: first, I have written this essay to satisfy myself. Perhaps I am a utopianist, but I claim that the people who reject these ideas are the real utopianists since the world is bound to become a very unpleasant place if these ideas, or better ideas, are not adopted. I remain, rather, a skeptic, who predicts failure for competing ideas that enjoy currency today. Next, the ideas expressed herein may serve as a guide to activists to help them reject tactics that lead to conditions no better than those they wish to replace; or, better yet, these ideas may help them aim higher. Finally, it is not at all clear that an improved vision of the world cannot be propagated through society one person at a time until nearly all of society is ready to reject the old institutions intellectually and embark upon a path toward replacing them with rational institutions.

As we have seen in the Former Soviet Union, when no one believes in the existing social structure, change can occur amazingly fast. Thus, we may hope that broad change might occur once more but this time in the right direction. Thus, it would be useful if a plan for change were already in place by that time – a plan that could be rejected, accepted, or superseded by all of us without giving political power to the planners. Finally, if these ideas won’t work, we better find some that will – soon.

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to my wife, Ellen Lee, without whose patience, fortitude, encouragement, and hours of assistance at boring and unrewarding tasks this book could not have been written. Also, the importance of the role played by my de facto editor and critic, Prof. Marian Hillar, a man of incredible depth and scope, cannot be underestimated. He read every word of two or three versions of each and every chapter and suggested numerous changes most of which have been incorporated into the final version of the book. I must emphasize the undeniable fact that many sections of the book appear despite his strenuous objections, therefore the final responsibility for errors of fact, logic, and judgment lies with me alone. Thank you, Marian. You have no idea how much your friendship, your articulate reasoning, your encouragement, and your downright hard work have meant to me.

I struggled for many months with the availability (high-grade energy) balance over the earth and her atmosphere without success until Professor Dan Wilkins suggested that I join an Internet list server dedicated to physics. By way of the list server I obtained the assistance of Prof. Dave Bowman who was able to teach me enough irreversible thermophysics of radiation to understand his solution of the problem that had frustrated all my efforts for so many months – despite stacks of textbooks that I found difficult to understand without anyone to tell me which should be read first even.

The methods used to compute the vast rate at which availability passes under the influence of the earth were devised by Dave. I checked every formula and repeated all of the arithmetical computations as an educational activity and to prevent mistakes as far as has been possible. I wish to thank Dan Wilkins and Dave Bowman, who is the de facto co-author of Appendix I, as well as the many physicists who managed to teach me more than I expected to learn so quickly at my advanced age. I think this may have been the most accelerated learning experience of my life. It is fitting, then, to acknowledge the valuable lessons learned from Dave Bowman, Leigh Palmer, John Mallinckrodt, Brian Whatcott, Jim Green, and others who were generous with their time, effort, and knowledge.

Also, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Professor Edward Deci of the University of Rochester who has made available to me at his own expense preprints and reprints of numerous peer-reviewed research papers written by himself and others on the subject of human motivation. This has saved me much time and effort and is greatly appreciated. Also, it is with great sadness that I acknowledge the assistance and advice of John Condry who has recently passed on. Professor Condry introduced me to Ed Deci and, indeed, to the whole idea of intrinsic motivation, which, as the reader will see, plays a crucial role in my philosophy. The literature on intrinsic motivation deserves and receives its own bibliography at the end of Appendix III.

Houston, Texas

October 12, 1990

Revised June 28, 1991

Revised August 1, 1992

Revised May 27, 1993

Revised July 30, 1993

Revised September 30, 1994.

Revised August 6, 1995

Revised May 21, 1996

Revised January 18, 1997

Revised July 2, 1997

Revised September 5, 1997

Revised September 22, 1998

Revised July 5, 2004

Revised January 22, 2005

References

1. Chomsky, Noam, World Orders Old and New, Columbia University Press, New York (1995).

2. Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York (1985)

3. The Chicago Manual of Style, The University of Chicago Press, Thirteenth Edition, Revised and Expanded, Chicago (1982).

4. Peirce, Charles Sanders, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Ed. Justus Buchler, Dover, New York (1955).

Chapter 1. Toward a Rational Social Contract

But the social order is a sacred right which serves as a basis for all other rights. And as it is not a natural right, it must be one founded on covenants. – Rousseau, The Social Contract

Governments cannot really divest themselves of religion, or even of dogma. ... Governments must proceed on dogmatic assumptions, whether they call them dogmas or not; and they must clearly be assumptions common enough to stamp those who reject them as eccentrics and lunatics. And the greater and more heterogeneous the population the commoner the assumptions must be. ... I repeat, government is impossible without a religion: that is, without a body of common assumptions. – G. B. Shaw, “Preface to Androcles and the Lion”

On Government

The Social Contract

Introduction

Definition (Social Contract). A social contract is a covenant between (1) governments and the governed, (2) between institutions and individuals, (3) between institutions, and (4) between individuals. It amounts to an agreement with general applicability commonly understood to regulate the behavior of every member of society just as a legal contract regulates the behavior of the parties who have entered into it with respect to the specific applicability of the contract – except that a social contract has much wider applicability than a legal contract.

As discussed above, we wish to abandon the institution of government, which no one likes anyway. This cannot be done without a period of delegislation during which laws must be replaced by rational morals gradually. The system of morals that we choose will determine the social contract we end up with. We expect that people who enter voluntarily into a social contract with their neighbors will behave at least as well as people who are constrained by laws normally not of their own choosing. They could hardly behave worse.

In the absence of government, Item 1 in the definition of a social contract will be discarded. This is the portion of a social contract that is supposed to be taken care of by a constitution – even though numerous exceptions are found in every case. Certain portions of the agreement between the rulers and the ruled fall under the purview of tradition, brute force, etc. The people make do as well as they can from their position of relative weakness. They hope that the tyranny under which they live will not be inordinately cruel and that constitutional provisions will not be violated excessively. To eliminate tyranny altogether it seems that government must be eliminated, in which case no constitution is needed.

Regardless of whether or not the contract that governs the behavior of institutions and individuals be written down or not, its provisions must be crystal clear and well-understood and accepted by everyone – or nearly everyone. In a well-ordered society with no government, the social contract must be the basis of the behavior of all those who accept it. They must internalize the morals embedded in the social contract in such a way that their behavior is, for all practical purposes, voluntary. The members of the community are free people who do what they do because they want to. In this chapter, I shall discuss the social contract I would like to have after I explain why I wish to reject the social contract that we actually do have.

Our Current Social Contract

Our current social contract, while centered upon the Constitution, is composed of many disjoint elements some of which are not recognized generally nor are they rational or just. The result is social strife and alienation bordering on outright rebellion especially among youths. The elements of what passes for a social contract nowadays require some discussion:

The Constitution Itself

The Constitution Is Unacceptable Because of Our Desperate Need for Autonomy (Freedom)

The Constitution creates numerous institutions, namely, the presidency, Congress, a judiciary, etc., whose function is to exercise power over individuals. But, individual autonomy is a prerequisite for happiness in the sense of Deci and Ryan [1]. Thus, despite the so-called checks and balances and a sort of fictional responsibility of these institutions to serve the people, we have become victims of the most insidious tyranny imaginable, a tyranny of which many people are unaware. Why should people rebel against tyranny if they have been convinced that they are free? We wish to make clear in this essay the importance of rejecting presidents, members of legislatures, and judges. If we wish to enjoy autonomy, necessary for happiness, we must establish a social contract that prevents the existence of all such leaders. This entails sweeping reform.

The problem of determining how social reform on an extremely broad scale shall be effected is exacerbated by the necessity to achieve widespread social reform essentially without so-called leadership! Normally, what is euphemistically called “leadership” is an impostor term, in the sense of Bentham [2], and should be called tyranny. Tyranny will not resolve mankind’s most serious problem, its greatest challenge, and, perforce, its most dramatic opportunity for universal ennoblement, namely, the elimination of enormous differences in economic well-being and the creation of communities of people who share real wealth virtually equally with essentially no government or “leadership” whatever! Each (undiminished) person must be his or her own leader. This will be discussed in greater detail in later chapters especially Chapter 6. [Having said this, no one should be surprised when I refuse to join with any people for any purpose – even people who agree with me who have organized to implement my ideas. Following William Morris, I reject all political parties, activist organizations however well intentioned, all and any organizations of every stamp. Don’t you see that these are ideal breeding grounds for “natural leaders”. If the government is to be overthrown, it must be overthrown by individuals working alone and anonymously.]

Our Constitution Is Unacceptable Because of Its Inconsistencies Due to Fundamental Religious Content

Religion and Philosophy

Definition (Religion) [from Random House Dictionary [3] (RHD)]. 1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances and often having a moral code for the conduct of human affairs. [italics mine], 2. a specific and institutionalized set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion. 3., 4., etc., not relevant. Clearly, the “beliefs and practices” referred to in Definition 2 might have moral implications.

Definition (Philosophy) [from RHD [3]]. 1. the rational investigation of the truths of being, knowledge, or conduct. 2. a system of philosophical doctrine: the philosophy of Spinoza. 3. the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge: the philosophy of science. 4. a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs: a philosophy of life.

According to the RHD, then, philosophy and religion have much in common as well as a number of differences depending, of course, on which sense of either word is intended. We may regulate our affairs, then, according to philosophical principles if we accept Definition 4 of philosophy and reject the Moral Code Clause in Definition 1 of religion. Unfortunately, we cannot prevent people from recognizing that the italicized portion of Definition 1 of religion and Definition 4 of philosophy are nearly equivalent. We have fallen into a trap by trying to invoke a principle that can be construed to be religious in nature by anyone who wishes to so regard it. Indeed, in our zeal to avoid the establishment of religion, we have committed the very sin we deplore.

Now, as far as I can tell, religionists – even the most unreasonable right-wing Christian fundamentalists – are not trying to incorporate their cosmological and hermeneutical beliefs or their rituals (other than prayer) into the law of the land. Invariably what they are after is to have their moral code for the conduct of human affairs enacted into law. Therefore, the moral aspect of religion is what should interest us. While it is true that many people believe, with good enough justification, that a moral code alone does not make a religion, one cannot a priori rule out the possibility that many people, including, perhaps, judges and juries in courts of law, do aver that all moral judgments are religious in nature, therefore we must make allowances in advance for such a ruling. Also, consider the point of view of G. B. Shaw quoted in the epigraph.

Improper and Proper Religions

My first inclination is to dismiss all religions as improper; but that will not do. In the first place the theory of morals that I propound in this essay is, in a certain sense, a religion. I claim it is a proper religion, that is, it is not an improper religion. Improper religions are easy to identify. I shall list a few of their characteristics, which should suffice to disqualify all of the religions that threaten the world currently. A religion shall be said to be an improper religion if it has one or more of the following characteristics or if it is inconsistent:

1. It claims to be absolutely true – for all time – never in need of revision. Although most improper religions have undergone considerable revision, they are always in a state of reaction to enlightenment. They lose one position after another to science, but they adjust and continue to assert absolute validity. [Bertrand Russell]

2. It claims to be the sole correct religion and nonbelievers are placed in an inferior position to believers. If the claim is that nonbelievers are in some sense doomed, this constitutes fraud as well as child abuse. [Note in proof (5-30-98). It is generally agreed that free speech does not extend to yelling “Fire” in a crowded theatre. Then, a fortiori, yelling “Eternal damnation” should not be protected either.]

3. It relies on circular reasoning, e.g., such and such doctrine (A) is written in the Holy Bible from which one may deduce that (B) the Holy Bible is the inerrant word of God, therefore the doctrine (A) is true. That is, if A, which was assumed, then B and if B then A, which was to be shown. Regrettably, to prove A, A was assumed to be true at the outset. (I do not know where in the Bible we are told that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Nor, can I show an example of circular reasoning in connection with the Bible. I do not need a case of circular reasoning to show that Christianity, as it is actually practiced, is improper!) The point, though, is that any religion that is based in whole or in part upon reasoning of the type: if A then B, if B then C, ..., if Y then Z, and if Z then A, i.e., circular reasoning, is an improper religion.

4. It comes with an excessive amount of intellectual baggage that must be taken on faith. It makes claims that cannot be substantiated by observation or experiment, which it justifies by unfalsifiable statements. It claims to know what no one can know – in particular the nature of God. Often it incorporates some sort of belief in magic.

5. It attempts to increase the number of adherents by unethical means such as childbirth or outright lies – frequently preying on human weakness.

6. It has a priesthood that claims to be invested with special knowledge sometimes received directly from God and, therefore, not open to debate.

7. Normally, it incorporates some form of irrational taboo morality.

8. Typically, it will shun all debate with nonbelievers even though it will claim not to.

9. Frequently, money is involved in one way or another.

10. Usually, its code of ethics will accommodate evildoers if they subscribe to its church.

Proper religions have none of these characteristics. I believe a simple heuristic may be employed fairly safely; namely, if it has a church, it’s most likely improper. Please remember that, if a religion be inconsistent or have even one of the above characteristics, it is improper by definition. Certainly, I do not imagine that I have some distinctive right to disqualify improper religions from consideration in a social contract without a general consensus of my neighbors, by which I might have to consider everyone in the world in some cases.

Separation of Church and State

Presumably, the Founding Fathers of the fledgling independent nation known as the United States of America envisioned a State in which every man is free to worship whatever hypothetical deity he wishes in the manner he wishes provided the mode of worship or the rites of his religion do not jeopardize the compelling interests of the State. Probably, though, (it must be admitted) they did not intend to protect people who wished to reject all of religion including every Christian sect.

In May, 1989, in my essay “The Separation of the State from the Christian Church” [4] (renamed “The Separation of the State from the Christian Church and the Case Against Christianity” [5]), I tried to make a case for the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I hoped to show that religionists may not incorporate their arbitrary moral judgments into the law of the land. [In this essay, quotes from my earlier papers will be distinguished by wide margins.] In 1989, I wrote as follows:

The First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees, among other things, that “Congress shall make no law respecting [regarding, concerning, with respect to] an establishment of religion ...” This, together with the expressed belief of the founding fathers, has provided the foundation of what has come to be known as The Doctrine of Separation of Church and State. This doctrine has been interpreted to mean that the public affairs of the people of the United States shall not be imposed upon by the particular beliefs of any religion no matter how widespread its acceptance. Even if the Doctrine were not supported by the Constitution, we would have to respect it because without separation of church and state there would be no possibility of peaceful coexistence of separate religions, cultures, or lifestyles within the United States. The Doctrine means much more than toleration of various religions; it means that individuals must be spared any impingement on their lives by any religious beliefs whatsoever, if that is what they desire. Adherence to religious belief has been shown to be entirely superfluous to the socialization (rendering fit for human companionship) of humanity, so there is no reason why people should be subjected to it against their will.

The point is that the position (stated above) that I took in my 1989 essay could be defeated by a clever debater who would argue that our laws already contain numerous moral judgments, which are never construed to be laws respecting an establishment of religion, therefore the Establishment Clause is either null and void or must be construed in a manner unfavorable to my 1989 argument. And, finally, laws prohibiting abortion and mandating prayer in school are not, after all, unconstitutional, since we have a law, for example, against murder, which is obviously a moral decision, perhaps derived directly from the Sixth Commandment.

Separation of Church and State Fails

Regrettably, the principle of separation of church and state cannot be justified completely on the basis of the First Amendment. This prevents the Constitution – in particular the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment – from protecting us from right-wing fundamentalists who wish to enslave us by solidifying the totalitarian theocratic nature of the State and by introducing into the law of the land the irrational restrictions placed upon our freedom by their improper religions. The arguments that undermine the Constitution are three in number. Generally, these arguments are not considered by champions of so-called separation of church and state, particularly Atheists and Secular Humanists.

Argument 1. The Rule of Precedence

Suppose a religionist school board decided to teach celibacy in the public schools. The religionist would argue that we already teach that killing other people is wrong, which is a moral judgment taken directly from the Bible; therefore, since celibacy is mandated by the Bible as well, it is valid to teach it in the public schools, according to the “rule of precedence”. Teaching celibacy in the public schools is wrong because celibacy is a personal or taboo moral and we have argued that no consensus can be reached regarding personal morals, but the First Amendment is no help because of the precedent provided by “Thou shalt not kill”. We need a new way to defend ourselves from the imposition of irrational or arbitrary morals upon us or upon our children by religious bigots. Sexual inhibition is extremely harmful according to many thinkers, including Wilhelm Reich [6], Bertrand Russell [7], and myself [8]. Thus, we must continue to look for a social contract we can live with.

Argument 2. The Religious Nature of the Bill of Rights

In addition to these inconsistencies, the Bill of Rights, itself, is inconsistent. Although not precisely “made” by Congress in the same sense that Congress makes ordinary laws, the Bill of Rights was originated by Congress and the spirit of the Establishment Clause was broken simultaneously with its creation because of the numerous moral judgments in the Bill of Rights, e.g., no cruel or unusual punishment, etc. If the Founding Fathers intended to disparage making laws respecting an establishment of religion, they should have recognized the inconsistency of a constitutional amendment respecting an establishment of religion. This argument was suggested by the poet Emily Nghiem.

While those who claim that the founding of the United States was based on Christian values are not entirely wrong, it is not clear that the common set of Judeo-Christian values upon which our country was based is useful or desirable now. What is clear is that the society based upon these values is coming apart at the seams and is on the brink of collapse.

What is worse, the Constitution fails to preclude the passing of laws based upon irrational morals; it leaves nearly every moral imperative untreated; and it is woefully vague with respect to the morals it does not neglect altogether. The result is that, in the United States, at the present time, we have widespread disagreement concerning the question of which morals are valid and which are not. It is fair to say that we are on the brink of another civil war. The worst possible catastrophe on the horizon is not the possibility of civil war, but the possibility that the wrong side might win.

Nevertheless, although the Founding Fathers probably did not have freedom from religion in mind when the First Amendment was enacted, the wording is sufficiently clear that religionists who claim that it does not imply separation of church and state and that they may lobby to have anti-abortion legislation enacted are not entirely honest. I continue to be appalled at the unfair use of media by televangelists to promulgate a religion that, if it were at all valid or beneficent, could be encouraged by honest means.

Recognizing the religious character of the Constitution, and perforce its inconsistency, has an interesting side effect; namely, it removes a certain weakness in the liberal position generally opposed to right-wing fundamentalists with which I have not been entirely comfortable. I have noticed, in particular, that conservatives who espouse obsolete and pernicious doctrines frequently are able to score points at the expense of the more nearly correct liberals because liberals are not willing to take a position radical enough to make sense. (Radical means “getting to the root of”.) They are well-intentioned, but they still spout nonsense, which makes them easy targets for right-wing critics. For example, laws prohibiting abortion might be attacked by citing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; however, the sovereignty of women over their own bodies is also a religious position; and, particularly, if it is accompanied by advocacy of drug prohibition, it is completely irrational. Also, liberals tend to accept the work ethic, which has religious origins (in Genesis); but jobs are out of the question for a large segment of the population, which is entirely justified in its reliance on crime – given the circumstances under which work is available if, indeed, such circumstances even exist.

Argument 3. Our Need To Espouse Religious Values

I consider a moral code sufficient but not necessary for a religion. Thus, I can’t disparage religion or isolate religion from public policy since almost all public policy (except for minor procedural matters, e.g., dates of public assembly) has moral implications. At least, I challenge the reader to suggest a public policy to which I am unable to assign moral implications. Perhaps not all moral rules for human conduct should be considered religious in nature, but I consider them religious in nature, which I may do if I wish.

The solution to the problem of facing the tragedy that religion, at least the all-important moral aspect of religion, may not be separated from public policy is presented in this chapter. Clearly, it is the rule-giving aspect of religion that gives rise to divisiveness nowadays. Thus, we are forced to consider any moral system whatever – a religion. Probably, a common core set of religious values is necessary to bind a group of people into a community. In the absence of a constitution, I must show how to arrive at a new social contract upon which nearly everyone can agree and which can supplant the State, government as we have grown to know it and hate it, and, indeed, leadership as it normally manifests itself. To achieve consensus through a common religious morality, I must find a way to exclude the dogma associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition and other religious traditions. Upon such dogma we can never agree.

The probability of achieving a general consensus on irrational morals is practically nil inasmuch as one set of irrational morals is no more attractive than another; therefore, the probability that people of diverse cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds should choose the same set is close to zero. A route to consensus is, indeed, what we seek; and it stands to reason that the fewer items that we require general – practically universal – agreement upon, the greater the chance of reaching consensus.

Other Reasons Why the Current Social Contract Is Irrational and Perforce Invalid

Every human being finds himself (or herself) at the beginning of his life in a strange world, presumably without having requested to be sent there. It can be argued that each person has a right to find the world in perfect shape with an ideal social system in place, not having had the opportunity to select the world he would like or the system he would choose and not having been here to arrange matters for himself. From the viewpoint of the previous generations, it doesn’t make sense to deny that the world owes the newcomer a living. The world (society) owes the newcomer much more, in particular profuse apologies for the state of the world that the newcomer finds and nontrivial reparations for not fixing it before the newcomer’s arrival. It is the business of this essay to prove that society is irrational, to describe what a rational society would be like, and to prove that such a society is feasible. If that be true, every normal (undiminished) adult is to blame that society is still not rational.

Clearly, each newcomer will not have signed the Constitution, ratified the laws of the land, or agreed upon the established institutions, but he has a right (or it can be deduced that he has a right) to find them at least reasonable, which they are not. This is what needs to be remedied. Until it is remedied, dissidents may not be treated as criminals. According to the logic just presented, all of the inmates of our jails are political prisoners. No one knows what their lives might have been like in a reasonable world.

Indoctrination in the Schools

Our early and sometimes later schooling consisted of indoctrination that amounted virtually to promises that can never be kept. This was done according to someone’s intentions. We were taught conventional falsehood, which many of us still understand as sacred truth, e.g., the greatness of our nation, the guarantees associated with hard work and conformity, etc. The way we were introduced to particular key words by our parents during the dark ages of our minds (before the age of reason) has clouded our subsequent thinking. It can safely be said that practically no one sees the world as it actually is.

Government Propaganda and Gratuitous Private Propaganda

As O’Flaherty says, “If there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a lie, the Government would find it out. It’s in the nature of governments to tell lies.” [George Bernard Shaw, O’Flaherty, V. C.] The government must tell lies because tyranny cannot be maintained without the consent of the victims, who will not give their consent unless they can be convinced that they are better off than they really are. The corporate media know that they must corroborate the party line to satisfy their sponsors, some of whom own the country and the government as well – for all practical purposes. The large corporations, which either own the country or are owned and/or controlled by those who do, know what to say. This is adequately documented in this essay and more thoroughly in the book by Herman and Chomsky [9]. This party line perforce becomes part and parcel of the social contract as the parties to the contract have accepted it and have been promised that it is true, in return for which they sacrifice their lives or the time of their lives. All of the conditions of a contract are met.

Tradition

The glorification of wealth and excessive consumption has been inculcated by Hollywood, television, etc. The goodness of the upper classes and their express right to their privileges has been promoted as well. I do not claim that the opposite has not been presented for the consideration of the public, but the damage has been done. This is easy to document and may be taken up as an exercise by the reader. Hint: Consider the movie Sabrina, recently remade, to examine both sides of the coin.

A De Facto Caste System

If we are truly equal and live in an equal opportunity egalitarian society, why do we make a distinction between exempt workers and non-exempt workers? See Chapter 6 for additional discussion of the caste system in America, an aspect of our culture that is rarely mentioned in the President’s State of the Union address.

Brute Force

The element of brute force in our de facto social contract is exercised through cops and courts and brought home otherwise by the necessity to be employed or to desire to be employed.

Our National Religion

Our national religion is the Judeo-Christian tradition of teaching blind obedience to the false gods of money, power, and fame. Clearly, this is an element in our social contract.

Superstition and Old Wives Tales

As an exercise, the reader may list a few examples of superstitions and old wives tales that qualify as elements of our social contract.

Community and a New Type of Social Contract Based on Rational Morals

Community Replaces the State

The exhaustion of our readily available supplies of high-grade energy will make large sovereign entities impossible to govern within the foreseeable future. The conclusions of Chapter 2 should convince us that large sovereign states like the U.S. are doomed. We need small lightly linked communities such that everything we need is within walking distance. The exigencies of economics will require that these communities be nearly self-sufficient. Again, see Chapter 2.

The members of these communities will be sufficiently few in number that an agreement upon a new social contract based on very few rational moral axioms and a small number of additional (rational) assumptions is not absolutely out of the question. We must find something of this sort that we can agree upon. We must have consensus to dispense with government and the concomitant strife arising from conflict between the rulers and the ruled. We cannot have a constitutional democracy, but we can exclude irrational religious principles and base our community upon a religion, a minimal proper religion, that makes sense and is easy to follow. We can get rid of tyranny if we replace laws by rational morals. This new type of social contract, based on a minimal number of conditions accepted by nearly everyone, is the binding force within the community and the only hope for sustainable happiness.

Definition (Minimal Proper Religion (MPR)). A minimal proper religion (MPR) is a proper religion that incorporates the minimal number of behavioral requirements necessary to ensure “sustainable happiness” for all of humanity. An MPR places constraints upon those who agree to follow it, but only those constraints upon behavior and public policy that cannot be relaxed without creating unbearable misery for a significant portion of humanity.

On Morals

Most of the material presented below in wide-margin format has been taken from an earlier essay on drug policy [10]. A few passages differ from the original rendering.

Rational v. Taboo Morality

I choose to distinguish two categories of morals: The first category consists of personal or arbitrary morals, the violation of which does not interfere with the freedom or well-being of any other person except, perhaps, in an irrational way. Thus, we could call these morals irrational morals without stretching a point. For example, the homosexual activities of a young man may distress his mother but only because of her irrational bias. Her freedom may be limited because she is afraid to face her friends; but, again, this is due to her misunderstanding of the situation. What I mean by [i] arbitrary morals [or [ii] irrational morals] is roughly congruent with what Bertrand Russell [7] calls [iii] taboo morality. [Let us take these three terms [i, ii, and, iii] to be synonymous for our purposes.] For the most part, arbitrary morals consist of proscriptions of certain activities that are disallowed by primitive cultures for non-rational reasons or to advance the unspoken agendas of the ruling or priestly classes, which might correspond with the best interests of the people from time to time but in an unsystematic way. Examples from this category are the requirement to do no work on the Sabbath, the proscription of eating meat on Friday (no longer in fashion), the prohibition of certain sexual acts, and the use of or abstinence from the interesting drugs.

For example, doing no work one day of the week may be a good idea to permit individuals to [refocus] themselves spiritually and to reconsider what they are doing on the other six days. Also, it might make the tribe more cohesive and facilitate social activities to make Sunday the day off for everyone, but we no longer live in sufficiently small tribes that the regimentation of requiring the day of rest to be the same for everyone can be justified. Even the seven-day cycle is unsuitable for many people whose inclinations and needs differ from the norm. [Soon, we may be living in eco-communities that will resemble tribes more than they resemble nations, but I hope we shall be able to tolerate great diversity within these “tribes”.]

[Note in proof (7-10-04). Perhaps our mean solar days (or sidereal days), lunar months, and sidereal years should be put on the decimal system. Days (either mean-solar or sidereal, whichever is best) could be divided into decidays (144 minutes), centidays (14.4 minutes), millidays (1.44 minutes), and microdays (0.0864 seconds corresponding to greater precision in the measurement of time). (My watch shows hundredths of seconds!) The mismatches between days, months, and years could be dealt with in a number of ways. I believe the day is most important and we should count up to a thousand days before beginning over. We might then write the day of the thousand-day cycle, followed by the month number until 33863 months or one million days have expired, after which we might re-initialize the month number. The number of sidereal years that will have passed is about 2,738, after which time someone else can figure out what to do. Dates might look like this 512,846:21,319:1408, the 846^th day of the 512^th thousand-day cycle, the 21,319^th month, and the 1408^th year of our era, the First Era. Dates before the initiation of this system could be written 7-10-2004, for example. This idea just occurred to me and I have given it about ten minute’s thought only. I don’t think I am quite the right person to work out the details. But, notice that, by including three decimal places, I can identify to the nearest minute Moonrise on the night of the Full Moon of the Autumnal Equinox. For example, 512,846.743:21,319.500:1408.750 would represent Moonrise of the Harvest Moon if 0.743 were the time of Moonrise and the 512,846 were the number of the day and 21, 319 were the number of the month of the Autumnal Equinox in the 1408^th year.

The second category consists of higher morals the violation of which does interfere with the freedom and well-being of others, which might include plants and animals, although harming plants and animals always impacts on the human race as well. Examples from this category are “Thou shalt not kill”, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”, thou shalt not incinerate trash, especially in the middle of an urban neighborhood, thou shalt not impose thy religious beliefs on others, thou shalt not start forest fires wantonly. These higher morals correspond to what Bertrand Russell calls rational morals, although they might be based on aesthetics as well as reason and utility. We shall reject lower morals as a criterion for law.

Shockingly, since the social contract – upon which we wish to achieve nearly universal consensus – can be construed to be a religion according to the RHD, I shall be advocating a community religion. But, most religions are harmful, as shown abundantly in my essays on religion. My solution to this problem employs the concept of a minimal proper religion, which, in turn, depends upon our ability to distinguish between proper and improper religions as defined previously.

Taboo Morality Is Coincident with Hypocrisy

Now, an important point made by Russell in his essay “On Chinese Morals” [7] is that, in many cases, taboo morals, particularly sexual morals, are morals that “we preach but seldom practice”. We set up requirements that no man of spirit can live by. We are not supposed to lust after a beautiful, sexual, and otherwise attractive woman; and, as soon as we do, which we cannot seem to help, we are wracked by feelings of guilt. Moreover, we hold our elected officials to higher sexual standards than we ourselves (I am speaking of men in particular now) could ever uphold were we faced with temptations that a young, handsome millionaire who reeks of power is subjected to nearly daily. This leads to gross hypocrisy of the most egregious type, as it discourages talented people from becoming candidates for positions that will be exposed to moral scrutiny. (I find it difficult to imagine that anyone could hold such a position for an appreciable length of time without suffering moral decay – as Lord Acton’s proverb would have it.)

Rational Morals Are Easy To Satisfy

Russell points out that the Chinese don’t bother with morals that no one can live by. On the other hand, everyone is expected not to violate the morals they have adopted. The Chinese take their morals very seriously! Of course, Judeo-Christian morality is full of ridiculous morals and neglects some very important ones. Since Judeo-Christian morality does not satisfy reasonableness, aesthetics, or utility, it should be rejected. To put it bluntly, it’s wrong! Instead, why not select rational morals that we can actually live by, thus avoiding all the hypocrisy, guilt, and stupidity – the stories of which fill our junk periodicals and even first-class newspapers! Regrettably, many of our laws are based on the Jewish and Christian religions concerning which we shall elaborate in a moment. That’s part of the problem. Let people have sex with whomever and under whatever circumstances they wish and, for God’s sake, get high whenever they wish and, in particular, whenever it’s the appropriate thing to do. Every drug in its time and a time for every drug. We are human. Let us act like human beings – and enjoy our natural atavistic animal natures too. It is easy to be virtuous. Unfortunately, we Westerners haven’t the foggiest idea of what virtue is. Russell has had the plain common sense to transcend this difficulty; and, by standing on Russell’s shoulders, I have illuminated the subject further.

Morals Are Preferable to Laws

The sense in which I use the word culture here is distinct from fine art but rather refers to the everyday life in a community, race, nation, or similarly identifiable group of people. One could make a pretty good case that this is the only morality that matters, since practically no one adheres to secular or ecclesiastical law if he finds it inconvenient. I will argue that The Law is practically innocuous and that the reason people take only one newspaper from the box into which one drops a quarter or more to open the hatch is that not taking more than one paper is part of their culture. Cultural values discourage suicide by driving one’s car at full speed into the left-hand lane of a two-lane country road. It simply is not done! I find it amusing, and slightly disturbing, that nearly everyone ignores the Big Time morals like “Thou shalt not steal”. Nevertheless, if a particular mode of theft, e.g., newspaper theft, is not condoned by our culture, it is avoided nearly universally. Could it be that we are not particularly imaginative or creative? Clearly, laws are absolutely the last resort. They are the worst possible solution to the problem of human behavior.

The vast litany of law ensures that ignorance of the law is part of the mind set of every single individual – even Supreme Court justices. Does anyone else find it strange that the country is 200 years old and we don’t even know what the laws should be? When they raised the drinking age in New York State to twenty-one, I commented by way of commiseration with my students, “Can you beat that? Two-hundred years and we still haven’t figured out what the drinking age should be”. I’m not going to look this up, but didn’t Moses write the laws of the Hebrews in a remarkably short time and were they ever changed? For the last ten years, I have been thinking about a tiny system of moral axioms from which all correct behavior can be derived, in which case we can dispense with legislators – perhaps even with lawyers. In this essay, a process called delegislation is proposed to replace thousands of laws by one or two simple rules until the glorious time comes when the replacement of all laws by rational morals has been achieved.

Absolute Morals Approachable But Unattainable

Also, from Reference 10:

We would like to have a system of absolute morals, morals that are independent of culture or point of view. Of course, some religious people believe that we already have a system of absolute morals given, for example, by the Bible, but most of these people are not aware of the epistemological difficulties that would have to be overcome to establish such a system. Actually, it is easy to show that the Bible is entirely inadequate as a handbook of morals. It is inconsistent and is filled with moral advice that does not satisfy aesthetics, reasonableness, or utility.

Note. I have shown this in some detail in the essay “Separation of the State from the Christian Church and the Case Against Christianity” [5], which can be found in Vol. II of my collected essays [8], which I have called Ancillary Essays on my home page. I return to the quoted passage.

The Basis for Moral Axioms and Philosophical Assumptions

To avoid infinite recursion we need a priori principles according to which we can evaluate the basis of our system of morals. Suppose, following William James [11], we choose reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility. [Note. Reasonableness and aesthetics might be the “left brained” and “right brained” aspects of the same thing. This is to be taken metaphorically until it is shown that reasonableness and aesthetics actually reside in the left and right sides of the brain, respectively. For now, we shall write “left-brained” and “right-brained” in quotation marks.] Then we are confronted with showing that reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility are suitable metaphysical values. Somewhere we must terminate the process and agree that something must be taken on faith. Thus, in all things, even in science, faith plays a pivotal role.

Our system of morals should be derived from a complete, self-consistent, mutually independent set of first principles that can be explained to a six-year-old and upon which most educated people can agree. It is unlikely, though, that mutual independence is possible or necessary. At this writing I do not know if it is possible to derive all morality from a single principle like the Freedom Axiom proposed in this essay. (We will show that the Environmental Axiom (A₂) can be derived from the Freedom Axiom (A₁), but the Truth Axiom seems to be logically independent of A₁ and A₂.)

If, in addition, we can prove that the principles upon which our system of morals is based are optimal in the sense that they maximize personal liberty, prosperity consistent with permanence, happiness, and spiritual growth, prevent inequality and injustice, and can never lead to undesirable consequences; and, if we can find a way to win over dissent by examples and counterexamples, i.e., by inductive reasoning (not coercion), we shall have done very well indeed. A system of morals may fall short of optimality and still be good enough to gain universal acceptance within a nation whose members are finite in number. The probability of our system achieving global acceptance might depend on its success wherever it is first applied.

We Are Not Yet in a Position To Live without Laws

It will be some time before the people of the United States reach a consensus on a new social contract. In the meantime, I don’t see how we can dispense with laws immediately as much as I would like to do so. We shall have to limp along with our botched Constitution. Perhaps the most antagonistic members of society, namely, the absolutist religionists, can possess themselves with patience to a somewhat more creditable degree while we undergo what is bound to be a profound spiritual transformation. Perhaps, then, they may begin to understand what their religions are all about.

Laws and Morals Should Be but Are Not Consistent

To continue the above quote from my own essay [10]:

Whether a self-consistent and complete system of morals can be constructed or not, a subset of a system of morals or a superstructure built upon it has been chosen to be the law of the land, or at least that part of the law that deals with human and institutional behavior, as opposed to political formalities, e.g., when Congress shall meet. I submit that the law should be congruent with our system of morals and easily derivable from it. We are far from that advanced state of affairs where legislators would be unnecessary inasmuch as any normal person could determine quickly whether a given proposition was a “law” (or not) by deriving it (or its contradiction) from fundamental axioms or first principles.

In the United States, laws are not congruent with community moral standards. This amounts to a contradiction to the detriment of Law. Rather than having been derived from first principles, laws have been enacted willy-nilly to consolidate the power of the ruling class and to appease the superstitions of the people. (The ruling class is defined in the appendix of this chapter.) The American legal system is in such shambles that we can hardly be considered a society governed by laws at all. However, everyone knows that Law has very little effect on the actual behavior of people. Law is more or less the last resort. People are inclined to obey the laws they wish to obey and to disregard the rest. Presumably, however, we shall have to put up with the institution of Law for a little while longer, and the best we can do is to bring it into line with rational morals insofar as it lies within our power to do so. Moreover, we must do our best to make community moral standards more rational.

Until delegislation is complete such laws as we require should be derived from and be congruent with a system of morals upon which we can all agree. Probably the Freedom Axiom of this essay was the prehistoric basis for all laws, i.e., the necessity to give each person his share or his space. In any case, there is no possibility of a nation living in America in peace unless we can agree to embrace higher morals and to recognize that some morals are a matter of personal preference. (Even if they were the personal preference of every person in the United States, they would still be personal morals.) [I believe that the reason we have so many gray areas in our public discussions of morals is that we are talking about the wrong morals. With the system described in Chapter 3 most (better yet, all) of the gray areas should disappear.] [This ends the quoted passages from Reference 10.]

It is easy to show that morals and laws (other than procedural laws, e.g., on what day a public servant retires to private life) should be congruent.

Lemma: In any rational social contract, laws (other than procedural laws) must be identical with morals.

Proof: Suppose not. Either The Law is evil (something illegal but not immoral) or incomplete (something immoral but not illegal) or both. To elaborate:

Suppose we had a law prohibiting an act that harms no one and is not offensive to the good taste or finely honed reasonableness of a rational person, e.g., the law against adding butter in which marijuana has been sautéed to coffee. Paraphrasing Bertrand Russell: To appeal to The Law to invalidate an act that otherwise would be good is to impute evil to The Law. Conversely, if The Law did not prohibit telemarketers from calling us on our own phones (for which we pay the basic bill including line charges) whenever they chose (which it does not), The Law is incomplete. If The Law of the Land achieves anything at all worth achieving, it certainly does not achieve all that its champions would like to claim for it, namely, protecting citizens from evil.

Rational Morals Provide the Nucleus of a Set of Common Assumptions in a Rational Society

Due to the technological changes in communication and for other reasons, cultural changes occur amazingly fast these days and no one can predict what might happen if a different set of core religious values were presented to society. I intend to present an alternative core set of religious values based not on myths and superstition but rather on firm philosophical principles that satisfy our three criteria, namely, reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility. These criteria are innate, experiential, subjective, or intuitive.

Hopefully, we can agree upon the theoretical aspects of this single most difficult task ever attempted by the human race, namely, the adoption of a new social contract for a large number of loosely linked small communities that will replace the Former United States (FUS). The North American experiment in which a large number of (large) sovereign states were united under a constitution is over. The United States is dead. (We should write FUS instead of U.S.) I set myself the task of forging a new basis for community!

Improper religions will struggle to provide the social contract, but the social contract must come from proper religion only – not just proper religion but a minimal proper religion, so as to reduce the number of points of contention to a level for which an acceptable probability of consensus can be expected. A minimal proper religion is our best hope for a rational social contract that will be safe from the imposition of irrational religious morals.

My agenda, then, for the first five chapters of this book is to establish a philosophical basis for a social contract that, after a suitably long period of adjustment, can be adopted by the vast majority of the members of a community, which might be very tiny, or might encompass the entire human race. This social contract, then, will replace the Constitution locally and provide a guide for human behavior adequate to ensure peace, harmony, and a prolonged period of human happiness. (Procedural matters, such as the time of community meetings, might be decided by consensus on an ad hoc basis.)

Many ecological systems are very large, e.g., the Mississippi Basin; therefore, many communities will need to cooperate to manage such a system successfully. This can hardly be considered “local”. Nevertheless, the MPRs of the several communities must be sufficiently consistent to foster ecological cooperation even though they may differ in ways that do not affect the other communities in the ecological region. The members of each community who interact to ensure that cooperative ecological management proceeds smoothly, without misunderstandings, are the type of public servants who should be selected randomly and retired by secret ballot – if necessary.

Summary

We have solved the problem of the failure of the doctrine of separation of church and state by distinguishing two types of religions – proper and improper. Improper religions disqualify themselves from any rational social contract by their own irrationality. We have solved the problem of achieving wide acceptance for a rational community religion by postulating a certain type of rational religion, a minimal proper religion (MPR), that protects a community of autonomous people from any restrictions upon their (personal and individual) autonomy. (We intend that the members of the community be autonomous and self-governing at the individual level, not merely at the community level.) Let us now consider the construction of a philosophy that will provide a suitable basis for an MPR whether it’s considered religious or secular philosophy. (Recall the similarities in the definitions of religion and philosophy.)

On Philosophy

No man who shuts his eyes and opens his mouth when religion and morality are concerned can share the same Parnassian bench with those who make an original contribution to religion and morality, were it only a criticism. – George Bernard Shaw, The Irrational Knot

Abstract

I am not a professional philosopher, nor am I particularly learned in the history of philosophical thought; therefore, whatever I do in this essay must be especially simple if I am to have a decent chance of getting it right. I am not inclined to read the philosophers of “antiquity”, which shall be taken to include Hegel and all those who precede him. Without going into specific examples – to save space, I believe they accept too many premises, such as the validity of rulers and slaves, that are not acceptable in the present era. Also, their methods of obtaining proofs seem to be inferior to the methods of the best mathematicians, such as Poincaré, Hilbert, and Lax, who is still alive. Regrettably, when I attend lectures on philosophy, I am disappointed that the speaker is interested in the philosophy of someone else, such as Leibnitz, Bentham, or Aristotle, rather than his or her own philosophy. If a professor of philosophy discusses a new point, it is usually a point that is so narrow that the outcome of the discussion is irrelevant. Presumably, professors of philosophy know what they are doing and why, but the point of their efforts eludes me – for which I make no apology. I am aware of my debt to philosophers, though, and I shall begin by borrowing from William James.

[Note in proof 9-23-95. Many months after this section was written I read Bertrand Russell’s wonderful book A History of Western Philosophy [12]. It convinced me that I haven’t missed much in neglecting the philosophers who preceded me other than John Dewey. Also, I heard about Charles Sanders Peirce [13] at a meeting of The Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. And, of course, we have Russell himself.]

On Existence

The discussion in this section touches on existence itself. We would like to define existence in terms of primitive concepts. However, it is difficult to find a concept more primitive than existence. Obviously the word “thing” follows from existence rather than precedes it. Nevertheless, we shall use the word “thing” in deciding what exists. Following the old semantic trick, we say that everything exists provided it is not said to be something that it is not. By thing we do not limit ourselves to corporeal things.

Definition (Existence). 1. Existence is a name for all that exists. 2. Existence is a property of things that exist and everything exists unless it is said to be something that it is not.

[Note in proof (12-4-04). Consider the statement, “Some things don’t exist.” Is this a paradox that requires a sharpening of our definition of existence? The statement seems to say, “Some things exist that don’t exist” or “There exists a non-empty class of objects that both do exist and do not exist,” which is paradoxical. Thus, the thing is said to be something that it is not, therefore it does not exist. But, it was said that it does not exist, therefore it is not said to be something it is not. So, it exists. This is amusing and, perhaps, a waste of time, but, otherwise, unimportant. The correct sentence is, “Some things do not belong to the Universe or even the Ideals; they belong to our imaginations, our mythology, and/or our fiction.” This sentence is easy to parse, whereas the sentence “Some things don’t exist” is bad syntax, but otherwise innocuous.]

Our conception of existence is illustrated by Fig. 1-1. The thick rectangle is supposed to be the boundary of all that exists. (Never mind the finiteness, boundedness, and two-dimensionality.) We divide existence into five parts as follows:

1. The Universe, U, in space and t ime (with a few extra compact dimensions thrown in to account for the fundamental forces according to Grand Unified Theories). I do not know if this can be said to include all of time or not. (Sometimes only the part of U of which we are aware is referred to as the real world. On other occasions the term real world is taken to be synonymous with U. Differences should be clear from context. In my philosophy, The World, W, refers to all that exists, i.e., Fig. 1-1. Thus W = U U M U I U R U E_. For the benefit of the uninitiated, I should say that the symbol in the equation that looks a little like a sans-serif U is the symbol for union; i.e., the objects represented by the letters U, M, I, R, and E are joined together and taken all together to be The World.) The symbol W, then, refers to The World in the large sense as it actually is.

[Note in proof 4-13-96. I believe I can d escribe a universe that includes all of time and is all of a piece. Every future event in that universe is predetermined, however no part of that universe can be said to be conscious mind. Therefore, events in mind are not predetermined. They enjoy a separate existence, which cannot alter the future of the universe in any way. Nevertheless, from the point of view of mind, the way in which it makes its decisions, i.e., its free will, makes all the difference in the world. What we think determines who we are and our relation to the universe even though it has no effect on the universe as it really is. This is good enough. I am not claiming that what I have just written is the actual case. It is only a renegade thought.]

2. Mind, M, i.e., the sum total of all mental activity and mental latency of all creatures. Mind might be a subset of the universe. I don’t know. Probably, it cannot be known. I do not require a one-to-one relationship between mind and events in the universe such as the flow of electronic currents or the migration of ions in brains even though such a relationship might exist. Mind may be a large connected set or a large number of disjoint sets. The topology of mind is not understood.

3. The realm of Ideals, I, which i ncludes, among many other things, every geometry that could ever exist complete with every lemma, theorem, and corollary – including the correct geometry of the universe, the Grand Unified Theories, if they exist, in all their glory and for every possible world, relations in their universal sense, i.e., greater than, North of, and many other things – things that Russell calls universals. The Ideals are eternal and immutable.

4. The correct relations among thi ngs in U and M belong to the realm of the Relations, R, e.g., the distance from the tip of my nose to every other macroscopic, identifiable object in the Universe as I go on my nightly walk is a collection of relations. Of course, incorrect relations exist only in Mind or on the printed page where they are mere artifacts of the Universe. In fact, if one says that the distance from the tip of my nose to the edge of the Grand Canyon – now – is six feet, one speaks of something that does not exist – not the distance of the tip of my nose from the Grand Canyon – then – but the six-foot relation as an object in R. That relation is said to be something that it is not, so it cannot be in R, which consists of correct relations only. Notice that the correct relations are hardly ever known to Mind, first, because their infinitude dwarfs what can be known and, second, because we do not apprehend sense data with infinite precision. The relations available to our minds are only approximations to the correct relations in R, which, nevertheless, exist – unless quantum mechanics somehow makes them impossible, in which case we would replace them with quantum surrogates. This is much more than we need to know; so, necessarily, I have said more than I needed to say. Please disregard anything that seems vague or otherwise incomprehensible.

5. Everything Else, E, i.e., that in which U, M, I, and R are embedded, if it exists, whether it has dimensionality or not – something completely beyond our comprehension or imagination.

Note. The Relations (not the universal re lations, which abide in I, such as to the right of, greater than, etc.) evolve in time, but whether or not all Relations for all time exist depends upon whether the Universe, for example, in all of its proper dimensions including time-like dimensions exists; i.e., not only the present exists, but the past and the future exist on an equal footing with the so-called present. This is an interesting question, which opens up inquiry into Everything Else (E), in particular, the possibility of something in which U, M, I, and R are embedded. If that “space” has a time-like dimension, U et al. would appear from the viewpoint of an intelligence living in E, which, if you remember, we know nothing about, as a complete and finished object.

Clearly, this division of existence is val id logically. It is – quite simply – a linguistic convenience, but it achieves a great deal philosophically in that it solves “the problem of God”, for example. It provides a place for God to exist without resorting to a statement such as “God is all in all”, which would be an abuse of language. It comes perilously close to being the “merest truism”; nevertheless, I believe we shall find it useful. For example, we have solved the problem of metaphysical truth, which shall arise in Chapter 3, by reducing it to semantics.

At the same time we have proved half of a conjecture I would like to present for the reader’s consideration, namely, that it is impossible to prove either the existence or non-existence of God – under any reasonable definition of God. Clearly, this proves that a non-existence proof is impossible. But, how can we prove the impossibility of an existence proof? Such a proof would be extremely useful. In particular, it would permit us to follow Walt Whitman’s alleged advice, “Don’t argue about God.”

The category of the Relations was defined to deal with the slight (or profound?) difficulty in identifying the Ideals. When first defined, these were of two types – regrettably. Type I: the eternal and timeless Ideals such as the Idea of the color blue. Type II: the constantly enlarging set of relations among things in U and M, e.g., as I go for my evening walk, the relativistic distances (intervals) between a point on my right thumb and the other objects in the Universe, the relation of every thought of one man to every thought of another. One would like to have the eternal things in a different set from the relations in the evolving Universe; however, we are getting used to regarding time as not very different from the other dimensions regardless of its “arrow”. Who knows but that some of the (compact) dimensions required to unify the forces may have arrows as well. After much deliberation, I have called the Type II Ideals the Relations. However, one wonders if all of Euclidean Geometry – complete and perfect – is a collection of relations and nothing more, in which case the categories are badly named. Let the reader decide.

Avoiding Infinite Regression

At a well-kno wn West Coast university, a s eries of weekly lectures in science was open to the general public. A lecturer had just finished describing the manner in which the earth revolves about the sun. “Nice theory,” quoth an elderly woman, “but the earth rests on the backs of four elephants who stand on the back of a giant turtle.” With an appreciative grin the lecturer countered with the usual Socratic question as to what supported the turtle. “Oh, I know all about that old argument, but it’s turtles all the way down.” [Note in proof (7-20-2004). This is not a true story, probably.]

William James [11] based his evaluations o f religious sentiments on his personal judgments and experience of philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness. Following James, I have avoided infinite regression, e.g., “turtles all the way down”, by basing my three moral axioms and my philosophical assumptions (or articles of faith if you prefer) upon my innate judgments of reasonableness and aesthetics and my acquired conception of utility, which might have originated, at least in part, from my experience of pleasure and pain. The foundation of my philosophy differs somewhat from the criteria of James, but what I owe to James is the principle that one not only can but must rely on oneself to provide a foundation for a philosophical edifice.

[Note in proof (1-1-97). When I say “rely on oneself” I refer to certain primitive judgments that are fundamentally subjective – although we may hope for a large class of human beings, perhaps all human beings, experiencing such things in a manner sufficiently similar to the manner in which we ourselves experience them. Perhaps these subjective judgments are universal in nature and we and other people will agree on important matters of aesthetics, reasonableness, and utility.]

My three moral axioms are, roughly speakin g, (i) respect for the freedom of oneself and others, (ii) respect for the environment, including animals and plants, and (iii) respect for truth. From these axioms and the basic assumptions, I derive additional morals and what are commonly known as rights, i.e., certain liberties permitted by the axioms and certain entitlements similarly derived. I next define justice and finally arrive at a rational, beautiful, and practical social contract upon which we can gather a very general consensus that permits a community to function in peace and harmony essentially without government! This social contract is what I have termed a minimal proper religion.

Presumably, we are born with a sense of wh at is reasonable. If not, we acquire it at such an early age that it is not necessary, for this discussion, to determine how it arises. Aesthetics, too, is assumed to be given a priori, but I shall not rely on that assumption here. Then, (1) our experiences of the world, i.e., the universe, which we acquire through our physical senses, extended, perhaps, by instruments, and (2) the events that take place in our own minds, can be used to develop the ability to reason (without assuming that the real world exists; that is, we may be reasoning about things that have no independent existence). But, once we have developed the ability to reason, perhaps by studying logic, sentential calculus, set theory, Boolean algebra, or the works of the masters, we may use it to interpret our experiences as evidence of an objective world; that is, we may deduce the existence of a real world using our developed reason.

[Note in proof (3-28-95). I do not wish t o argue the reality of the complementary measurement in quantum mechanics, e.g., the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) thought experiment [14]. Personally, I believe the indeterminate observable is just as real as the measured one; but, obviously, something is real – either the horizontal spin or the vertical spin.]

[Note in proof (9-24-96). Underlying the phenomena we observe lies something that has an existence independent of ourselves as evidenced by the undeniable fact that the Aspect experiments (well-known to physicists [14]) will yield the same results no matter who performs them.]

Once we have established the independent e xistence of the world, we may rely upon the evidence of our senses and our consciousness to develop a sense of utility enhanced by our comprehension of pleasure and pain. Our comprehension of pleasure and pain is based, in part, on our sense of aesthetics, which we assumed was given a priori, but which may be enhanced by experience and other factors. We are now in possession of the three tools, namely, reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility, with which we will evaluate philosophical assumptions and moral axioms. I hope that I am not an anomalous specimen of humanity, but that my primitive notions will be experienced by most, if not all, of humanity.

Once the moral axioms have been stated wit h a sufficient degree of rigor, a system of morals can be derived from them that can serve, in turn, as a basis for human rights and for the rights of other creatures. Justice is based on morals and rights. Thus, morals are based on aesthetics, reasonableness, and utility; rights and justice are based on morals; and our knowledge of the world, including our knowledge of the usefulness of things, is supposed to come from experience and reason. What we choose to experience or apply our powers of reasoning to, and how we decide to take the next step in our reasoning may be dictated by our imaginations or other faculties, which might include intuition, a faculty that is presumed to come primarily from experience. It is not necessary to suppose that the origins of intuition are well understood. We do not necessarily deny the existence of divine inspiration. If the conclusions based on the moral system derived from the fundamental assumptions and the moral axioms lead back to reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility, we will have developed a consistent philosophy. I do not see how we can hope to do better. If some future generation accepts it as a minimal proper religion suitable for a social contract upon which a cooperative society such as the one described in this essay can be based, the most improbable dream of a dreamer of impossible dreams will have come true.

I shall give a list of philosophical assum ptions, which might as well be called articles of faith. I hope that I do not assume too much. This essay is supposed to be an example of the axiomatic methods of science applied to human society. Normally, if an axiom is required to prove what we already believe is true, we simply go ahead and assume it. For example, most of modern mathematics rests on the Axiom of Choice, which makes claims about what would happen in a process that takes place an infinite number of times, namely, the selection of one member from each of an uncountable number of nonempty sets [15]. Naturally, the axiom cannot be verified experimentally; moreover, it might be possible to derive an entirely different mathematics by assuming that the Axiom of Choice is false. I cannot imagine what would be gained by devoting volumes to determining which is the case even if it is possible to do so. [I believe that it is not.]

I hope that this development is adequate, but, if it turns out to be deficient, I will add whatever else I need to construct this system, which appears to me to be nearly complete according to my intellect and my intuition. These ideas came to me in chronological order, i.e., in the only way in which anything comes to anyone, rather than in logical order, so I must search constantly for errors that may have arisen in the reordering process that occurs when one thinks and writes. This is an important point, which, it seems to me, is frequently overlooked, namely, that we do not present arguments in the order in which they occur to us. One of the ramifications of this may account for our unwillingness to abandon our most cherished notions.

Reasonableness and Aesthetics

Reasonablene ss is very much related to our sense of aesthetics. Musicians say that a beautiful passage “makes sense” and mathematicians say a reasonable argument is “beautiful”. Perhaps the part of our being that receives pleasure from things aesthetic is identical with or similar to the part of our being that finds satisfaction in things that make sense. It is possible that, if they are not identical but rather two parts of ourselves, they are mirror images of one another, one on the right side of the brain, the other on the left. (Since the right-brain / left-brain theory is unproved, hereafter I shall enclose the terms in quotes to indicate the provisional and figurative nature of the terminology. I do not need to inquire into their mechanisms to identify them categorically or definitionally, but I would like to inquire, briefly, into the origins of our sense of beauty and our sense of reasonableness so that I can depend upon them as a guide for philosophical judgments.)

Are we born with a sense of aesthetics, wh ich, for me, is the same as the sense of beauty? If so, are we born with a sense of what is reasonable? If we are not born with them, do we acquire them early in our lives in an infallible way upon which we can depend with as much certainty as if we were born with them? In the introduction to The Critique of Pure Reason [16], Immanuel Kant claims the existence of a priori synthetic judgments, however the examples he gives do not seem to be valid – in my opinion. The first example is mathematics, which as I have noted below, is essentially definitional and, therefore, analytic, as opposed to synthetic. [Note in proof. The definitions from which mathematics is derived by analysis are synthesized, therefore I am not sure to which category mathematics ought to belong.] The second example is the judgment that every effect has a cause, which might be discredited by the quantum theory. Thus, Kant ends up by trying to determine the properties of a class of objects which may not have any members.

But, if any form of knowledge could be bot h a priori and synthetic, it seems that it must be our sense of beauty. As far as we know, the beauty of an object cannot be deduced from it by analysis (although probably some scientist or artist is trying to discover how to do it); moreover, it seems that it is not given by experience either. Thus, if I do not misapprehend Kant’s intention, our sense of beauty must be an a priori synthetic judgment. It remains only to determine that our sense of beauty, for example, is what Kant meant by a judgment or a faculty of judgment and I must assume that it is. On the other hand, if Kant would exclude the sense of beauty and the sense of reasonableness from his category of a priori synthetic judgments, his category might be empty, which, of course, is of absolutely no importance.

In this essay, I do not appeal to the idea of a conscience. If the conscience is, in whole or in part, the residuum of notions picked up in our earliest years, before we were able to apply our judgment, then, conceivably, a portion of it could be confused with aesthetics. We might judge that something, e.g., sex, is not beautiful because we have retained an irrational notion that it is not beautiful from notions picked up early on that are in conflict with what we would decide had we been left alone. We would like to distinguish conscience as a negative attribute in contradistinction to aesthetics and reasonableness, which we hold to be natural and desirable. This is a mere semantic quibble and should not cause any difficulties.

Similar reasoning can be applied to our se nse of reasonableness. I am not referring to the science of logic or to the theory of sets. In order to acquire these systems of thought one must already be in possession of a sense of reasonableness or one would not be able to turn the first page without throwing up one’s hands in disgust or despair. We understand the fundamental premises of these systems of thought because we are given a sense of what is reasonable a priori. Moreover, the reasonableness of something cannot be deduced from its other qualities without having in place the mechanisms of thought upon which analysis is based and these mechanisms must follow from our sense of what is reasonable. Piaget [17] has given evidence of developed reasoning ability in very young children, who, presumably, are not in possession of a calculus of reasoning such as set theory. I do not know the position of modern child psychology on when the rudiments of reason can first be observed in infants.

We begin to experience the real world (the objective universe or, at least, the part of it of which we are aware) through our senses before we are able to deduce its existence. Also, we are aware of events occurring in our own minds whether we consider them a part of the real world or not. We take advantage of these experiences, which might include our educations, to develop our innate reasonableness into an ability to reason. We are able, then, to deduce the existence of an objective universe from the evidence of our senses. Since I will not give the steps in this deductive process, I will assume the existence of the real world as an article of faith.

Note: Despite the results of the Alain As pect experiments to test Bell’s Inequality [14], I still insist that something objective and real lies underneath all of these phenomena because the experiments come out the same no matter who performs them. This underlying reality may be much weirder than we have been able to imagine, however.

Utility

Our experience consists of our per ceptions of events in the world through our physical senses and the events that occur in our own minds, which we interpret as joy, sadness, pain, love, anger, hate, compassion, nostalgia, etc. We are endowed, too, with memory. The faculties with which we are endowed permit us to develop our primitive sense of reasonableness into an ability to reason, which, in turn, permits us to deduce the reality of some sort of objective universe – regardless of our position in the Einstein-Bohr debate, if we, indeed, have such a position. Our initial experiences and impressions of existence come far in advance of that deduction and, without reasoning, cannot be presumed not to be delusions. Given an objective reality, which includes our own existence and the events that occur in our minds, we are in a position to judge the usefulness of objects and institutions that spawn events of a predictable nature. Since we believe in objective reality as a collection of events and we believe in ourselves, we are not in doubt as to the meaning of experience. Utility, then, is judged in terms of experience and how we perceive pleasure and pain, that is, in terms of our sensibilities. We may exercise our sense of aesthetics, too, in evaluating usefulness. I do not wish to explore the role played by experience in the development of our sense of aesthetics. It may be similar to the role played by experience in the development of reason, but, since I do not claim that our sense of aesthetics has developed into anything new (such as artistic infallibility), I do not need to explore that subject further.

We now have a complete basis for judging v alues, philosophical assumptions, and moral systems, namely, (i) aesthetics, which is presumed to have been given a priori, (ii) reason, an outgrowth of our primitive sense of reasonableness, and (iii) utility, which is based on experience of the real world. We can construct a basis, then, for deciding what else can be known and for evaluating new knowledge, but we should be aware that the basis rests on assumptions that may not be correct.

Occurrence Implication and Occurrence Equi valence

In mathematical logic, letters stand for simple statements. For example, the letter A might stand for “It is snowing” or “All governments are bad” or “Smarty Jones is a dog with two heads” or “All horses have five legs”. In the statement “It is snowing”, one wonders what or who “It” is. The sentence could have been replaced by “We have snow” or “There is snow” or, simply, “Snowing”. The symbols A → B are read normally as “A implies B”; however, all of the following are equivalent: (i) A implies B, (ii) B if A, (iii) A only if B, (iv) not-B implies not-A, (v) B is a necessary condition for A, (vi) A is a sufficient condition for B, (vii) if A then B. By the symbols A ↔ B we mean: (i) A implies B and B implies A, (ii) if A then B and if B then A, (iii) A if and only if B, (iv) A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B, all of which express the fact that (v) A and B are logically equivalent.

By analogy with the preceding, we may use symbols to stand for circumstances that obtain in society such as ‘Materialism’, ‘Tyranny’, ‘Environmental Destruction’, or ‘Dishonesty’. As in the case of ‘Snowing’, ‘Materialism’ means ‘There is materialism’ or ‘We have materialism’, ‘Materialism is occurring’, etc. Let us replace the questionable notion of cause and effect, as in A causes B, with the useful concept of occurrence implication by analogy with A implies B. In my book On the Preservation of Species <http://web.wt.net/~twayburn/POS.html>, I represent occurrence implication with the symbols A → B which mean that B occurs whenever A occurs. If we have A, B is present too, or, at least, it soon will be. We cannot have A without B, which is the same as not-(A & not-B). We neglect time lags separating the occurrence of A from the occurrence of B as these, typically, are short in comparison with the time frames with which we shall be concerned. Finally, in analogy with logical equivalence, we have occurrence equivalence, written A ↔ B, whenever A → B and B→ A. Occurrence equivalence is an equivalence relation in the mathematical sense.

Occurrence Equivalence as Evidence of Divi nity

Of any personal experience that would sugg est to me the existence of a Divine Intelligence, I find the following the most compelling: It seems to me that everything that is reasonable is beautiful and practical; everything that is beautiful is reasonable and practical; and everything that is practical is reasonable and beautiful. This strikes me as truly wonderful. I interpret it to mean that, despite the enormous amount of evil in the world, a just and perfect world is within the reach of mankind and our fellow species. I am aware that we may have evolved in such a way that this occurrence equivalence works for us and that the amazing coincidence in which I rejoice is merely a natural result of the way in which we evolved with no need for divine intervention whatever. Nevertheless, I like to think that we would judge reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility the same no matter how we evolved and no matter what we evolved into. Contact with extraterrestrials might settle the question, but I can’t imagine what else would. Do you ever get the feeling that you are out of your depth?

A Minimal Proper Religion as a Social Cont ract

Minimal Proper Religions

For the convenien ce of the reader, the def inition of an MPR is repeated:

Definition (Minimal Proper Religion). A m inimal proper religion (MPR) is a proper religion that incorporates the minimal number of behavioral requirements necessary to ensure “sustainable happiness” for all of humanity. An MPR places constraints upon those who agree to follow it, but only those constraints upon behavior and public policy that cannot be relaxed without creating unbearable misery for a significant portion of humanity.

The MPR proposed by me makes no statements about the nature of any god or gods. It has no unnecessary intellectual baggage; and, although it is designed to gain nearly universal consensus, it prohibits unlimited procreation and any form of trade or commerce (in keeping with the freedom axiom). Obviously, it will not be accepted by everyone immediately. Nevertheless, it has a set of conditions none of which can be removed without destroying the possibility of sustainable human happiness; so, it is minimal. Admittedly, this is counter-intuitive (not what most people would expect).

A minimal proper religion, either mine or someone else’s, has the potential to be the basis for a social contract among the people of a community, which might be as large as the United States, although it would be better if communities were smaller, more decentralized, and, indeed, quite local. It is recognized, though, that some sort of contract among essentially all the people of the world is necessary eventually, in particular so that resources can be shared without introducing contingency. Again I point out that I could avoid the term minimal proper religion and go directly to social contract, but I like to anticipate my critics. It is important to prevent improper religions from trying to pass themselves off as legitimate candidates for social contracts because we shall be indoctrinating very young children with our social contract so that we won’t need a government. Perhaps, no one has tried to indoctrinate children with rational philosophical tenets. Naturally previous attempts to indoctrinate children with unreasonable philosophical or religious tenets have failed and we still have governments – all bad.

The important thing is to achieve a nearly universal consensus about how people living in a community will behave; and, for that difficult goal, one needs the fewest conditions possible. The social contract must deal in a humane and enlightened manner with a few people who do not accept the social contract (based on a minimal proper religion) no matter how reasonable, beautiful, and practical it may be. It will be assumed that something close to a universal consensus can be achieved. This is like Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. You don’t have to sell it. People accept it when they understand it. Eventually almost no one thinks it’s wrong whether they understand it or not. Of course, it will have to be modified eventually because, although it’s the best thing we’ve got, IT IS WRONG. (Not because it is disallowed by some reactionary principle but because it is not sufficiently radical.)

Building Upon a Minimal Proper Religion

We might think of the following as interio r decoration for the soul. [Sometimes I think of the soul as the history and future, i.e., the trajectory (if you like that word), of the mind. We can count people by counting souls. Please do not argue with me about the soul.] In addition to the conditions in the social contract, people may place themselves under any number of behavioral requirements or conditions (as long as the conditions are consistent with the social contract) and may believe in a God, or a Life Force, or Élan Vital, or whatever they wish to call it. In my linguistic categorization of the world-in-the-large-sense (all that exists), I solved the problem of God by recognizing that the Universe, the Ideals, the Relations, and Mind might be embedded in something, therefore I have provided a category called Everything Else.

I find, upon close introspection, that, wh ether I wish to or not, I do believe in a personal god, but that belief is not part of my MPR because it is not needed to achieve sustainable happiness for all, nor can it be accounted for by any rational process. It is the philosophical system described in this essay, not the religion of my heart, that provides a basis for an MPR. While an irrational belief in God may be a part of my heart’s own religion, it doesn’t belong in my philosophical system. It is, in fact, a superstition! The position of my MPR is that I don’t know, you don’t know, no one knows, and it can’t be known, whether or not there is a god and, if there is, what it’s like. I call this position hard agnosticism. I, like everyone else, can and will believe whatever I please – or everything, or nothing, or what is reasonably likely to be true. An MPR says nothing about belief and very little about public policy – only the absolute minimum that must be said to protect the rights of others.

A Rational Philosophical Basis for a Minim al Proper Religion

Many able thinkers have attempted to give the Judeo-Christian tradition a philosophical basis, but this was done many years after the tradition was firmly established. Predictably all such attempts have failed. The Jewish and Christian religions arose more or less independently of rational or critical thought and it is extremely unlikely that they could be given a rational basis a posteriori. And yet the aforementioned thinkers recognized the desirability of a rational philosophical basis in view of the ascendancy of science almost concurrently with the Christian era.

I agree that such a rational philosophical basis for religion is desirable. Consider for a moment all of the people who place their faith in science every day with the sole exception of the Sabbath, upon which day they suspend disbelief in the irrational and superstitious aspects of their particular religion, attend church, and do violence to the consistency of their mental attitudes. This is undesirable as it makes the mind much more susceptible to the holding of contradictory beliefs, which is a form of mental derangement and can have dire effects on the behavior of its victims.

The Subject of The Varieties of Religious Experience Compared to a Proper Religion

In the course of lectures upon which he ba sed his famous book, The Varieties of Religious Experience [11], William James deliberately chose to concentrate upon a particular aspect of religious experience, namely, the personal aspect. I am curious to determine if his avoidance of the ecclesiastical and formal aspects of religion, e.g., the commonplace ritual of going to church on Sunday, can be construed as a much earlier rejection of improper religions. Thus, I am largely motivated by natural curiosity and self-interest to determine if William James anticipated some of my “original” ideas. This has been an afterthought. My system was developed completely before it occurred to me that James and I might share similar views. While it should be a matter of complete indifference to the reader, I find that I cannot resist this brief digression. It might even be a source of gratification to discover that not every thought that entered my head found its first earthly home there!

James defends his choice of personal over ecclesiastical (or formal) religion by noting that all formal religions began with someone’s personal religious experience. He argues that personal religious experiences are more profound than the alternatives. “Lutherans wouldn’t attend the church of their choice had not Luther experienced religion in a way that quite probably is to be denied his latter-day followers.” I concur. My personal religious interests are congruent with the pedagogical choices of James, which is not something I normally report, except that, in this case, I wonder to what extent his notion of personal religion corresponds with my notion of proper religion, even though I do not consider James’s opinion more important than yours or mine or in any way essential to my thesis. The reader, therefore, may skip this section as it is strictly tangential.

I would like to dismiss improper religions completely. Improper religions are not religions. In his famous book, James makes no such claims and freely admits that institutions that satisfy other definitions of religion or, actually, aspects of religion, which might include “improper religions”, may properly be called religion. Thus, according to James, improper religions might be proper. (Of course James hadn’t seen television evangelists.) As he says, “[I]t would indeed be foolish to set up an absolute definition of religion’s essence and then proceed to defend that definition against all comers, yet this need not prevent me from taking my own narrow view of what religion shall consist in for the purpose of these lectures, or, out of the many meanings of the word, from choosing the one meaning in which I wish to interest you particularly, and proclaiming arbitrarily that when I say ‘religion’ I mean that.”

And, further, “Worship and sacrifice, proc edures for working on the disposition of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion and the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. In the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the center of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. And, although the favor of the God, as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story, and theology plays a vital part therein, yet the acts to which this sort of religion prompts are personal not ritual acts, the individual transacts the business alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, with its priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. The relation goes direct from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between man and his maker.”

I think it is fair to say that James has e xpressed a preference in this passage that night be congruent with my view. I have not proposed an exact definition of the essence of religion. Working backwards I gave a preliminary list of what proper religions are not! I didn’t say that my list was exhaustive. James may not wish to offend the purveyors of improper religions, as I term them; but, probably, his sympathies lie with me.

However, the minimal proper religion would not be received enthusiastically by James – the religionist. He would find it too dispassionate and, frankly, too lukewarm, for a religious concept. The sort of religion James had in mind would be considered madness by many people: “There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are ‘geniuses’ in the religious line, and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability.”

As the reader may have noticed, such “nerv ous instability” is no longer tolerated in the United States, if it ever was. One might just as well be a drug addict. I must not conclude these remarks without discussing my personal religious feelings, including a sense of awe and wonder and a feeling that my every thought and deed is informed by something divine that completely fills my being in the unlikely event that I am fortunate enough to take the right drugs under the right circumstances. This is a feeling that renders death itself a matter of no importance. I wonder if anyone in America has what can reasonably be called a religious experience without drugs. I tend to doubt it because our “advanced” capitalist industrial and technological society floods our minds to their utmost capacity with the thousands of mundane and materialistic considerations that fill our day. Although, in a certain sense God is everywhere (or nowhere), one is not likely to experience the divine spark of the Holy Ghost in one’s bank, brokerage, or business. The sacred drugs permit one to discard all of this obsession with “coping” with “life” for an interlude protracted to as much of the rest of our lives as possible, depending on our capacities. During that blessèd interval, we can be what we were intended to be. The reader had better think twice before he persecutes the next druggie he meets. The druggie may be one of God’s own people – if I may indulge in a literary figure.

September 8, 1996

How a Social Contract Ba sed on Consensus M ight Work

Becoming a Party to a Valid Social Contrac t

When we discussed proper religions and min imal proper religion, we noted that a minimal proper religion could be the basis for a social contract. When a child reaches the age of reason, he may elect to accept the social contract enjoying currency. An alternative is to surrender his personal sovereignty to one or more of his guardians until some later time when he feels he is better prepared to take that step.

Rejecting a Social Contract

Also, he has t he option to reject the soci al contract and retain his personal sovereignty just as a head of a foreign state living in our community might do. Personal sovereignty is the sovereignty that remains when all other sovereignty is found to be invalid. He would enjoy diplomatic immunity and other similar considerations until such time as he wishes to join the community into which he has been born. He must not be treated as a criminal under any circumstances because he has not agreed upon the moral code by which the majority live. If his behavior creates a very great nuisance, he may be treated as a prisoner of war with all of the privileges pertaining thereto. Personal sovereignty persists under all conditions. All contracts are voluntary. That is guaranteed by the Freedom Axiom.

Definitions of Terms Employed in Fundament al Theorem

Sustainable Happiness for All of Humanity

Definition of Happiness

By happiness we do not mean a continuous s tate of bliss. We agree that happiness requires a reasonable satisfaction of the usual tissue deficits. One can be happy while one is a little hungry, but one cannot be expected to be happy in the technical sense while starving to death, or, as we shall make clear in a moment, while one’s child is starving to death.

Following Deci and Ryan [1], we say that h appiness is a state of mind that often occurs when the following necessary conditions are met: (a) autonomy, (b) effectiveness, and (c) relatedness. (We prefer this phenomenological definition because we cannot measure the state of a person’s mind.)

Autonomy means that the requirements of th e Freedom Axiom, discussed in detail in Chapter 3, are satisfied. We are free. [See also the note following the definition of happiness on p. 79 in Chapter 3.]

Effectiveness refers to the accomplishmen t of something satisfying and possibly useful. The usefulness may come from our interest in the task and may have nothing to do with scarcity economics. Time passes so quickly that we are amazed when we realize how long we have been completely engaged and totally absorbed in our task. We say we are “in the flow” or “in a zone”. Our thirst for effectiveness ensures that mankind will not perish in a world where no one is required to do anything to live. Everyone must do something to be happy!

Relatedness refers to our interactions with and feelings toward other sentient beings, in particular, human society. The need for relatedness makes cooperation worthwhile and accounts for the unhappiness of a woman whose child is starving although she may not be.

Finally, happiness in this technical sense requires that the conditions discussed above exist in perpetuity. Happiness requires safety. We must be free of worry that the other requirements for happiness can be taken away (by the rise of a despotic “natural leader”, for example). “Acts of God”, on the other hand, such as astronomical catastrophes, we accept with equanimity, free of negative emotion, and we die the good death of a person who has lived a happy life – without regrets or bitterness of any kind. Actually, most of us don’t devote much of our concern to worries that the sun will burn out or that earth will be struck by a huge comet. And, we should not be influenced by desperate scientists, about to lose lucrative defense contracts, to invest in a gigantic big-science, Star-Wars-type Asteroid Defense Project. Nor, should we be tempted to avert the end of the human race by escape to outer space, as explained in my essay “On Space Travel and Research” [8]. The point is that wisdom, concomitant with happiness, transcends fear of calamity.

To summarize, the conditions for happiness are:

1. Reasonable satisfaction of tiss ue deficits.

2a. Autonomy or freedom from tyranny.

2b. Effectiveness, the ability to interact with one’s environment in a satisfying and positive manner.

2c. Relatedness, good relations with fellow human beings and, perhaps, animals.

3. Safety, assurance that the above four preconditions cannot be taken away, except, perhaps, by Mother Nature, e.g., astronomical events.

Hypothetical World W′

1. Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivat ion is assumed to be the preferred form of human motivation. This is the basis for the scientific theory under development by a number of scientists, notably Deci and Ryan [1]. [Note in proof (11-27-96). I can now provide a long list of peer-reviewed scientific research papers that support the theory of intrinsic motivation. This research makes intrinsic motivation much more than a philosophical assumption. A dedicated bibliography of just the papers read by this author is given at the end of Appendix III.]

[Note in proof (7-20-2004) on Intrinsic Motivation. For most of my life, I have been driven by extrinsic motivation, that is, by parents, teachers, and bosses. Since 1989, I have had no such motivation. I can testify that, without extrinsic motivation, I had a hard time moving. This corroborates Deci and Ryans’ finding that extrinsic motivation poisons intrinsic motivation. Nevertheless, I did get moving, at last, and I have completed a considerable volume of work, some of which can be found on this website. Lately, I have been “working” sixteen hours a day, with the hours melting away like minutes, and the work itself is the sole motivation – as far as I can tell. I believe I am “in a zone”.]

2. Happiness in the Colloquial Sense

Peop le who enjoy the preconditions for hap piness, which in this theory were, for technical reasons, identified with happiness itself, will by-and-large allow that they are happy in the colloquial sense. Thus, we retain a phenomenological view.

Essentially, in W′, the theory of Deci and Ryan is correct. Happiness means what it should mean.

Hypothetical World W"

The world W″ is a hy pothetical world th at has all of the attributes of W′, except that in W″ three additional conditions are met:

1. A Stable (Human) Population

The popula tion will be stable at about ten billion human beings or, preferably, closer to the optimal population size, i.e., a sufficient number of people that succor from one’s fellows is available when needed, not so many people that the quality of individual lives is appreciably reduced, the opportunity for as many people as possible, consistent with the previous two conditions, to be able to enjoy the blessings of having been alive. Probably, the optimum population size will be smaller than ten billion people.

2. Adequate High-Grade Renewable (Sustain able) Energy

In W″, renewable energy technology adequat e to provide the energy per capita equivalent to one kilowatt-hour per hour of 110-volt, 60-Hz AC will be available. This is the standard for emergy calculations, therefore we have one emergy unit per hour per capita. (Since this is based on power plant electricity, it represents more energy than 1 kWhr/hr. For example, if half were coal and the rest electricity, the rate of energy consumption per capita would be 2 kW.) Also in W″, the matching problem, providing lower grade energy to those uses for which it is adequate so as not to lose availability converting lower-grade energy to higher-grade energy that is not needed, has been solved. This is discussed in slightly more detail in Chapter 2.

3. Sufficiency of One Kilowatt Per Capita Renewable Emergy

We assume that every human being can live on 1 kWhr/hr – or simply an average rate of consumption of emergy units equivalent to 1 kW of 60-Hz, 110-volt AC electric power. In addition, we must assume that a one kilowatt per capita emergy budget is sufficiently abundant to provide happiness as we have defined it. Perhaps, no American can be happy on only one kilowatt emergy consumption, but we know of primitive peoples who consume much less and they are happy. In any case, this per capita rate of emergy consumption is assumed adequate for a satisfactory life wherein happiness for everyone is possible if not guaranteed.

Sustainable Happiness

Definition (Sustaina ble happiness). We sa y happiness is sustainable when it cannot end because of human social factors but only because of astronomical events.

Universal Sustainable Happiness

Definition (Universal sustainable happines s). Universal sustainable happiness is sustainable happiness enjoyed by all of humanity and as many other species of plants and animals as possible. It is a goal of this philosophy that can be approached only asymptotically.

Power

Wealth will be discussed in the next chapt er. We now wish to discuss power. The word power has a definite meaning in physics. That sort of power is really material wealth whenever it is exercised. In this essay, we are referring to power such as the power that a rich and influential person holds over a poor and “unimportant” person or the United States holds over Haiti. We ought to choose a new word, but we shall use the same term that is used in physics in keeping with other authors who discuss political power. One can say without fear of contradiction (by reasonable people) that the pursuit of wealth and power is the most highly regarded activity of Western man. It amounts to his religion for all practical purposes, regardless of what he claims his religion is.

Influence in the sense that the United Sta tes influences the affairs of Panama is a form of power. Influence in this sense is undesirable. Joseph Stalin and Ronald Reagan wielded tremendous influence in the form of power as leadership; moreover, they did not lead primarily by examples that were imitated voluntarily. The leadership of Joseph Stalin or Ronald Reagan was genuine power over other people and, therefore, undesirable, as no person should have power over another. Unless I specify otherwise, leadership will be referred to in its undesirable sense in this essay. I find it amusing to use a eulogistic term in a dyslogistic sense, i.e., attach a negative connotation to a word that is usually associated with something that most people imagine is desirable even though it may not be – ever. The way the word leadership is used in ordinary discourse makes it an impostor term in the sense of Bentham [4]. I will devote an entire chapter to disposing of leadership, which I portray as the cause of the apparently unending cycles of the rise of leaders, their corruption, and their eventual displacement by reformers, who then become corrupt leaders. “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Rather than the petty tyrant who rules our fireside, we should be concerned with the very rich people (and some who are not so rich) who rule our nation and the even-more-powerful multi-national corporations and who essentially hold power of life and death over us. The definition of the ruling class is given in the appendix of this chapter. (We have agreed to define terms as soon after they are used as is practicable.) These are the leaders with whom we must contend to become free men and women. When the ruling class is deposed, never to be replaced, we can deal with our mothers-in-law, shrewish wives, and incorrigible children appropriately.

Negotiable and Non-Negotiable Fame and Inf luence

Most of us have noticed that one can excha nge wealth for power – perhaps by buying political influence through campaign contributions, perhaps by starting a company and hiring people who must then do one’s bidding. Negotiable fame is in the same class with wealth and power. It is a dangerous thing. It can be exchanged for wealth and power including negotiable influence.

One can easily exchange wealth or power fo r fame – perhaps by appearing in one’s own ads on TV, as the owner of a well-known hamburger chain has done. Also, most types of power can be exchanged for wealth, for example by selling influence, as former high-ranking elected and appointed officials do when they become lobbyists. Most powerful elected officials leave office nowadays in a better position financially than before holding public office. (I have heard that Nixon, at one time, did not want to reveal his net worth (as required by election rules) not because it was excessive but, on the contrary, because, in fact, it was next to nothing. Apparently, he improved his fortunes considerably by virtue of having been president, even though he left office in disgrace.)

However, power sometimes consists only in influence over other people. This influence may or may not be convertible to wealth. If it cannot be converted to wealth, we shall denote it non-negotiable influence. If it can be converted to wealth, it shall be referred to as negotiable influence. Obviously, negotiable influence is a form of power that can be converted to wealth and, for that matter, fame. Similarly, we have non-negotiable fame and negotiable fame. Negotiable fame can be converted into wealth and power, including negotiable influence. It remains only to give examples of negotiable fame, non-negotiable fame, negotiable influence, and non-negotiable influence. Now, Michael Jordan possesses negotiable fame and Richard Nixon possesses negotiable influence. The other two are harder to find.

Obviously, I hope to influence the reader of this essay, and, conceivably, my influence could be the predominant external influence in some reader’s life, but I shall not exert power over anyone nor shall I accept a position of personal predominance in public affairs voluntarily. My influence must be in and by my words, as opposed to my personality or my authority; i.e., it must be non-negotiable influence.

How can one be sure it is genuinely non-ne gotiable? That is a difficult question and the best answer I can come up with right now is “Because I say so”. I promise not to negotiate that influence. It may be a bit harder to come up with an example of influence wielded by a living person that, obviously and because of its very nature, cannot be converted into anything else, except, possibly, non-negotiable fame. Except for the very minor and, for our purposes, insignificant power Albert Einstein had over his graduate and post-doctoral students, I would argue that his influence and fame were non-negotiable.

Occurrence Equivalence of Wealth, Power In cluding Negotiable Influence, and Negotiable Fame As S*

Thus we can form a commutative triangle am ong (i) negotiable fame, (ii) negotiable influence together with other types of power, and (iii) wealth. That is, negotiable fame can be converted into wealth and power, including negotiable influence; negotiable influence and other types of power can be converted into negotiable fame and wealth,; and wealth can be converted into negotiable fame and power including negotiable influence. The situation is as shown in Fig. 1-2.

Figure 1-2. Negotiating Wealth, Power, and Fame

To maintain philosophical rigor we must acknowledge that some forms of fame and infl uence might be non-negotiable. Then, excluding these (which might not exist), we can make our generalization about the equivalence of wealth, power, and fame in the sense discussed above; that is, they form a commutative triangle. I need refer only to material wealth when I mean material wealth and anything that can be converted into material wealth. Because of the above commutation equivalence, we might consider lumping all of these things together and giving them a name. The name I have chosen in the past is importance; but, since I meant worldly importance as distinguished from true importance, it might be better to choose a different term. Perhaps status is the best choice I can make. Other choices include: rank, enviability, distinction, consequence, eminence, worldly success, materialistic success, standing, etc. [Note in proof (1-28-06). To avoid confusion with other concepts, I have elected to use the symbol S* to stand for the equivalent concepts of wealth and power. Probably, to encourage excellence and to accommodate our natural propensities to seek reproductive advantage, we must allow competition for fame, which becomes non-negotiable.]

Note in proof (1-4-06). We shall need a term for the esteem in which we hold people for whom we name our children. Indeed, these people may very likely be the recipients of Tokens that cannot be used by their holders to have children of their own in accordance with the Token Principle of Chapter 3. I have not used the term ‘prestige’ to mean anything else; however, we must be certain that we are talking about something that will not be exchanged for greater wealth or political power. We agree that it can result in greater reproductive advantages – not only for the usual reasons but because of the Token Principle. It may be fame; but, if it is, it must be non-negotiable fame.

We should note at once that if one of the three aspects of S* never occurs, then none of them can occur; whereas, if any of them is permitted to exist in a hypothetical society, then all of them will be present eventually. We refer to this kind of relationship as occurrence equivalence; i.e., wealth, power (including negotiable influence), and negotiable fame are occurrence equivalent. We shall find this concept useful in the sequel.

Ambition

The noble Brutus

Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious

If it were so, it was a grievou s fault,

and grievously hath Cæsar answered it.

Definition (Ambition) RHD [3]. 1. an earnest desire for some type of achievement o r distinction, as power, fame, wealth, [italics mine] etc. 2. and 3. irrelevant.

I, for one, find it interesting that the Random House Dictionary (the very best Engl ish language dictionary that I, personally, can lift without the use of a forklift truck) chose precisely the elements of what we have agreed to call S* to illustrate what I may now adopt as a dyslogistic term, namely, ambition.

Throughout my life, even as a young boy, whenever I have heard ambition praised or t he lack of it denounced, I have experienced disgust. Certainly I have no objection to a desire to achieve something worthwhile and I am only a little uncomfortable with distinction. But, I find it amusing that this lifelong antipathy toward ambition has turned out to play a role in my philosophy (and religion).

Ambition, then, restricted to an earnest desire for S*, can be taken to be a major c omponent of what we shall call materialism, competitionism, or, in phenomenological lingo, artificial economic contingency.

Materialism

Definition (Materialism). Materialism is defined to be any system havin g the follow ing characteristics or the belief in, promotion of, or dedication to such a system:

1. Competition for wealth, power and negotiable influence, or negotiable fame , i.e., S*, in any form.

2. The use of S* as a reward for achievement or good behavior or as a measure of success.

3. Any institutions that permit people to influence the amount of S* they the mselves or anyone else (especially their own children) may accumulate, consume, or possess because of who they are or what they do or because of any aspect of their beings whatsoever.

4. Differences in the amount or rate of accumulation of S* whether derived fr om competition directly or not, e.g., inheritance of wealth. Small differences in the values of homes or their furnishings are not included in the definition. (Normally, homes of similar value are not strictly comparable; i.e., it is impossible to say which possesses the greater real worth. Techniques employed by real estate appraisers might be useful to determine whether or not the differences in value are sufficiently small to be exempted from this definition.)

5. The existence of institutions by means of which wealth can be hoarded in t he form of paper money, financial instruments, or ledger entries – usually in a computer.

6. The acceptance of S* as a reward for anything one does, gives, or says.

7 . Contingency upon something extrinsic and artificial (as opposed to the amo unt of rainfall) affecting one’s ability to live abundantly.

We find the following definitions in The Random House Dictionary [4]:

Definition (Co ntingence). n. contact or tangency

Definition (Contingency). n. 1. dependence on chance or on the fulfillment of a co ndition. 2. an uncertain event; chance possibility. 3. something incidental.

Definition (Contingent). adj. 1. dependent for existence, occurrence, character, e tc., on something not yet certain; conditional ( often followed by on or upon). 2. happening by chance or without known cause, fortuitous, accidental. 3. Logic. (of a proposition) neither logically necessary nor logically impossible.

Definition (Artificial Economic Contingency (AEC)). Artificial economic contingency is the same as materialism. (The term artificial economic contingency will help some people get the idea faster. It is simply amazing how many people do not grasp this concept quickly.)

Perhaps competition for wealth and money is the cause of competition for power; perh aps competition for power (“the will to power”) is the cause of competition for wealth; perhaps both are caused by a strange perverted desire to be loved. In any case, it will be more difficult for people to seek power if they do not enjoy excess wealth and, presumably, the damage done by those who somehow do rise to greater influence will be less severe if they cannot convert that advantage to excess wealth. Whatever the case, the phenomena do coincide.

Originally I employed the term materialism (M) but, as someone pointed out, we reall y need to respect material more – not less – and we ought to accept and exercise our responsibilities as custodians of the earth’s material wealth. For a while I used the term competitionism (C) instead, and you may see that word occasionally in my writing. Competitionism means the same as materialism, which is the word I prefer – mainly because materialism is the word that most people use to express something very close to this concept, namely, economic acquisitiveness and an obsession with worldly success. The reader should be aware that this definition of materialism (or competitionism or artificial economic contingency (AEC)) applies to this essay only and other essays written by the author. These terms may be used by others in the sense employed by the author, but he is not responsible for their use in other contexts.

The Fundamental Theorems and Premise

Theorem (Fundamental Theorem). The abandonment of materialism is a necessary condit ion for universal sustainable happiness in W^′ and a sufficient condition for universal sustainable happiness in W^″.

Fundamental Premise. It is unreasonable to be happy when one is aware of people liv ing now who are experiencing unbearable misery no matter how far away in space they may be. It is unreasonable to be happy when one is aware of circumstances that will lead inevitably to unbearable misery for people who will live at some future time however remote.

Discussion of the Premise. Notice that we said unreasonable rather than impossible. Clearly, a human being would have to be diminished considerably to be happy in the presence of an extremely miserable person. I do not refer to comic or false misery. I refer to starvation, extreme pain, the horror of impending painful death, extreme mental anguish. We can’t ignore the suffering of our fellow human beings including posterity. Surely, we are affected by the unhappiness of those close to us first; but, since we are intelligent reasoning creatures, we cannot be happy while others are miserable even though they are far away in space or future time.

Moral distance in space is the physical distance beyond which a person aware of mise ry no longer feels the responsibility of a brother for a brother, a sentient being for his fellow sentient being. The question is: How far away does the misery have to be for a reasonable person to be happy? Down the street? Across town? In the next county? In a far-flung principality? I claim that for reasonable people there is no moral distance sufficiently great. If reasonable people are aware of suffering in India, they are unhappy. Their awareness does not attenuate with physical distance like a radio signal. (I shall be delighted, however, if the concern of most people for others should extend to the entire earth – merely, with no concern whatever for hypothetical beings on far-flung galaxies when we happen to witness an astronomical catastrophe that occurred millions or billions of years ago. Also, I would appreciate the reciprocal tolerance of a few of the “unconcerned” if I should moderate my grief over the demise of a single-celled human zygote whose misfortune it was to run afoul of an unlooked for intrauterine device.) By analogy with the relativistic interval, moral interval is moral distance in space and time.

Presumably, we should be distressed by the foreseeable misery of people who will liv e at some future time – long after we have passed. Although I have written this book to please myself, the principal beneficiaries might be people I shall never know or see. I am concerned about the people who will starve to death when the petroleum is gone. Nevertheless, I, for one, am able to remain aloof from the suffering of past generations. What’s done is done and can’t be undone.

I believe the way in which we respond to the Fundamental Premise divides us into dis tinct classes. If I indulged in human taxonomy, these classes would be given the highest priority. At this time, however, I see nothing to be gained by giving names to the different classes of persons created by these distinctions. Nevertheless, I am willing to predict that moral distance in space and time (moral interval) will be (or has been) discovered to be an important indicator of “relatedness” in the theory of Deci and Ryan and, perforce, will take its place inW′, which we agreed was identical to the real world, W.

According to the Truth Axiom, described in Chapter 3, all moral persons satisfy thei r love and respect for truth, in part, by setting their fundamental philosophical goal as follows: To see the world as it actually is. Thus, we may not ignore the misery of unknown people even for the sake of our own happiness. We know that people are starving to death right now and we know that we know it.

Clearly, the Fundamental Premise precludes happiness in the technical sense for this generation of moral persons. Although we cannot be happy in the technical sense, we can enjoy temporary moments of great joy or any of the other sublime emotions while still being dissatisfied with the state of the world and all of the misery in it. We might experience moments of artistic pleasure and intense gratification when we have been effective in completing a difficult project. In particular, we might experience great joy and temporary satisfaction when we are able to alleviate the misery of others or when we achieve a political victory that will permanently reduce the misery in the world. But, this cannot compare to the satisfaction and joy we would experience if we achieved a permanent victory over all man-made human misery.

If we add one more assumption to The Fundamental Theorem, namely, The Fundamental Pr emise, which deserves some discussion, particularly with respect to moral interval, we can deduce the following result:

Theorem (Strong Version of Fundamental Theorem). Assuming the Fundamental Premise i s true, the abandonment of materialism is a necessary condition for a reasonable person to be happy in W' and a sufficient condition for a reasonable person to be happy in W^".

In Chapter 10 of this book these results will be proved as well as I can prove them.

Utopianism and Ideals

According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Langua ge [3], the adjective utopian refers to something “founded upon or involving imaginary political or social perfection”. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary [18] employs the phrase “impractically ideal social and political schemes”. In Webster, a utopian believes in the perfectibility of human nature or advocates utopian schemes. According to Bentham [2], utopianism is a system of beliefs that attempts to construct an ideal political or social system based upon a program of social changes that is guaranteed to have the opposite effect of what is desired. Thus, utopianism is a fallacy!

Utopian socialism, according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Dictionar y [3], is “an economic system based on the premise that, if capital voluntarily surrendered its ownership of the means of production to the state or the workers, unemployment and poverty would be abolished”. Is utopian socialism a fallacy? I believe that it is fallacy the way it is stated here and elsewhere, but that it can be restated so that it is not a fallacy. For example, if one rejects ownership of the means of production by the state and defines employment in a generalized sense, rather than as the condition of having a paying job, one can take the utopianism, in the sense of Bentham, out of socialism; but, then, I suppose, it would not be the socialism we have come to know. It would have to satisfy a different premise, as we have seen.

[Note in proof (5-12-97). Lately, I have heard the term socialism applied to a sche me sufficiently close to the measures advocated in this essay. In this chaotic linguistic climate, I should avoid the word or, at least, not go out of my way to employ it.]

We have discussed the Realm of Ideals above. Now we wish to use the word ideal in a nother sense. [Note in proof (5-31-96): To avoid any possible confusion, we could have adopted Russell’s term universals for the Realm of Ideals.] The relevant meanings of the noun ideal in The Random House Dictionary are: (2) a standard of perfection or excellence, (4) an ultimate object or aim of endeavor, especially one of high or noble character, and (5) something that exists only in the imagination. The relevant meanings of the adjective ideal are (6) conceived as constituting a standard of perfection or excellence from (2) above, (7) regarded as perfect of its kind, (8) existing only in the imagination, not real or practical; visionary, and (9) advantageous; excellent; best, and (10) based upon an ideal or ideals.

When I use this word, some readers might suppose that I am always referring to somet hing existing only in the imagination as an archetype, something that is absolute and immutable. When I am referring to a Platonic Ideal, it will be clear from context. In many cases, I use the word ideal both as an adjective and as a noun to refer to something advantageous that can serve as a model until something better is discovered. It is not my intention to distinguish among things that are attainable and things that exist only as a vision. I use the word to describe both types of objects. Perhaps the word model would have been a better choice, except that “model” does not always connote excellence.

For example, in this work I refer to an ideal political-economic-social system, by w hich I mean a basis upon which mankind can build. Nothing could be more fundamental. The discussion of ideals should be the point of departure for all discussion of social change. I need to say what I am trying to accomplish, after which my readers can decide (i) whether or not they accept my vision of the future, (ii) whether or not they believe that my recommendations will accomplish the goals I seek (if not, my plan is merely utopian), and (iii) whether or not my other values are consistent with my ideal. Thus, even futuristic ideals are not only useful, they are indispensable.

When I refer to an ideal society, I am not referring to something absolute and immut able. Ideals are subject to updates and should always take into account the latest information. The ideal society discussed in this work is, indeed, the standard to which I compare all other societies and visions of societies; it is the society I would like to see mankind attain even if it requires a long struggle; and it is closest to perfection of any society that I can imagine; but, it is also the furthest from perfection of any society that I could accept on a permanent basis; i.e., it is the best possible and the least acceptable, not just the least acceptable, but the worst society that is likely to prevent the human race from becoming extinct. It is a necessary and sufficient society. This is a hypothetical judgment, of course, as it is unlikely that I will have to endure any society whatever on a permanent basis, at least as far as this earthly life is concerned, and that is the one upon which I am trying to have an effect. A utopian society, then, is a fallacy, but an ideal society is a useful concept that can serve as a guide for social change and even for discussion of social change. It is a vision of a hypothetical future.

Popper’s Objections Answered

Utopian Religions

Popper’s definition of Utopianism in “Utopia and Violence” [19] is admittedly very m uch like my explanation of a political ideal. Thus, we shall not quibble with his notion of Utopian religion because it is not so different from my minimal proper religion (MPR), which, if you remember, solved the problem of the religious nature of our Constitution. Now, there is widespread agreement upon our Constitution or, at least, there once was. Today the Constitution is in crisis, cf., abortion, capital punishment, drug prohibition, drug and weapons searches, gun laws, airport security devices showing up everywhere, roadblocks to intercept drunk drivers, etc. If, at the founding of our nation, we had hit upon the concept of the MPR, we might not be able to avoid intolerance between various Utopian religions, but those who reject the social contract established by consensus would not be able to call upon logic in their defense. My claim, then, is that the MPR is at least as good as the Constitution and I don’t hear Popper denouncing the Constitution.

Now, suppose the MPR is a Utopian religion. Let’s catalogue its evils according to Popper and see how many of these my MPR is prone to.

1. [T]here can be no tolerance between these different Utopian religions.

2. [T]he Utopianist must win over, or else crush, his Utopian competitors.

3. He has to be very thorough in eliminating and stamping out all heretical c ompeting views.

4. Again, the only way to avoid ••• changes of our aims [resulting from new c onditions arising due to the passage of time] seems to be to use violence, which includes propaganda, the suppression of criticism, and the annihilation of all opposition.

5. The Utopian engineers must become omniscient as well as omnipotent.

6. [I]t does not bring happiness, but only the familiar misery of being conde mned to live under a tyrannical government.

Now, anyone who knows my philosophy, knows that none of these things can happen when it has been adopted (in the form of a social contract) by a large consensus – even if there be many reservations and a relatively large body of dissent. So, one of two things is the case: (i) my philosophy is not Utopian or (ii) it will never be implemented, in which case further discussion is of academic interest only and it might as well be incorporated in a work of fiction written for the entertainment of its readers.

Clearly, Popper is aiming at one and only one Utopian religion, namely, Marxism, as evidenced by his reference to “the point of view of an alleged aim of the development of history”. His remarks are not valid in all generality.

Abstract Happiness vs. the Elimination of Misery

Now, Popper says, “Do not aim at es tablishing happiness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete miseries”. Let us first list the preconditions for happiness as defined phenomenologically following, in part, Deci and Ryan; then list the various miseries Popper wishes to correct. Popper doesn’t bother to define happiness; so, probably, we aren’t talking about the same thing, which could cause confusion – but it wouldn’t be my fault.

Preconditions for Happiness as Defined by Me, Not Popper, Who Doesn’t Bother To Defi ne

1. Reasonable satisfaction of tissue deficits.

2a. Autonomy or freedom from tyranny.

2b. Effectiveness, the ability to interact with one’s environment in a satisfy ing and positive manner.

2c. Relatedness, good relations with fellow human beings and, perhaps, animals .

3. Safety, assurance that the above four preconditions cannot be taken away, except, perhaps, by Mother Nature, e.g., astronomical events.

Miseries that Popper Believes Should Be Addressed

1. Violence, including war .

2. Tyranny.

3. Crime within the state.

4. International crim e, i.e., national ag gression and the ill-treatment of m inorities or perhaps majorities.

5. Poverty. He wants a minimum income.

6. Epidemics and disease. H e wants universal health care.

7. Illite racy.

8. Unemployment.

He could think of more if he wanted to. But, notice that h appiness is no more deman ding than the elimination of his concrete miseries. He is simply more disorganized. There is nothing to distinguish the two programs in scope, steps necessary for implementation, and major necessary social changes. Thus, the difference between abstract happiness and the elimination of concrete misery is an illusion. In the case of unemployment his task is impossible, which is worse than Utopian. He is way behind the curve. It is easy to deduce that the changes recommended by me or changes just as radical as mine would have to be implemented to eliminate the miseries he is against. He is more radical than I, but in the wrong way. How in the world is he going to end poverty without some kind of communism! I may be the Idealist, but he is the Utopian. Popper gives no clue as to how his goals are to be accomplished. Is he day dreaming?

Is There a Utopian Capitalist Religion?

Popper does not give a converse to his theor em, but one wonders whether, if all of t he above difficulties ascribed to Utopian religions are present, is a Utopian religion present as well. In America, for instance, all of the symptoms, including a tyrannical government, are clearly present as I have amply demonstrated elsewhere. Why do we not suspect, then, a cabal of interested capitalists who wish to control the entire world under their perverse and evil Utopian (for them) religion, which, in my view, will result in nine-tenths or more of the human race dying off!

Final Remarks

I agree with some of “Utopia and Violence”, but it is not clear that t he results of certain points of view must follow inevitably. This is just as absurd as the historicity he denounces. I disagree that “much has been accomplished in the last hundred years” from the point of view of social betterment. I think it’s easy to prove that society is much worse off than it was in 1847. Popper is unaware of the environmental and population problems it seems. And, so was I in 1947. I, too, reject the idea that the happiness of the current generation can be traded off for some future abstract happiness, however attractive. Finally, he speaks of his belief in man as he is. This belief is the basis for my philosophy. “Man is good but corruptible.” – Wayburn

[Note in proof (5-31-96). I have disposed of these accusations of utopianism in a d ifferent way in the latest version of the preface. Regrettably, I cannot help suspecting that Popper was a toady of the rich and powerful, despite his remarkable achievements, none of which placed him in danger of incurring the wrath of the power elite, which he served faithfully.]

June 22, 1995

Revised July 2, 1997

References

1. Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan, Intr insic Motivation and Self-Determ ination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York (1985).

2. Bentham, Jeremy, Bentham’s Handbook of Political Fallacies, Ed. Harold A. Larrabee, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore (1952).

3. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Lawrence Urdang, Edi tor in Chief, Random House, New York (1968).

4. Wayburn, Thomas L., “On the Separation of the State from the Christian Ch urch”, Truth Seeker Supplement, 117, Nos. 2,4,6 (1990) Nos. 2,4,6 (1991).

5. Wayburn, Thomas L., “The Separation of the State from the Christian Church and the Case Against Christianity,” in Humanists of Houston 1995 Yearbook, Marian Hillar and Frank Prahl, Eds., Humanists of Houston Chapter of the American Humanist Association, Houston (1995).

6. Reich, Wilhelm, The Function of the Orgasm, Pocket Books, New York (1978).

7. Russell, Bertrand, On Ethics, Sex, and Marriage, Ed. Al Seckel, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York (1987).

8. Wayburn, Thomas L., The Collected Papers of Thomas Wayburn, Vol. II, American Policy Inst., Houston (Work in progress 1997).

9. Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon, New York (1988).

10. Wayburn, Thomas L., “No One Has a Right To Impose an Arbitrary System of Morals on Others,” in Drug Policy 1889-1990, A Reformer's Catalogue, Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin B. Zeese, Eds., The Drug Policy Foundation, Washington, D.C. (1989).

11. James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, The Modern Library, New York (1936).

12. Russell, Bertrand, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, Ne w York (1972).

13. Peirce, Charles Sanders, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Ed. Justus Buch ler, Dover, New York (1955).

14. Baggott, Jim, The Meaning of Quantum Theory, Oxford Science, New York (199 2).

15. Hungerford, Thomas W., Algebra, Springer-Verlag, New York (1974).

16. Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith, Translator, St Martin’s Press, New York (1965).

17. Piaget, Jean, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, Int'l. Universities Press, New York (1952).

18. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Henry Bosley Woolf, Editor in Chief, G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield , Massachusetts (1977).

19. Popper, Karl R., “Utopia and Violence”, in Conjectures and Refutations, Ba sic Books, New York (1965).

Appendix A. The Case for Rational Anarchism (Libertarianism) or Why We Hate Government and Wish to Rule Ourselves

The following, which needs to be revised, expanded, and, possibly, rendered in a sep arate essay, is an abstract of what needs to be said:

1. Consideration of the rise of the ruling class from fierce war-like nomadic quasi-savages who initially raided and looted agricultural communities but eventually elected to move in on the husbandry by way of stealing the entire community as described in H. G. Wells’ Outline of History leads us to reject the ruling class as an inferior breed that degenerated in time due to soft living so that even prowess at arms eluded them. Eventually people realized that they didn’t have to put up with this so-called nobility. This scenario of submission followed by rebellion was the prototype of the endless cycles described next.

2. Leadership (hierarchy) condemns us to endless cycles of corruption followed by revolution or reform. The revolution or reformation always becomes corrupt if a “natural leader” [G. B. Shaw] is involved.

3. Leaders invariably force religious beliefs (taboos) upon us as do our neighbors who have no concept of tolerance, which Anarchy will introduce.

4. Deci and Ryan (intrinsic motivation scholars) show that autonomy is necessary for happiness, which forces Anarchy upon those who wish to be happy.

5. People who make their own decisions are more highly evolved (truly noble, if you wish) than the governed.

6. Communism is impossible without anarchy and we are just about at the point where if anyone consumes more than necessary someone will die. (We must try to consume the least we can - avoiding cars, planes, spacecraft, etc.)

7. Starting with “Who owns the skies?” we show that we are already communists.

8. Under the present system, the government is ineffective in many respects, therefore we muddle along under a poorly understood irrational anarchy anyway.

Appendix B. The Definition of the Ruling Class

Never in a million years did I expec t to find myself giving a definition of the ruli ng class. After all, a student at Brown University who could not understand the cause in which Amy Carter and Abbie Hoffman had become involved declared in a television soundbite that his raison d'être for attending Brown was to get into the ruling class and no one asked him what he meant. But, Peter Denning, a columnist for the Scientific American, demanded proof that such a thing exists during the course of a straightforward debate on an entirely different matter. I was shocked; but, if one person needed an explanation of what I meant by the ruling class, it makes sense to include it in the book since one never knows the extent of the naiveté of one’s readers. After a moment’s reflection, I came up with the following:

Definition 1 (Class). A class is a number of persons (or things) regarded as belong ing together by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; e.g., the class of front-wheel-drive automobiles with at least one broken headlight.

Note. I could define the ruling class by virtue of its attributes, but that wouldn’t prove the class isn’t empty. It’s better to enumerate the members by subclass, then the question as to whether or not the ruling class has any members has been answered. Of course, one might still doubt whether the attributes of the subclasses give the ruling class the power to rule. While it is true that no one has absolute power, it is necessary only that people exist who have a disproportionate share of (political) power in order for democracy to be subverted. (Consider your share in the decision as to whose names will appear on the ballot.)

Definition 2 (Ruling Class). The ruling class consists of:

1. Everyone who c an afford to give $50,000/year or more to political campaign s, PACs, or lobbies. I chose the number 50,000 for definiteness.

2. The officers of companies who are authorized to make such expenditures on behalf of their companies.

3. Holders of high office, including judges, provided they have not traded a way all of their autonomy for campaign contributions, gifts, or favors.

4. Those who have great influence over (i) the holders of high office, (ii) l obbyists, and (iii) members of the other categories because they have acquired great intellectual prestige, e.g., Henry Kissinger, or because they belong to old, prestigious families that traditionally have wielded such influence, whether they have the financial means to assist campaigns or not (old wealth and feudal aristocracy). Other wielders of influence include important members of the media and high priests in the cult of fame, e.g., Frank Sinatra, who, simply because they are famous, exert influence in matters concerning which they have no expertise.

5. The leading lawyers and doctors, for reasons similar to those given under Subclass 4 and, in addition, because they are often in positions of power over other members of the ruling class.

6. The highest officers in corporations, which sometimes wield greater power than sovereign states. Our jobs influence our lives even more than the government does, hence those who rule the workplace have more power over us than does the government, at least until we go to war.

7. The leaders of the military, the presidents of the “great” universities, c hurch leaders, leaders of enterprises, other than government, that have a great influence on society, such as the American Medical Association (AMA), even the NAACP (maybe), perhaps even Sigma Xi, organized crime bosses, leaders of secret societies, such as the Masons or the Knights of Columbus, who might be able to dictate the policies of elected officials, members of conspiracies, such as the Trilateral Commission, if they exist. G. B. Shaw discussed the problem of “natural leaders” in the preface to The Millionairess.

8. Top-ranked bureaucrats.

9. The most important lobbyists, e.g., Mich ael Deaver before he got busted.

T hese categories are not mutually exclusive and they probably are not exhaustive. T his may seem like a lot of people, but it probably doesn’t amount to more than 1% of the population. Remember, too, that America is ruled by some people who are not even Americans. The attribute that is shared by all of these people is a disproportionate share of political power and influence. For all practical purposes, the U.S. is a plutocracy rather than a democracy. We don’t need to quibble about a few four-star generals, admirals, or university superstars who aren’t rich (yet), do we?

Houston, Texas

February 12, 1990

Revised March 1, 1998

Revised July 5, 2004

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Chapter 2. Emergy and Economics

It is a fact that:

Real wealth is food, fuel, water, wood for houses, fiber for clothes, raw minerals, electricity, information.

A country is wealthy that has more of this real stuff used per person.

Money is only paid to people and is not proportional to real wealth.

Prices and costs are inverse to real wealth.

When resources are abundant, standard of living is high, but prices are low.

When resources are scarce, prices are high, more money goes to bring resources, a few people get rich, but the net contribution to prosperity is small.

Real wealth is mostly the work of nature and has to be evaluated with a scientific measure, EMERGY.

– Howard T. Odum

Abstract

Appendix on Thermodynamics

In Appendix I, I have tried to provide a brief r eview of – or introduction to – thermodynamics. Readers will determine the usefulness of my efforts. Many readers will wish to skip this appendix; and, if they are familiar with thermodynamics, they might not miss it. I recommend that everyone read it first however. Alternatively, one might read the words and skip the equations – employing the procedure suggested in the preface. Even the expert might gain an insight or two (or find an error). (However, no one should blame himself if he cannot profit from this attempt to explain thermodynamics in about thirty pages. Undoubtedly, the fault lies with me. In any case, one can render Appendix I completely harmless by simply ignoring it.)

My introduction to Appendix I discusses some suggestions by leading theoreticians concerning the appropriate names we should give to the various divisions of the subject. This brief review doesn’t get beyond the basics of the simplest types of problems. The next main section defines some important concepts, namely, the control volume, what is meant by the properties of a substance and the state of a system. Processes, including cyclic processes, and what is meant by a pure substance and a simple compressible substance are discussed. Next, a generic balance equation is presented, e.g., the increase in the population of the United States is the births minus the deaths plus the immigrants minus the emigrants (during the period of interest). To define work in a slightly novel way, I have defined entropy using a definition of entropy developed by Prof. David Bowman, after which I present the energy balance that represents the First Law of Thermodynamics for the easier cases. (Entropy is defined before energy!) The Second Law is presented as an entropy balance, with the entropy created represented by a thermodynamic-lost-work term, the meaning of which is illustrated by an illuminating example.

The appendix ends by combining the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics to get definitions of the Gibbs availability function and the Helmholtz availabilty function. These terms are not even in common use, which shows the low esteem in which the concepts are held – even by scientists who ought to know better. I have removed the section in which availability analysis is used to compute the maximum quantity of reversible work that can be performed sustainably within the Earth’s control volume; but, I do present a simple availability analysis to determine the break-even efficiency for burning fossil fuels without emitting CO₂. I will present the availability analysis of the entire Earth in a separate paper later.

Main Text

I begin this brief introduction with my chronic complaint that practically every author is calling his propaganda educational whilst I am actually presenting material of an educational nature that is nearly guaranteed to be mistaken for propaganda. (Of course some of it is propaganda, but not all of it is propaganda.) With that off my chest, I begin establishing the need for emergy analysis. Next, I present Odum’s theory of emergy and transformity. When I discuss emergy analysis, I shall employ the rough definition of availability given above. That definition will satisfy some lay people. (Many readers will be satisfied with a qualitative definition and leave the thermodynamics, presented in Appendix I, to experts. One might consult a friend who knows thermodynamics to determine how many mistakes I have made – if any – and whether the mistakes are fatal to my thesis or not.)

Using a departure from Odum’s computation of emergy, I outline my methodology for determining the feasibility of sustainable energy technologies in terms of a modified emergy efficiency that I find satisfactory except that the transformity doesn’t have always a unique value in this new setting. In ecology, nature decides what shall be transformed into what and the pattern is basically immutable. For industrial purposes, the matching problem, i.e., what primary energy resource shall be used for what purpose, is considerably complicated by scarcity and abundance and is by no means God given. This explains why Odum finds transformity so useful in ecology whereas I find it troublesome (to keep track of) in determining the feasibility of sustainable primary energy technologies. I indicate how one might go about determining the primary energy costs, including the indirect costs that are normally overlooked, that go into primary energy production facilities (when the transformities are unknown) using nuclear fission as an example.

In the next section, I use a system diagram approach to model the U.S. or world economy and to speculate on an improved humanistic economy. We then look at energy flows on the earth to estimate how much sustainable energy (availability) we can hope for in the best possible case (short of cold fusion). I speculate that renewable energy from biomass is likely to be the major provider of energy toward the end of the next century. [The reader understands by now that, whenever I use the word energy loosely, I am nearly always referring to high-grade energy, availability, or emergy.]

We, then, look at how energy is likely to be distributed in a one-kilowatt-per-capita, neo-tribal, decentralized society that employs advanced technology in an appropriately humanized manner of which, perhaps, even the Unabomber might approve. The Unabomber confessed that he had been unable to distinguish “good” technology from “bad” technology; therefore, he recommended eliminating all technology – and, just imagine, burning all of the technical literature. I believe I have solved the problem of determining which technologies might be safely retained; and, needless to say, if my system were employed, we could dispense with book burning!

Probably, we can retain (i) technologies that consume only moderate quantities of high-grade energy; (ii) that do not dehumanize anyone; (iii) that can be produced locally in plants small enough to fit in two-car garages, which, clearly, will not be needed for cars; and (iv) that can be understood by the average undiminished user, provided he expend a modicum of effort to understand the world he lives in – quite unlike you and me, who are content to utilize dozens of devices we couldn’t repair if our lives depended on it. Shame on us. With a little more time and effort I might be able to sharpen my characterization of sensible technology – guided by the Schumacherian dictum [2] to behave “as though people mattered”.

Next, we revisit the matching problem for a society in which we have a large menu of sustainable energy technologies to choose from. Finally, we consider under what conditions sustainable energy is likely to be sufficient to permit sustainable happiness – at least absence of unbearable misery – for ten billion people. I draw some conclusions of my own and, then, present a series of extremely important questions that I submit for the reader’s consideration and for further research.

Introduction

Propaganda Is Not Educational

Definition (Education) [from Random House Dictionary (RHD) [3]]. 1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge and of developing the powers of reasoning and judgment. 2 - 5. (Irrelevant in the sense of which we are speaking).

Definition (Educational) [from RHD [3]]. 1. pertaining to education. 2. tending or intended to educate, instruct, or inform: an educational TV show.

My claim is that the greater part of this chapter (together with Appendix I, which, in an earlier draft, was part of this chapter) qualifies as educational under any reasonable (dictionary) definition of the word because, first, what I tell you is factual (unless I make an error, which, of course, is always possible despite my best intentions) and is not propaganda or indoctrination; and, second, systems diagrams, emergy analysis, and balance equations, especially availability balances that account for lost work – but really all balance equations – are powerful tools for reasoning and making judgments. (In this draft, balance equations are banished to Appendix I.) All of the material given here and in Appendix I is easily checked, therefore the dangers of unintentional errors are minimized.

This is in contradistinction to many other discussions of the environment (whether pro or con), which are referred to as “educating the public” but amount to nothing better than propaganda. Why must scholars, even successful scholars, abuse the word education so shamelessly?

The lack of understanding exhibited by politicians is appalling; but, it is simply incredible how poorly the subject of this chapter is understood by the “experts” who teach college students, write books, head institutes that collect public funds, express their views on TV, and speak in scientific symposia. As of this writing, I have neither heard nor seen the situation stated at all correctly – present company excepted. I’ve heard and read a lot of nonsense – mostly from people who are “soft” on markets, commerce, and capitalism. I am prepared to refute the conventional wisdom in debate – anytime, any place, and against any odds despite a painful awareness of my own limitations. The reader understands that I have no illusions about the extent of my own mastery of the subject, which I recognize as inadequate. Perhaps, though, I can convince someone that I have made a modest start in the right direction. This is a subject about which practically nothing useful has been said. One should not expect my remarks to be the last word.

Quite distinct from the educational material presented in this chapter is my preference for the soft-energy position in the soft-energy / hard-energy debate, which may be viewed as a matter of personal taste. The consequences of a hard-energy scenario, however, can be derived scientifically; and, I do not see how anyone acquainted with these results could prefer the hard-energy position, which, by the way, is part and parcel of the American Dream.

Why We Need this Chapter

We need this chapter to understand the Environmental Axiom, which is presented in the next chapter. That’s why this is Chapter 2, but excellent reasons can be given for presenting this material even if it were not used elsewhere in the book:

Industrial civilization has been based on fossil fuels. Currently, society is challenged by two opposing trends: (1) fossil fuel is running out and (2) developing nations (and poor people in rich nations) want to live the “American Dream”. Americans have been bingeing on fossil fuel for 150 years – particularly on oil since World War II. We have behaved like the heir who squanders in a day a large fortune built up over dozens of generations. Even conservative analysts such as Wolf Häfele [4] predict severe oil shortages beginning around 2030. The most “optimistic” estimates of total reserves – both discovered and undiscovered – would have us running out in about 400 years at the present rate of consumption assuming (1) no population growth and (2) continued disproportionately low use of oil in the third world. This scenario is in severe conflict with the aspirations of many people. Americans use 25% of the world’s energy budget while comprising only 5% of the world’s population.

Moreover, the American Dream is an environmental nightmare. (This claim is justified somewhat near the end of this chapter when I discuss the unlikely plentiful energy scenario. I should say more about the evils of a highly commercial, consumerist society supported by heavy industry, which, in the usual case, is hard on the environment and, in any case, requires costly measures to prevent serious environmental damage. For now, I shall have to let the Unabomber speak for me despite certain discrepancies in our views. Do not make the mistake of depriving yourself of reading his brilliant Manifesto [5] simply because you don’t approve of his marketing methods. This is one of the best analyses of the harmfulness of heavy industrial technology I have seen. Not reading the Unabomber Manifesto because the author had to kill people to get it published is like not reading Mein Kampf because you don’t approve of the Beer Hall Putsch. Even if it’s wrong, you could save yourself a lot of grief by knowing what it says. (Hitler outlined his plans fairly straightforwardly in Mein Kampf. Why, then, were intellectuals surprised when he began killing Jews? Answer: They didn’t read Mein Kampf!)

Some people (usually not technologists) believe that shortages of fossil fuels will be relieved by technological breakthroughs. It has been noted that these people are like smokers who won’t quit because by the time they get cancer a cure will be found! It has taken nature millions of years to evolve the tree. The likelihood of man developing technology superior to a tree is only slightly greater than the likelihood of developing an artificial human being. Actually, the horrifying plentiful energy scenario (described below) with its excessive motion, alienation, and stress, if not pollution and the wiping out of nearly every species of plant and animal, is unlikely. Nevertheless, reasonable quantities of renewable energy will be needed to support human life. At the present time, as far as I know, despite my involvement with the mainstream scientific and technological sustainable energy communities, I have not heard of anyone who knows, or is trying to find out – even, if any renewable energy technology is feasible.

Normally, when technologists discuss the viability of alternative energy sources, they give us energy costs in cents per kilowatt-hour, for example. But, money is an inappropriate measure to determine which sustainable energy technologies will be feasible. As far as primary energy is concerned, we need the cost in kilowatt-hours per kilowatt-hour produced. Prices are distorted by fossil-fuel subsidies. According to Odum and Odum [6], we purchase the 1700 kilowatt-hours (kWhrs) in a barrel of oil with the money obtained by expending only one-sixth of 1700 kWhrs. Money does not account for the work done by nature; moreover, it does not satisfy useful conservation laws. We need an energy-based measure of value such as emergy – with an m. The Odums claim that nuclear fission and, for that matter, photovoltaic cells are net consumers of energy; i.e., if nuclear fission were the only primary energy source and all of the energy costs of producing it – the direct costs and the indirect costs – had to come from nuclear fission and nowhere else (not fossil fuels), eventually the nuclear plant would grind to a halt because it had not produced enough energy to keep itself going.

We need a methodology that is independent of money for evaluating alternative sustainable energy technologies. Money won’t work (i) because of the distortions in the prices of fossil fuels, (ii) because it can be created too easily by governments, for example, and (iii) because money-based economic theories do not account for the work done by nature. In this essay, we use emergy analysis (1) to assign an immutable measure of value to manufactured articles, capital goods, and energy sources; (2) to understand the economic “facts of life” that reveal why almost all public policy is irrational; and (3) to determine good policy and provide arguments toward widespread acceptance of reasonable social goals. The Odums and other practitioners of emergy analysis use emergy theory for many other useful applications, especially in the field of ecology [7,8,9,10]. I have applied (and modified) Odum’s methods in a different setting, which is not to say that the Odums have not anticipated my efforts in these areas as well. They are true visionaries.

This, then, is an attempt to establish methodologies to put public policy on a firm scientific basis. Unfortunately, this chapter, with or without Appendix I at the end of the book, is likely to be more demanding of the reader than other chapters in the book. If you find the writing inaccessible, please refer the material to a scientifically inclined friend and try to get a judgment of its validity, after which – hopefully – you can accept (or reject) its conclusions. Do not be too hasty to dismiss my remarks, though, if your scientific friend has a vested interest in the status quo, e.g., is an employee of a U.S. or multi-national corporation. Be especially skeptical if your “friend” dismisses these concerns with a cursory glance at the material and what sounds like a Rush Limbaugh quote.

What We Hope To Accomplish in this Chapter

I hope to show that we consistently under estimate the social changes required to achieve sustainable happiness for all of humanity. We shall consider three cases: (i) the case where our supply of high-grade energy keeps pace (approximately) with population, (ii) the case of scarcity, and (iii) the case of abundance. I hope to use the results of this analysis to convince the reader that the Fundamental Theorem is probably true.

Fundamental Theorem. The complete abandonment of competition for wealth, power (and negotiable influence), and negotiable fame is a necessary and sufficient condition for sustainable happiness for all of humanity – under certain conditions that will be stated later. (Hopefully, these conditions can be satisfied, in which case the theorem can be stated without the proviso.)

I hope to prove this as well as social questions are ever proved, but we shall need the entire book to do so. In this chapter, we shall see one reason for the necessity to abandon materialism and, hopefully, we will get some idea of the sufficiency – although much research needs to be done to determine if we can produce enough sustainable energy to support ten billion people in comfort. (“One can never prove a theorem too many ways – especially when no one believes it.”) The terms sustainable and happiness have definite technical meanings that are close to ordinary usage. When the reader has heard the argument given here he or she might accept the idea that, in all probability, economic growth is inconsistent with sustainability. We need economic shrinkage (probably). Also, the reader should be convinced that using money as the basic unit of economic analysis leads to confusion and poor political decisions. Using emergy leads to clarity and understanding.

An interesting new development has begun in the environmental debate. Some overtly anti-environmental activists have entered the fray despite the unpopularity of overtly anti-environmental statements. What does it mean? (Normally, everyone pays lip service to the environment regardless of his true intentions.) In my opinion, it means that some conservatives are beginning to understand the true picture; namely, if we really want to protect the environment, we will have to abandon the American economic system. These anti-environmental zealots are willing to sacrifice nature, which is real, to an economic system, which is a failed abstraction! These people are talking such madness that they may convince some people who have been neutral to join the environmental movement and to adopt the radical and scientifically sound position advocated in this essay – but at least they are not kidding themselves. They understand that environmentalism means the end of the American way of life.

In the old days, conservatives used to say that, if wealth were divided equally, the average wealth would decline and all of us would be poor – at least by the standards of middle-class Americans. The conservatives are correct. What they do not take into account is that, if we do not divide the wealth equally, those who receive less than the average will live lives of misery or simply perish. The point of this chapter is that, according to our best scientific guess, there is not enough to go around unless the big consumers reduce their consumption drastically. The criterion of successful living is to consume as little as possible! We must construct institutions, indeed a new form of community, that will make this possible.

Hopefully, when you have finished this chapter, you will have a strong grasp of the following notions, i.e., sufficiently strong that the first clever conservative you meet cannot talk you out of what you know:

1. The so-called energy crisis is much worse than our leaders say.

2. The end of the petroleum era is the most awesome deadline facing humanity.

3. When petroleum is scarce, our diesel farm machinery will stop, which could mean starvation for billions – not millions. Conceivably, nine billion people could die of starvation before the year 2100.

4. When the average emergy per capita is no greater than the emergy consumption just sufficient to live without undue misery, sharing wealth equally becomes a moral imperative. Every individual who consumes a modicum of emergy in excess of his fair share will be directly responsible for the deaths of the people who sink below minimum subsistence. The number of people who die depends upon how the deficit incurred by that one person is apportioned among few or many.

Odum’s Theory

Wealth

Material Wealth

Money is not equivalent to material wealth. I can say this 2 000 tim es and every time I say it it will be true. Material wealth consists of the things we need to live, including art to enhance our spiritual lives, and a few luxuries to take the drudgery out of life. It can be measured in units of emergy – with an m. Examples of material wealth are (i) food, (ii) clothing, (iii) housing and other infrastructure, (iv) tools and other capital goods (things used to make other things), (v) medicine and drugs, (vii) stockpiles of high-grade energy, (viii) works of art, (ix) books, (x) computer programs, (xi) correct, useful, and non-trivial information, etc.

Spiritual Wealth

Naturally, the wealth of the intellect in its vast accumulations of knowledge and mental powers, the wealth of the psyche in its deep understanding and love, and other forms of spiritual wealth are not what we are referring to in our discussion of the evils of inequality of wealth. Indeed, by eliminating differences in material wealth, we hope to make greater spiritual wealth, consistent with one’s capacity, available to everyone. This is why it is so difficult to distinguish one’s final goals. Every goal can be a means to something more and every intermediary stage is someone’s personal goal. These intermediary stages can be taken to be the means to an end by someone else. Thus, Popper’s thesis in “Utopia and Violence” [11] is untenable. He imagines that one can distinguish means from ends, which is impossible. (“Utopia and Violence” was discussed at the end of Chapter 1.)

Money and Other Forms of Surrogate or Paper Wealth

When I speak of surrogate or pape r wealth nowadays, I may be talking about entries in computer files. Sometimes there is no paper involved, but the dynamics are the same whether it be paper money, stock and bond certificates and other fiduciary instruments, or simply entries in a computer, e.g., John Doe owns 100 shares of General Motors. Paper wealth is not considered wealth in this theory, despite the terminology. However, as long as people have faith in it, it is a surrogate for real wealth, which means it can be converted into real wealth.

Paper wealth, which is normally negotiable, has brought down empires. It can be accumulated without owning a treasure chest – let alone a storehouse for wheat, cotton, lumber, and drugs. Large differences in paper wealth between citizens who own comparably sized homes can occur. Paper wealth can create massive poverty and it can mask serious underlying difficulties in an economy that is not producing food, clothing, and shelter in adequate amounts. The exact way in which catastrophes occur because of such vast accumulations might be extremely complex. On the other hand, it may be no more difficult to comprehend than our own recent savings and loan debacle. Permit me to describe an imaginary simplified scenario that indicates the type of thing that can happen.

The Fall of the Paper Empire

The claim is that an empire or nation can fall because of large accumulations of paper wealth in the hands of a few individuals – less than 1% of the population, say. The best I can come up with is a thought experiment where this happens. I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not the following scenario is plausible. This point is not crucial to my thesis and I do not absolutely insist upon it.

Ground rules

This is supposed to be a hypothetical society the needs of which are fe w. The people eat food produced domestically by about 1% of their population, but they do not require dwelling places or health care. The fuel for their cars, trucks, trains, boats, and planes is processed practically automatically from imported crude oil. Their communication is done using amazingly high-tech imported gadgets that practically run themselves. Indeed, everything they need except food is produced abroad and they consume all of the food produced by the tiny minority engaged in that once-noble pursuit, who now eke out a bare existence on practically the lowest level of the social ladder. After all, every adult who does not produce food is a college graduate, normally with a masters degree in something – usually some highly specialized aspect of commerce – The Art of the Deal or something even deeper!?

The accumulation of paper wealth (freely convertible to old man’s toys until the pyramid crashes) comes from business done in connection with foreign trade and the sale and distribution of foreign goods, including primary energy, e.g., petroleum, to domestic customers most of whom are employed in (i) negotiating deals, (ii) selling the goods at the wholesale, retail, and street level (mostly to each other), (iii) marketing, (iv) the government, (v) personal-salvationism; i.e., they are spiritual counselors, lawyers, consultants, presenters of seminars on (a) how to manage people, (b) how to comply with the new government regulations, (c) how to succeed in business without really trying, and (d) how to lose weight while eating as much as you want and never exercising, (vi) managing any of the above. These are a sorry crew. They produce not one single thing that anyone needs to live. They call their society THE INFORMATION SOCIETY, but they might just as well call it the paper money society. [To call what they know information is to call excrement food.]

To show you how simple (and therefore amenable to analysis) this hypothetical society is, I shall divide it into four sectors and four classes. The sectors are (i) business, government, and academia, (ii) service, and (iii) agriculture. Please forgive me for lumping business, government, and academia together; but, really, they are barely distinguishable from one another. It’s easy to distinguish them from service, though, because the service sector pays minimum wage. Agriculture depends on the market, however, so prices are high whenever crops fail, i.e., when there is nothing to sell. If it weren’t for government subsidies, the members of the agriculture sector would make less than minimum wage!

I have saved the fourth sector for last. It is, of course, the military. It is difficult to live off the efforts of the citizens of other nations and their natural resources without a military sector. They enforce business contracts negotiated by men and women who couldn’t pass basic training if their lives depended on it. In other words, the army, navy, air force, and marines “persuade” the trading partners to accept paper currency in exchange for real wealth. This is what petty hustlers and crooks call “a real sweet deal”.

The four classes, then, are (i) white collar criminals and tyrants, (ii) their lackeys, (iii) military personnel, who, with the exception of a handful of lunatics, would not work without pay (but will do anything for a price) and have no interest whatever in the agendas of those who pay them, and (iv) dropouts (usually heavy drug users, artists, and philosophers), the homeless, the hopelessly handicapped and deficient, the elderly, the terminally ill, and people who are kept around, mostly in jails, in case someone of consequence needs a spare part, etc.

What Goes Wrong

1. The agriculture sector must suffer economically so that t he rest can eat. Moreover, they tend to be social pariahs and, by induction, so do their children. They resent this and their children refuse to enter the field; moreover, they begin to sell their farms to housing and business developers. Pretty soon some of the food has to be imported.

2. Business and government begin to eliminate middle management and appropriate more and more unto fewer and fewer.

3. The military can barely be paid (the interest on the national debt is staggering) and soon the nation is scarcely able to defend its “vital interests”. Soldiers grumble and desertions start. Also, contrastingly, people who are less willing and less able to fight want to become a part of the military because things are worse elsewhere.

4. In emulation of business, many of the lower paid workers, usually in the service sector, and many of the disenfranchised resort to crime and violence where a few opportunities to become wealthy through drug sales, say, still exist. Soon, enough of these disillusioned people become politicized and organized terrorism begins. The military and police are practically powerless. (The police are outgunned!)

5. The small professional class (not mentioned separately above) is infiltrated by foreigners who nucleate, e.g., hire only people of the same nationality as themselves, and soon control entire areas of expertise. These foreigners have been brought in by predatory businessmen to keep the wages of their lackeys low. Eventually, the lackeys of the tyrants and businessmen are reduced to wage slavery. Natives are no longer attracted to the professions and attempt to become businessmen themselves rather than lackeys. This is a big drain on professional talent. Some of the most gifted people begin to plan a revolution.

6. The rest of the world is loath to accept devalued paper money and the supply of oil and manufactured goods begins to slow down.

7. Agriculture no longer can feed everyone because it is entirely dependent on foreign oil and machinery.

8. Rebellion begins in the military and spreads rapidly. Some military remain loyal to business and the most powerful elected officials and bureaucrats, so civil war spreads throughout the land – mostly in the cities.

9. Resentment of foreigners escalates essentially to pogroms. The foreigners fight back, quickly organizing into “benevolent societies” and “tongs”.

10. Alienation, anomie, and dissolution of all social order is complete.

11. The Four Horsemen saddle up and ride.

Emergy (with an M)

Definitions

Definition (Availability). Availability (or availabl e energy) is energy [enthalpy, H, or internal energy, U] corrected for entropy, S. Rigorous definitions of the Gibbs availability function [H – T_oS], the Helmholtz availability function [U - T_oS], and entropy are given in Appendix I, Fundamentals of Thermodynamics, where the symbols and technical terms employed in this paragraph are explained. [T_o is the temperature of the environment, usually taken to be the temperature of the coldest body of water or the atmosphere into which the waste heat of a heat engine can be discharged. For Earth, 300 K will do. The effect of entropy on the availability function of sunlight is to reduce it by the ratio of the temperature of Earth to the temperature of the Sun – a factor of about 19/20. Since the enthalpy of a proton is 4/3 times the energy, the Gibbs availability of sunlight is about 76/60 times the energy.] The reader understands that by the word “energy”, as it is used in ordinary parlance, we mean availability.

Definition (Exergy) [1]. In an environment whose ambient temperature and pressure are known, such as the atmosphere or a large body of water, exergy, with an x, is an exact measure of the maximum reversible work that can be obtained from a fixed quantity of material, such as a fuel, the sole use of which is to supply available energy to a process under investigation. We define the exergy per fixed quantity of material to be the difference between the Gibbs availability of the material and the Gibbs availabilty of the same quantity of the same material reduced to ambient temperature and pressure (generally lower) and, especially in the case of fuels, brought into chemical equilibrium with the surroundings by reacting chemically to obtain products from which no additional work can be extracted. In this treatment, I shall neglect any additional work that might be extracted by allowing combustion products, for example, to diffuse from their high concentration in the combustion chamber to the concentration at which they are found in the atmosphere far from the site of the combustion.

Thus, the exergy of one kilogram-mole of octane at 500^°C and 10 atmospheres is the difference between the Gibbs availability of 114 kilograms (one kilogram-mole) of octane (the fuel) at 500^°C and 10 atmospheres minus the sum of the Gibbs availability of 352 kilograms of carbon dioxide and the Gibbs availability of 162 kilograms of water (the products of combustion) all at 300 K and one atmosphere. This is the most degenerate state that this collection of atoms can attain in a world where temperatures lower than 300 K and pressures lower than one atmosphere cannot be found except by actually doing work, which would defeat our purpose, namely, to discover the maximum amount of reversible work that we can extract from the 114 kilograms of octane at elevated temperature and pressure. We are assuming here that 400 kilograms of oxygen is obtained from the ambient air and that it does not contribute additional availability; i.e., its exergy is zero – just as its Gibbs availability, which is equal to the Gibbs free energy at atmospheric conditions, is zero. As stated above, we are neglecting any possible work that might be extracted from the high concentration of carbon dioxide and water vapor just after combustion by allowing it to diffuse (through some sort of machine) to the average (low) concentration of carbon dioxide and water vapor normally found in the atmosphere. (Presumably, we could invent some sort of device that would harness the differences in partial pressures using a semi-permeable membrane, say.)

Odum’s original definition of emergy. Odum defined emergy, measured in emjoules, to be the Gibbs availability of the sunlight, measured in joules, required to produce, by an optimal process, (1) fuels; (2) other energy sources such as wind or fresh water in mountain lakes; (3) natural resources such as grass and trees, (4) manufactured objects, (5) human resources; (6) information; and (7) any other objects of economic interest that can be associated with an identifiable quantity of sunlight. This is a sunlight-based emergy. It leads to large numbers for the emergies of primary fuels that are known only approximately; therefore, we shall modify the definition slightly to give common industrial energy products emergies that are known precisely and that are close to 1.0 in magnitude.

Table 2-1. Solar Transformities (solar emjoules per joule) [7]
Item	sej/J
Sunlight	1
Wind kinetic energy	623
Unconsolidated organic matter	4,420
Geopotential energy in dispersed rain	8,888
Chemical energy in dispersed rain	15,423
Geopotential energy in rivers	23,564
Chemical energy in rivers	41,000
Mechanical energy in waves and tides	17,000-29,000
Consolidated fuels	18,000-40,000
Food, greens, grains, staples	24,000-200,000
Protein foods	1,000,000-4,000,000
Human services	80,000-5,000,000,000
Information	10,000-10,000,000,000,000+

The transformity of sunlight is, of course, unity. The entry for wind kinetic energy says that 623 joules of sunlight are required to generate 1 joule of kinetic energy in wind. (Wind has about 40 joules of thermal energy, which is not available to us, per joule of kinetic energy.) Each joule of geopotential energy in dispersed rain requires 8,888 joules of sunlight according to Odum. Presumably, some portion of this falls into mountain lakes, etc., which, in turn, feed mountain streams and rivers and may be used to produce hydroelectric power. The entry for geopotential energy in rivers is 23,564. (How it can be known to five significant figures I cannot say.) The emergies of food, greens, grains, and staples must account for the rain they require, the sunlight they absorb in photosynthesis, any fossil fuel that is used in their cultivation and transportation, etc. Each joule (of availability) such foods contain requires from 24,000 to 200,000 joules of sunlight – depending, I suppose, on whether they grow wild in the consumers backyard or are farmed by a giant agri-business and shipped half way around the world. The reader realizes that a meal of greens from the green grocer, which might contain 21 million joules of Gibbs availability, has an emergy that might be as high as 4.2 trillion solar emjoules. The case of human labor is interesting too. I consume energy at the rate of about 0.1 kilowatts when I work. That’s 100 joules per second. If I work one hour using all of the knowledge I have acquired through some very expensive (no doubt overpriced) schooling, the emergy cost of that hour could be as high as 5 E9 solar emjoules per joule times 3600 seconds per hour times 100 joules per second times 1 hour = 1.8 E15 solar emjoules. (That’s 1.8 million billion emjoules.) So, these are some pretty expensive words you are reading!

Sunlight-based emergies have the disadvantage that they are large and known only very roughly. Moreover, gross estimates are used to evaluate the fuels we use most frequently. We don’t know how many joules of sunlight must be expended by the most efficient process to produce one joule of alcohol from biomass. Undoubtedly, the optimal process has yet to be discovered. These are deficiencies in emergy analysis. They can be remedied somewhat as will be shown. Howard Odum recognized that the value of manufactured goods can be quantified in terms of the energy consumed to produce them. What we owe to the genius of Howard Odum is beyond our powers to compute (even in units of emjoules) – it is truly priceless. That said, I must warn the reader that the use to which I put his gift is my responsibility alone. If my implementation of his ideas, which, for the most part, corresponds to my personal taste and inclinations, turns out to be defective, the blame lies solely with myself and does not reflect upon the merit of his original conception and the great body of his vast and rapidly growing scientific legacy.

If we wish to do economics based upon emergy, we need to assign emergies to capital goods and other manufactured objects. Let us see how to do this in a thought experiment involving an imaginary ideal process. In this process, the only input is energy (availability); no raw materials are used or, put another way, the raw materials are not considered to have any value – maybe negative value – like toxic waste or raw sewage, but we won’t take credit for it. The process produces one product. We wish to compute the emergy of that product produced by an optimal process.


Figure 2-1a. Energy balance for ideal process	Figure 2-1b. Availability balance for ideal process	Figure 2-1c. Emergy balance for ideal process

In Fig. 2-1a, we depict the energy balance for our process. We don’t show the product coming out, which is assumed to carry negligible energy. All of the energy entering is reduced to junk heat. In Fig. 2‑1b, availability enters and nothing comes out, since junk heat has no availability (in this analysis) and neither does the product, which can’t even be burned. The lost work term provides closure for the availability balance. Finally, in Fig. 2-1c, the emergy balance is shown with the transformed availability entering, measured as emergy, and the product carrying an equal amount of emergy along with it into the economy – even though all of the availability was consumed as junk heat.

In the case of a similar process that produces the same unit product but is less than optimal, more emergy is required at the input, and the difference between the input and the output is lost. Thus, as in the Combined First and Second Law (Appendix I, Eq. I-6), emergy can be destroyed.

In their earlier work [6], Howard and Elizabeth Odum measured emergy in fossil-fuel equivalents. Emergies used to evaluate industrial economies might be computed more easily by taking the transformity of crude oil or even methane as unity. If we are moving toward an electrical basis for energy analysis, it might be better to take one joule of single-phase, 60 cycle (Hz), 110-volt alternating current (AC) as the unit of emergy – or, perhaps even better, 3,600,000 joules ( = 1 kWhr).

Definition (Standard Electricity). In this paper, single-phase, 60 Hz, 110-volt alternating current is taken to be standard electricity.

Definition (Emergy Unit). My arbitrary – but well-defined – choice for one unit of emergy (1 MU) is 1.0 kilowatt-hours of standard electricity. Although electrical current carries a small amount of entropy manifest in difference currents, for all practical purposes, that is, for engineering purposes, electricity is pure work. The availability of electricity is equal to its energy; and, with this choice of emergy unit, the emergy of electrical current is numerically equal to its energy in kilowatt-hours. The transformity of sunlight, wind, biomass, and other energy products will be less than – but close to – 1.0.

Definition (Transformity). The transformity of a primary fuel is the number of kilowatt-hours of standard electricity one can obtain from 1 kWhr of the primary fuel by an efficient process, the tradition of reporting the availability of fuels in BTUs per pound or kilocalories per gram mole notwithstanding. Any unit of energy can be converted to kilowatt-hours. This is an electricity-based transformity, the units of which are emergy units per kilowatt-hour.

Definition (Emergy). The embodied energy or emergy of a primary fuel is the Gibbs availability of the fuel in kilowatt-hours multiplied by the electricity-based transformity. The emergy of anything else is the sum of all the emergy that went into producing it by an efficient process minus the emergies of any by-products formed. The emergy of an activity is the average rate of expenditure of emergy times the time. These definitions are easily extended to include the dependence of emergy on location and time. The concept of nemergy or negative emergy can be introduced to aid in the discussion of environmental damage.

Definition (Emergy efficiency). Emergy efficiency is emergy out divided by emergy in. This efficiency is 1.0 for an optimal process because the emergy of the output is defined to be the emergy of the inputs. For a less than optimal process, the emergy efficiency is the emergy of the inputs to an optimal process over the emergy of the inputs to the process under investigation. Emergy efficiency lies between zero and one.

The transformity of any fuel can be determined by using it to generate standard electricity by an efficient process. The most efficient process might be a fuel cell. Therefore, the emergy of any fuel is the Gibbs availability of the fuel multiplied by the electricity-based transformity.

Balance Equations. Sholto Maud suggested working out energy, availability, and emergy balance equations for simple extraction and conversion processes. Writing balance equations for extraction and Type 1 conversion helped me to understand what must be included in the definition of emergy and what may not be included without encountering inconsistencies. Many other people can improve their understandings by studying the balance equations discussed at http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Balance.html.

Extraction. An example of extraction is the production of petroleum from the well to the refinery. Extraction is discussed in http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-EROI.html.

Type 1 Conversion. The first type of conversion is the production of primary energy from energy supplied by Nature for which we do not compensate Nature. This is a sustainable process provided the energy from Nature (natural energy) comes from a source that is continuously renewed by the Moon or by the Sun shining on the Earth. The input to such a process includes other types of energy, material goods, transportation, labor, taxes, etc. The output includes the principal product, by-products, waste heat, and pollution. Normally, pollution is not considered; however, the concept of nemergy (negative emergy) should be employed to account for pollution of every type even, for example, the extent to which animals are deprived of habitat by the mere existence of the energy production facility. Examples of Type 1 conversion are the production of electricity by windpower and solar power. The emergy balance equation for a Type 1 process is illustrated in Figure 2-1d:

Figure 2-1d. Emergy Balance for Type 1 Conversion

Let us define some symbols to be used in connection with Figure 2-2:

Table 2-2. Symbols used in this discussion
ER	Gibbs availability of fuel produced by process
λ_R	electricity-based transformity of fuel produced
MR	emergy of fuel produced by process = λ_R · ER
MI	the algebraic sum of all of the emergy inputs (except for MN) minus the by-products
EI	Gibbs availability of stream MI
μ	ratio of EN per unit mass to ER per unit mass
EN	Gibbs availability of energy from Nature = μ · (ER + EI)
λ_N	the electricity-based transformity of the energy supplied by Nature
MN	emergy of energy from Nature = λ_N · EN
β	Energy returned over energy invested (EROI) = ER/EI = MR/MI
EP	the Gibbs availability of primary energy in Type 2 conversions
λ_P	the transformity of the primary energy source in Type 2 conversions
MP	the emergy of the primary energy supply in Type 2 conversions

Each of the input emergies, except the emergy supplied by Nature, is to be transformed into a product-equivalent emergy. Then, the emergy invested, MI, is imagined to have been produced by the same process that produced the fuel. In this way, it will be apparent immediately if the process consumes more emergy than it produces. All indirect energy expenses should be included in the MI term, in which case EROI is a good measure of the effectiveness of the process. (See http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-EROI.html.) [An example of an indirect cost is the pro-rata share of the commuting costs of the tax consultant (A) that should be charged to the worker (B) who maintains a windpower installation because the man (C) who serves B lunch had his taxes done by A.]

Then, since

and,

In the first approach, the transformity of the product is determined by the generation of standard electricity with a well-known, efficient process and the transformity of the energy from Nature, whether it be from the tides, from biomass, from wind, from sunlight itself, or from some other natural source, is determined from the emergy balance. Normally, this transformity is well established. Therefore, two separate cases obtain:

Case 1. If λ_N, the value we compute, is greater than λ_N*, the accepted value of the transformity of the natural energy, then we should report that our process is part of a more efficient route to standard electricity, and λ_N should be considered for a new value of the transformity of the energy supplied by Nature.

Case 2. If λ_N is less than λ_N*, then our process is less efficient than the process that established the larger value and we must report an emergy efficiency, η, for our process because we could have generated more emergy with the same quantity of natural energy if we had used the standard process. The reader should remember that the energy from Nature is “free”, but the area of the solar collector or the size of the windmill is not.

In the second approach, the well-established value of the transformity of the energy supplied by Nature is accepted and the transformity of the product is computed from it. Call it λ_R'. If λ_R' is less than λ_R, the true value, we should revert to Case 1 and recalculate the transformity of the natural energy. If λ_R' is greater than λ_R, then the efficiency is λ_R over λ_R'. This is in agreement with Equation 2 above.

Let us imagine the process in the configuration illustrated by Figure 2-1e.

Figure 2-1e. Alternative Diagram for Type 1 Conversion

If the algebraic sum of the emergy inputs to a process minus the emergy supplied by Nature exceeds the emergy of the product, that is, if MI > MR, then the process is wasting energy resources. This is the case for some alternative energy projects that seek venture capital, government subsidies, donations, or unwary buyers. If they were not subsidized by fossil fuel, they would not work.

Type 2 Conversion. The second type of conversion is the production of secondary energy from primary energy. The production of hydrogen from methane or from electrolysis of water is an example of Type 2 conversion. Figure 2-1f is the same as Figure 2-1d except that MP, the primary energy, is substituted for MN:

Figure 2-1f. Emergy Balance for Type 2 Conversion

In the first approach, the transformity of the product is determined by the generation of standard electricity by a well-known, efficient process and the transformity of the primary energy is computed from the emergy balance equation just as we did in the case of a Type 1 conversion, mutatis mutandis:

Case 1. If λ_P, the value we compute, is greater than λ_P*, the accepted value of the transformity of the primary energy, then we should report that our process is part of a more efficient route to standard electricity, and λ_P should be considered for a new value of the transformity of the primary energy.

Case 2. If λ_P is less than λ_P*, then our process is less efficient than the process that established the larger value and we must report an emergy efficiency, η, for our process because we could have generated more emergy with the same quantity of primary energy if we had used the standard process.

In the second approach, the well-established value of the transformity of the primary energy is accepted and the transformity of the product is computed from it. Call it λ_R'. If λ_R' is less than λ_R, the true value, we should revert to Case 1 and recalculate the transformity of the natural energy. If λ_R' is greater than λ_R, then the emergy efficiency is λ_R over λ_R'. This is in agreement with Equation 3 above. These results are worth deriving in a different way:

If a fuel the emergy of which is known is produced by the process under investigation and the sum of all of the emergy costs – both direct and indirect – that go into the process (computed with the true transformity λ_P*) minus the emergies of any useful by-products is greater than the algebraic sum of the emergy inputs for the process that determined the known emergy of the energy product, the process under investigation is sub-optimal and the emergy efficiency, η, is

and, the transformity of the product we would compute from

is higher than the true value λ_R. The only justification for the process is that we cannot do without the product and there is no other way to get it, which is not the case when electricity is used to produce hot water (discussed below) since hot water can be produced with less emergy by burning fuel under normal circumstances. Nevertheless, the process may be needed in extraordinary circumstances where the burning of fuel is prohibited, e. g., on a space satellite.

If the algebraic sum of the emergy inputs for the process under investigation is less than that of the older process, the transformity of the primary energy should be recalculated. It may not be expedient to discontinue production by the older process immediately because of compelling reasons not to shut down the older facilities – not the least of which is the time delay before new facilities can be built. The emergy efficiency of the older process is now less than 1.0.

Type 3 Conversion. The third type of conversion is the manufacture of non-energy goods. The manufacturing process has inputs of energy, material goods, transportation, labor, taxes, etc., and outputs that include a principal product, by-products, and waste heat. This is best illustrated with a diagram such as Figure 2-1g.

Figure 2-1g. Emergy Balance for Manufacturing Process

Table 2-3. Symbols for Figure 4
MI	emergy of direct energy supplies
MX	emergy of inputs of material, transportation, labor, taxes, etc.
MA	emergy of principal product
MB	emergy of by-product
MW	emergy of waste heat stream

The emergy, MW, of the waste heat stream is its availability times the number of kilowatts of standard electricity that can be generated efficiently by one kilowatt-hour of waste heat. The emergy of the sum total of all direct energy inputs to the process is determined in the usual way. The emergy of the sum total of all non-energy inputs must be available from past studies or must be determined during the analysis. It may include contributions from pollution etc. in which case negative emergy in the output is added to the input. Unlike the case of energy production, the transformities of the inputs cannot be influenced by the process. The emergy of the principal product and the by-product must equal the emergy of the inputs minus the emergy of the waste heat. In the case of a principal product as the sole output, the determination is trivial. However, when one or more by-products are present, the emergies of the by-products and the principal project must be apportioned in a canonical manner that should be determined by the analyst on a case-by-case basis.

If the emergy of a by-product is known in some other way, it may be appropriate to use the known value. In a case where the emergies must be distributed equitably, the relation between market price, either instantaneous or averaged over time, and energy or emergy may be useful. See “The Relation of Energy to Money”. Thus, the emergy is apportioned according to market value. This is a singular intrusion of money into the physical realm of emergy analysis and may not be advisable. In a non-market economy, some combination of energy, labor, capital expenditures, product mass or heat of fusion (even) might be of use. In any case, the sum of the emergies of the products must close the emergy balance. The consumer may find it expedient to compare the emergy of any given product with the emergy of a comparable product to minimize his impact upon the environment.

Note. The EROI defined in this essay is sometimes denoted EROI-1 because it is one less than the usual EROI which equals (MR + MI)/MI. The reader should realize that the terms Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 Conversion have no currency outside of this essay.

Matching Problems

At this late date, we still have no idea if even one sustainable primary energy technology exists other than firewood itself. (We would prefer not to burn firewood directly, because of the smoke, even if it turns out that global warming (from carbon dioxide) is not a problem.) In any case, when we analyze our first sustainable energy process, we have no right to imagine that a less expensive sustainable energy source exists that can be “matched” to that process. We cannot make use of predictions concerning the distribution and usefulness of our form of primary energy (call it E_o) or any other. In other words, we must do our determination of feasibility with only occasional reference to the matching problem that will be solved subsequently.

Th us, it is, in fact, E_o, itself, that must carry the burden of the direct and indirect costs with few exceptions. If we have sustainable electricity, probably we would use electric cars, which are much more efficient consumers than gasoline or diesel cars, regardless of the emergy costs associated with building the cars and providing the electricity. Workers commuting back and forth to work will consume about one-third the energy budget of a gasoline-powered car. We do not use electric cars currently because, with 1997 technology, we would consume more fossil fuel making electricity for electric cars than gasoline cars consume on the road. [A good case can be made that the reason we do not use electric cars in 1997 is that oil companies have conspired to prevent us from doing so, but it is not necessary to make so reckless an accusation to advance the thesis of this essay. This book is about radical social change. It is singularly lacking in sensational conspiracies.] It takes about three kilowatt-hours of fossil fuel to produce one kilowatt-hour of electricity in a modern power plant even with cogeneration. Thus, one-third (of the energy consumption of a comparable gasoline-powered car) is the break-even point for cars powered by electricity from power plants – not that we wish to use fossil fuel even when we can use less of it than the comparable budget for sustainable forms of energy. [Probably, in an economy whose only primary energy is electricity, hydrogen from electrolysis of water would be the fuel of choice (or the precursor of the fuel of choice) for applications that cannot use electricity.]

Examples

Consider Process A, which produces a continuous stream of hot water at 500 K. The inputs to Process A are cold water, whose Gibbs availability may be taken to be zero, and 1 kilowatt of 110-volt, 60-Hz AC. Since electricity can be converted to work with an efficiency close to 1.0, we set the power term in the rate form of the energy balance equation to precisely 1 kilowatt. It may be used to lift a weight or it may be converted to heat completely. Let us divide Process A into two control volumes to facilitate analysis. The first control volume, A₁, consists of an ideal electric heater. The energy balance equation, presented in Appendix I, is

It is easy to see from Eq. I-1 that, for A ₁, which is a steady-state system, Q_out = W_in, or, in terms of rates,

Next, consider a control volume, A₂, consisting of the space within Process A through which the water flows. The inputs to Process A₂ are cold water with zero availability and the heat from the electric heater, which for the water should be written Q_in. The output is hot water at 500 K. To see that the availability of the hot water is the output of a Carnot engine the high temperature reservoir of which is the hot water and the low temperature reservoir of which is cold water at 300 K, we write the Availability Balance (Combined First and Second Laws) for Process A₂. The Availability Balance Equation is

or in rate form

where, for a steady-state process, the term to the left of the equal sign is zero; and, for a reversible process, the rate of lost work term is zero. Moreover, the availability of the water entering is zero, the heat out is zero, and both work terms vanish to give

This shows that the Gibbs availability of the hot water is equal to the exergy. (To find the exergy for fuels one must subtract the Gibbs availability of the combustion products from the Gibbs availability of the fuel.) If, instead, we had transformed the availability of the hot water to standard electricity, we would not have been able to do it with anything like the efficiency of a Carnot engine. Perhaps we would have been able to obtain 0.2 kilowatts, i.e., one half of the Carnot efficiency, which is rather optimistic.

Suppose we wish to produce standard electricity (call it E_o) by means of photovoltaic cells. One emergy unit then is one kilowatt-hour of E_o. An emergy flow diagram for this thought experiment appears in Figure 2-2 below. Since, ultimately, we must determine if this technology is feasible or not, we will assume that E_o is the only form of primary energy available. Therefore, we will employ this form of energy for most of our production needs. Moreover, we must assume that the suppliers of goods and services will employ our product as well. Also, most suppliers have some known emergy costs associated with manufactured items – from paper clips to electron scanning microscopes. Since the emergies are known, either because E_o has been used always or because it is easy to convert the emergies to what they would be if E_o were used, no further emergy analysis is required. Let us denote these emergies C_n, where it is understood that C_n will take different values depending on where the symb ol appears. Some of the emergy inputs are not even labeled; i.e., they may include indirect costs that are rarely considered in the peer-reviewed literature. For example, it is assumed that the pro-rata emergy expenses of all people involved in the project in any way whatever are included among these inputs including their living expenses. For a detailed discussion of this point see “Energy in a Mark II Economy”.

Figure 2-2. Illustration of complex primary energy process to demonstrate EROI calculation

Suppose, though, that, in some process that supplies one of our inputs, passive solar energy can be employed to provide hot water, E₁. The manufacturing facilities that produce the passive solar energy apparatus must be assumed to employ standard electricity; nevertheless, under this assumption, we might be able to produce hot water (E₁) the availability of which is 1 kWhr by employing only 0.1 MU, say, of E_o . Since the transformity of hot water is 0.2 MU/kWhr, we have obtained two emergy units for the price of one. Suppose, further, that 0.1 kWhrs of E₁ is required for each MU of E_o produced. The emergy cost of this input is only

All such emergy inputs will be summed. If they exceed one, the process under investigation is infeasible (under present circumstances).

Determination of Feasibility of Nuclear Fission

To compute the total emergy input of nuclear fission, we must consider all phases of the operation from discovery of uranium to the disposal of the decommissioned plant and the storage of radioactive materials for thousands of years. If the sums of the emergies of the inputs, calculated according to the author’s modifications, exceed the a priori assignment of one MU per kWhr of primary energy (electricity), the process is infeasible. (On December 27, 2005, we still don’t know if it’s feasible, since no nation has used nuclear energy without a generous infusion of fossil fuel.) Even in the case of feasibility, if the emergy costs overwhelm the emergy costs of sustainable routes to electricity, nuclear fission should be rejected, unless our energy consumption has exceeded Maximum Renewables.

Figure 2-3. Rough proportional partition of economy into sectors

For the sake of simplicity, we divide the economy into four sectors, namely, energy, production (including agriculture), service, and business as shown in Fig. 2-3 and Fig. 2-4. (Government is considered part of business; but, probably, we should separate transportation from other service categories because of the dramatically greater energy use in that sector. The purpose of these pages is merely to suggest a methodology.) In Fig. 2-3 we divide the sectors roughly proportionally to the share of the economy they represent, but in Fig. 2-4, to make further division of the sectors easier to see and draw, we divide the sectors into equal quarters. To the ith sector one assigns an emergy relation for each hour worked: e_i = e_w,i + a_ie_P,i , where e is the average total emergy expended per person-hour, e_w is the emergy expended at the job, and a is the fraction of the personal emergy budget, e_p , that must be charged to the job. (In the case of some participants, a might be 1.0.) This methodology is promising because employment figures are readily available and the average emergy expenditure per employee can be estimated closely enough. One can dispense with the individual e_wterms in favor of the total emergy budgets or the appropriate pro rata shares, of the participating enterprises. (It is the sum of the a_ie_P,i portions that is conspicuously absent from the standard Energy Returned over Energy Invested analysis in 2005. Please see my study of a theoretical simplified economy in “Energy Flow in a Mark II Economy”.)

We then count the person-hours expended within the energy sector, E_o, both nuclear and non-nuclear that should be charged to nuclear. For example, the work done to discover uranium, mine it, refine it, comply with regulations including getting the plant permitted are part of E_o
. (This is not the E_o of the Example (above).) Also, the employees at a nuclear power plant drive back and forth to work and part of their personal emergy budgets, coming mostly from fossil fuels, would not have to be expended if they did not work on nuclear emergy. But, the nuclear sector is serviced by equipment manufacturing and plant construction, which we place in the production sector. Therefore we must count the hours expended in the production sector, P₁, that must be charged to the energy sector. The transportation of uranium ore, fuel rods, and production equipment belongs to the service sector, but the people who feed energy and production workers their lunches away from home, do their income taxes, etc. – all of those people spend emergy that must be charged to nuclear fission. Thus, we must count hours in the service sector, S₁, that must be charged to the energy sector and the production sector. This service may include scientific research and engineering as well as window washing. Finally, nothing gets done (in this crazy economy) without a huge amount of sales, bargaining, deal making, accounting, shuffling paper, counting beans, hiring and firing, scheming, forecasting, and telling other people what to do. All of which costs emergy, especially the fossil-fuel emergy required to carry these people around in cars, trains, and planes. So, we count the hours in the business sector, B₁, that must be charged to the energy, production, and service sectors.

Figure 2-4. Accounting for emergy costs of nuclear fission

But, P₁, S₁, and B₁ must be serviced by additional person-hours, E₂, from the energy sector, which hours, in turn, must be serviced by the production sector, P₂. For example, accountants need computers and copying machines, paper and ink and many other manufactured items. Economists add this to the Gross Domestic Product, but it is really overhead and should be counted as a debit – not economic growth. This second level of hours spent in the energy and production sectors entails additional work, S₂, in the service sector and all three require additional hours, B₂, spent in the business sector. Secondary person-hours are followed by tertiary hours until no new hours can be identified. (One must count the gasoline expended by the person who cleans the floors where the paper is printed to do the income tax of the person who delivers the sandwiches to the cafeteria where the man eats who services the copying machine of the person who does the taxes for the truck driver who carries the fuel to the garage where the truck is fueled that carries the steel to the construction site where the equipment is built to maintain the nuclear power plant. The reader gets the idea.)

[Note in proof (2-5-97). In accounting for emergy inputs to transportation, for example, we may take credit for the increased efficiency of electric vehicles over internal combustion vehicles, since we may assume that the emergy from the nuclear power plant is the only primary energy available. Alternatively, we may use that emergy to produce hydrogen for fuel cells if that process reduces the proportion of emergy production that must be charged to overhead.]

This iterative accounting procedure must converge eventually because the total person-hours in the economy is finite over a finite length of time, which may not exceed the period of decay of the radioactive materials. This difficult calculation can be carried out in principle; but, undoubtedly, excessive emergy costs will be encountered in many cases early in the process.

I cannot emphasize enough that this calculation should actually be done – at least roughly – for nuclear energy, photovoltaic energy, energy from biomass from both biological and other processes, such as pyrolysis of biomass. The first two technologies produce electricity, my favorite choice for an absolute emergy standard; i.e., one kilowatt-hour of 110 volt, 60 Hz AC is one emergy unit (MU) even though electricity is not primary energy. Only the assumed emergy of one MU per kWhr of pyrolysis products (or pyrolysis products that have been reacted with hydrogen to produce diesel fuel) is inconsistent with the practice of choosing electricity to be the universal standard to which all emergies should be referred. Inevitably, some electricity must be employed in any biomass process; therefore, we must assign an emergy of 3 MU to one kilowatt-hour of availability from electricity, since we shall require (approximately) 3 kilowatt-hours of pyrolysis product to produce one kilowatt-hour of electricity, as estimated previously. We have reverted to Odum’s original definition; and we have established a transformity of 3 for electricity. We may not employ this emergy or transformity for electricity outside of this calculation without endangering our hope for a universal (electrical) standard for emergy. Alternatively, we could begin this calculation by assigning an emergy of one-third MU for pyrolysis products.

If electricity were abundant, but the scarcity of diesel fuel (needed to run essential farm machinery that we could not afford to replace) had become a life-and-death crisis, we might be pressed into converting electricity into diesel fuel at a loss. Suppose diesel fuel were produced by reacting pyrolysis products of biomass with hydrogen. What is the transformity of diesel fuel in that case? The analyst will want to consider carefully the assignment of emergies, exergies, and transformities in every application.

Improving Efficiency

Suppose nuclear emergy proves infeasible under the circumstances described above. Nothing stops us from recomputing the emergy input costs in a society that has already abandoned materialism. Suddenly, the huge overhead of business and government is gone, e.g., licensing, regulation, inspection, (graft?), exorbitant executive salaries for people who contribute about as much as Dilbert’s manager (the pointy haired guy). (“Dilbert” is a comic strip, written by Scott Adams, that ridicules non-technical managers who “manage” technical workers generally without a clue as to what they (the “techies”) are doing. The reason this is funny is that it is true.)

If decentralization has occurred, the costs of workers commuting will have been eliminated. If money has been eliminated, the costs of accounting, collecting taxes, paying wages, collecting bills – even grocery bills – will have been eliminated. If delegislation has occurred, all legal costs will have disappeared. Ninety percent of the population will have been freed from drudgery and, since economic contingency would have vanished, they could afford to do as they pleased, which might include bu ilding a primary energy provider.

Indeed, eliminating materialism can make the infeasible feasible. And, if the infeasible is essential to our survival, I don’t see what there is to decide (politically).

Scarcity

The results of the calculations are not critical for my case unless a per capita energy supply of 1 kW, on an electricity basis (110 AC, 60 Hz), cannot be supplied. High-energy scenarios are rejected for reasons other than their expected impossibility. The very low energy prognosis must be countered with much more stringent birth-control policies – one child per couple, say. Again, one can only hope that this could be achieved voluntarily if it were necessary. People have got to be made aware of the urgency of the situation. They must be convinced that they are personally responsible for the outcome – and might be held accountable for their behavior. Dissenters should be encouraged to speak openly and should be defeated soundly in public debate wherever it occurs. Pointing out the fallacies of policies that promote population growth is one way, perhaps the best way, to teach the lesson. Please do not let anyone make a casual remark, even, that the earth is not really over-populated without making a strenuous objection, even if you are classified thereafter as a crashing bore.

Emergy Analysis of Economies

The Emergy Cycle

Figure 2-5. Odum’s emergy diagram for economy

Regardless of the basis chosen and in spite of the difficulties, we can use emergy to analyze the U.S. or, indeed, the world economy. This is represented in Fig. 2-5 as a system diagram. In Fig. 2-5, the emergy from fossil fuel is represented by a thick arrow entering production from the left-hand border. The emergy of manufactured objects is stored in a capital pool and, in part, is recycled to production. If the portion recycled is sufficiently great that the means of production can be enlarged so that more emergy can be drawn from the environment and more products produced, we say that we are capitalizing; i.e., we have capitalism in the strict sense. Capitalization can occur globally when the supply of emergy from the environment is essentially infinite, but what we are experiencing now is a gradual shrinkage in the net amount of emergy available from the environment; i.e., we must go out to sea to find oil or transport oil over long distances. Also, we must pay more emergy to restore the environment in case we spill oil or st rip mine coal, for example. Pollution is represented by an arrow on the left-hand side of the drawing entering the system. If we wished to represent pollution by an arrow leaving the diagram, we might coin the term nemergy, which would be defined to be negative emergy. In addition, we have a very expensive government (lumped together with business in the center of the diagram) that consumes emergy that might have gone toward improving production. The arrows going to junk heat represent depreciation, consumption, and excess emergy used by less-than-optimal processes. In an emergy limited world (this world), capitalism cannot exist! [Note in proof (10-22-06). It has been proved in my short essay “On Capitalism” that capitalism requires an expanding economy. Conservation measures may counteract the increase in energy budget one would expect in an expanding economy to some extent; however, the extent of conservation is bounded below and economic expansion is unbounded.]

The Money Cycle

Business and Government

Nevertheless, business people (the money people) do their best to keep the money cycle (shown in Fig. 2-5) turning counter to the emergy cycle as fast as possible. The faster the money cycle turns the more money they acquire even though they produce less than no emergy. Since the emergy cycle cannot be accelerated, we have what is known as inflation, i.e., less emergy per dollar. Odum’s diagram is the first explanation of inflation that ever made sense to me.

In this type of economy, the people are regarded as belonging to production, business, government, etc. by virtue of their jobs. The proportions are represented by the percentages on the drawing. Clearly, an inordinate effort is consumed by business and government. (What is the fraction of the population that belongs to the health-care sector? Is health-care overhead? Is it wealth?) Eventually, people begin to lose jobs; the infrastructure begins to decay; and society reverts to barbarism. This is a dog-eat-dog economy.

Let us agree that businesspeople and government employees, with the exception of astrophysicists, particle physicists, space researchers, etc. do not spend as much energy per hour on the job as do people in the production sector; i.e., e_w,B in the formula e_i = e_w,i + a_ie_p,i , where i replaced by B in the case of business (and government), is smaller than e_w,P. Normally, they operate low wattage computers and even the cost of air-conditioning and lighting their offices is insufficient to overwhelm the cost of forging steel, for example. However, the part of their personal energy budgets that must be charged to the job might be greater as they often wear suits that must be dry cleaned and, if they receive high salaries, undoubtedly they consume too much high-grade energy in consumer goods and in the operation of their homes. I know a businessman in Houston whose monthly electric bill is approximately $500. The excess over 1 kW per person is enough to sustain two third-world people for each of the four members of his household, some of whom must starve to death no matter what else is done if he should maintain this expenditure. In fact, we might make the case that, if he reduce his consumption to his fair share, more than twenty-four people in Bangladesh who consume 0.1 kW less than subsistence could be spared a horrible death (starvation) each month. In a very real sense, he is responsible for their deaths, which might rise to a staggering debt of 8640 before he dies or is killed. (I don’t suppose it is legal to kill him now to save so many people and to spare him a harsh judgment if God is watching and is at all vindictive, which I very much doubt.)

Now many readers believe that the man (with the $500 electric bill) paid for the use of the electricity and is, therefore, entitled to use it. Nothing could be further from the case. To quote Tom Pinch in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, the “money is the least important part of the transaction”. All Americans are responsible for the deaths that are caused by America’s imperialistic policies because all of us – even the poorest of our poor – benefit from them. A moment’s reflection, or, in my case, comparison of my expenses when I am unemployed with my expenses when I have a job, should convince us that e_p,i is much smaller for unemployed people than it is for job holders. E.g., I don’t need a car when I am unemployed. Do you?

Perhaps I have mentioned already that this general culpability (“for all have sinned”) exonerates terrorists from the oft-made charge that they have injured innocent people. No one is innocent – which indictment quite naturally includes the terrorist himself (lest anyone suppose that I approve of him. I don’t judge him either – no more do I judge the “money creeps”. “Judge not lest ye be judged” Don’t worry; you will be judged whatever you do or don’t do. People are really into judging one another, don’t you think? “What do you care what other people think?” Even if there were no God, we would have to imagine one who knows everything we think and do! We had better please God – imaginary or not!

To continue the indictment of business, a large proportion of the population is employed by business or government, including those who serve business and government indirectly – perhaps as high as 90% or higher. How many people do you know personally who produce something with their own hands that is needed to sustain life? Don’t count the products consumed by business and government. The paper consumed by government is an overhead on our standard of living. My philosophy claims that this expenditure is more than what the human race can afford. (This book is overhead; but, in my view, an essential overhead.) The resources of the earth and the sun have been bequeathed to the human race in common. They must be expended for the common good. No one is entitled to a greater share than another. Nearly everyone agrees that the government spends too much. What I am claiming is that business spends too much and produces practically nothing of value. This is a new idea for most readers. I claim we must find a way to replace business and government. They are cruel, ugly, base (as opposed to noble), immoral, which won’t impress many Americans; but, when the majority of “nobodies” like me realize that we flat-out cannot afford them, they, the majority, may begin to pay attention.

Many people depend on the jobs supplied by business and government. The jobs and wages aspect of current economic practice virtually guarantees that these people will suffer from the increase in efficiency resulting from the elimination of wasteful business and government activities. Why should these people not receive their fair share of the benefits to the economy achieved by eliminating wasteful business and government activities? For example, when an army base closes, the victims might receive a fair share of the money saved – even under our ridiculous capitalist economy. Why should the budget be balanced at the expense of a few and not all?

It is easy to see that the concept of a job is absurd and should be replaced. Whenever I hear a politician call for more jobs, I know that he or she hasn’t got a clue as to how the economy works. One day (DV), I will list the contradictions derived from the notion that people must have jobs to live. For now, consider the conflict between cutting government spending and providing jobs for everyone. Now, imagine what the idea of “free-trade” does for that situation. The notion that we must have a global economy is used to get people (you?) to accept lower wages and be glad that they are employed at all. Why should everyone be employed if a small percentage of us can produce locally everything we need – not what we are led to think we need but what we actually need!

Does the Government Do Anything Useful?

I have drawn a thin line with a question mark in Fig. 2-5 to indicate that, through the sponsorship of scientific research (not all scientific research is as mindless and wasteful as space research) the government could provide something useful to the economy. It does not have to supply much useful information to have a large impact because the transformity of information can be very high. If the government were to supply an equation of state that would govern the two liquid phases found in mixtures of oil and water, we should be very grateful. Unfortunately, that has not been done. If the government would compute the emergy input (using the author’s methodology) required to produce 1 kWhr of nuclear electricity, I would be delighted. Apparently, this is not even thought of. On the other hand, one can dial (as of June 18, 1993) a phone number (1-303-497-3235) in Colorado and obtain a very good approximation to the value of the solar flux for that day. One also obtains a report and prediction of solar activity and the magnetic field for yesterday and today. [Note (7-21-2004). That phone number still answers today, however the information imparted is different. I did n ot hear the value of the solar constant stated explicitly.] This must be enormously useful to someone, but I can’t imagine to whom. I have discussed the National Science Foundation in my essay “On Honor in Science”. My comments have not been favorable.

Can the Government Solve Social Problems?

The “liberal” approach to ameliorating the terrible misery inherent in the American system is to institute government programs to correct the worst defects of materialism. (Admittedly the government is not monolithic, but it is centralized sufficiently that no one should expect it do anything truly helpful for the poor of our country after seeing it bomb the poor people of other countries, cf., Iraq, to protect the business interests of the wealthiest Americans. The purpose of government is to serve business; but, when its own interests conflict with those of business, it takes care of itself first.) Regrettably, I find that I must agree with conservatives in the observation that these programs almost never have the effect that is intended. A variation of Odum’s diagram with some hypothetical figures as in Fig. 2-6 might help us understand why this might be the case.

Figure 2-6. Emergy flows in a thought experiment

One imagines that the economy produces 100 emergy units (MU), whatever an emergy unit turns out to be (obviously 1% of the emergy produced). Also, we suppose that the economy is being maintai ned by only 10% of its production rate, i.e., 10 MU, and that it operates with the amazing emergy efficiency of 50%, i.e., it is half as efficient as the optimal production system, which, of course, has not been invented yet. In this model, we imagine the consumers drawing their livings directly from the pool of capital rather than from the enterprises to which they are attached by virtue of their jobs. We further suppose that only 20% of production has to be recycled to maintain business, government, and production. Let us suppose that this is a conservative number. The 80 MUs corresponds to the fraction of each person’s emergy budget that cannot be charged to his work, namely, (1 - a_i)e_p_,i .

Suppose, now, that, according to a proposal to eliminate poverty, government decides to collect an additional 6 MUs in taxes to pay for programs for the poor, which might even include job training, as in Fig. 2-7. I believe that an overhead of only 1 MU for this program is a very conservative estimate and accounts for the fact that the total emergy available for distribution to the consumers is reduced by only 1 MU. The careful reader will notice that I have not increased productivity to account for more educated workers. This makes perfect sense as the worker will be converted from a fruit picker to a paper shuffler – in all likelihood.

Figure 2-7. Emergy flows in a thought experiment

In Fig. 2-7, government absorbs an additional 6 MUs from the economy in order to pass 5 MUs of its increased input to needy people. Therefore, since the total emergy input to the economy doesn’t change (perhaps because it is already at its upper limit) and production can’t increase its efficiency, 74 MUs, rather than 80 MUs, reaches the consumer in the normal manner, namely, as wages after taxes. The government supplies another 5 MUs, but the net result in this conservative scenario is only a 1.25% drop in the average standard of living of the citizens. Since the rich take theirs out first, the brunt of this minor hardship would fall on the poor who were supposed to benefit. Even if the 5 MUs were aimed directly at the poor, the rich would get at the money by starting drug rehabilitation centers, correspondence schools, etc. Of course, private “charities” would not do better. Non-profit private charity has become profit oriented. Witness the exorbitant salaries paid to United Way executives.

I cannot resist injecting a little first-hand anecdotal evidence. An acquaintance of mine was fired (unfairly, according to him) from a major charity. He fought fiercely to regain his position, going to court, etc. I was puzzled and asked him why he should care about being employed in such a place. Surely, with his Ivy League education and background (and prodigious intelligence), he could do much better. He answered, “Are you kidding? This job is extremely lucrative!”

A Humanistic Economy

In the humanistic economy diagrammed in Fig. 2-8, competition for wealth and power has been abandoned. People receive their fair (equal) share of the national (or world) dividend regardless of the activities they pursue, therefore they are no longer regarded as belonging to their jobs and the overhead of business and government is saved. The only wealth is true wealth (emergy), which cannot be hoarded. The economy is intentionally permitted to reach steady state; production serves people who belong to themselves; and the only motivation is intrinsic motivation – as opposed to greed and fear. Involvement replaces employment.

Figure 2-8. Diagram for a humanistic economy

The Availability Supply

Energy Flow Diagram for Earth

Let us now turn our attention to the flow of energy within the earth’s system. The energy flow diagram in Fig. 2-9 is a modified version of Fig. 6-1 in the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) 1981 study [4], therefore some of the numbers may not be the latest available, but that should not invalidate our rough calculations. Some of the numbers on the drawing are given with greater precision than would be warranted by the accuracy of the energy balance; nevertheless, the arithmetic does not quite work out. (Old joke: “The melody is terrible, but the words aren’t good.”) But that is of no importance to us. We need just a rough idea of where the energy is going. We know that these numbers do not represent availability because, if they did, the number representing radiation from the earth would be more or less, but not equal, to the figure given. The only concession to availability analysis is the designation of some of the flows, e.g., agriculture, as high quality. We would like to have an availability analysis, but we shall have to forego that luxury for now.

The solar constant is about 1353 W/m². That means that where the straight l ine joining the center of the sun to the center of the earth crosses the outermost layer of the earth’s atmosphere, 100 miles above sea level, say (since we wi sh to calculate an upper bound on the rate of energy transfer), the mean energy flux due to sunlight is about 1353 Joules per second per square meter. The solar constant isn’t quite constant, but we shall use it for very rough calculations; so, we may safely ignore the variations. The atmosphere is a very thin shell surrounding the earth and whatever we take to be the outermost layer has a radius less than 100 miles or 160,934 meters greater than the radius of the earth, which we shall take to be 6,378,000 meters. Further, we shall assume that the sunlight strikes the earth in a plane wave. Actually, the sun is more like a point source in the sky subtending just over a half of a degree, but the calculation of the total energy entering the earth’s system is simpler if we assume all of the photons are traveling in paths parallel to the aforementioned line connecting the centers of the two bodies, which gives a value for the total power from the sun entering the earth’s system that is slightly high. (The earth’s system is all of the mass contained within a large (concentric) sphere just beyond the furthest reaches of the earth’s atmosphere and outside the smaller (concentric) sphere representing the depth beneath the earth’s surface that is, for all practical purposes, unreachable.) The projected area of earth, then, is:

Therefore, the total energy striking earth is less than 1353 W/m² · 134.3 E12m² = 181,710 TW, in excellent agreement with the 178,000 TW that Häfele [4] obtains. We could have done a fancy calculation using integral calculus to account for the actual spherical nature of the wave fronts of the sun’s radiation, but it wouldn’t have affected our answer by more than a few percent; so, we would have felt foolish for wasting our time like that. (Actually, I did do the fancy calculation and I did feel foolish; however, this was a counter-example to the well-known “principle” that no person whose age exceeds 40 can evaluate the integrals of integral calculus.)

Notice that the reflected sunlight is about 30% of the incident radiation. Continued population increase and economic “development” could drive that figure higher. Highways and rooftops reflect sunlight “better” than forests do. Another 46.2% of the incident radiation maintains the temperature of the air and water. The mechanical energy of the wind and waves amounts to about 370 TW. This is a high-quality flow; but, for each joule of mechanical energy extracted from the ocean currents, the flow of about 10,000 joules of thermal energy is interrupted. This would have an unpredictable effect upon the weather. The ratio of thermal to mechanical energy is only about 30 or 40 in the case of wind and we should harvest some of that. The 5 TW of run-off is where we get our hydroelectric power, but it’s not worth killing off all the salmon for a fraction of a terawatt additional power. The ecological effects of damming rivers must be taken more seriously. The giant Ashwan Dam project in Egypt was catastrophic, which could have been predicted in advance by the engineers and constructors who used it to line their pockets.

Figure 2-9. Energy flows in the environment

Planetary and lunar motion and geothermal energy can play a small role under very restricted circumstances, but the big renewable contributor is photosynthesis and that amounts to only 100 TW. The rate of energy capture by photosynthesis could grow if we let it; but, again, population growth and economic development will have the opposite effect as we cut down forests for housing and urban sprawl. Thus, in Fig. 2-9 the only “high-quality” flows, other than the extraction of fossil fuels, are from wind, run-off (hydroelectric), heat convection (geothermal), and agriculture (biomass, including silviculture). Is it realistic to expect to harvest even 10% of the energy captured by photosynthesis without extinguishing animal life?! Please remember that the human race has been sustained by photosynthesis throughout its existence. This is the fundamental way in which the sun’s ability to reduce the entropy of the earth sustains life. A change from this fundamental fact of life is very unlikely on the face of it. I have not proved that a fundamental change in the way in which life is supported is impossible. After all, this essay assumes fundamental spiritual change is possible.

Sustainable Energy: How Much Can We Expect?

We would now like to use the concept of emergy to estimate the standard of living in an economy driven by sustainable energy – a world where fossil fuel has been exhausted or may not be used because of global environmental effects or where prudence and common decency dictate that fossil fuel be preserved for future generations and better uses. The best estimates (hard technological limits) for sustainable energy were evaluated in a massive effort by the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis [4]. A few crucial results appear in Table 2-2.

By 2030, the population of the world is expected to exceed ten billion souls [13]. We have approximately 10 billion kilowatts, which must be distributed equally among 10 billion people to avoid widespread famine and misery, i.e., 1 kilowatt/capita. Besides the obvious immorality of policies that tolerate widespread misery, Machiavellian pragmatism dictates that large numbers of miserable people will be a continuous danger to people who are well off – unless genocide is employed. Moreover, we have assumed that reasonable people (homo sapiens) cannot be happy while others are miserable.

Unless we take economic development to mean economic shrinkage to manageable and humanistic pre-industrial levels, but with a post-industrial soft technological basis, the idea of sustainable economic development is absolutely idiotic. Anyone who uses the term wit hout qualifying it to refer to a level of interaction with nature that is no more violent than the economy of the North American Indians before the advent of Europeans is a fool or a liar. I am afraid that takes in a large class of people, especially people in high places, in particular, every head of state of every nation whose policy is known to me. Who am I too denigrate the high and mighty? Who are they to wield power with so little knowledge and understanding? I am willing to debate anyone anywhere on these issues. The debate must be sufficiently protracted that I can make all my points and refute a torrent of rhetoric backed by tons of irrelevant statistics. (In science, the idea is to extract the sharpest conclusions from the least data. If the scientist can reach a conclusion by pure logic, so much the better.)

Fossil Fuels

The fossil fuel extraction shown on this 1975 chart (Fig. 2-9) is 7.5 TW. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), directed by Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize [14], predicts 4.8 TW oil production during 1994 [15]. Presumably, natural gas and coal use could bring the fossil fuel extraction up to a level comparable with 1975. I don’t know if we are using more or less fossil fuel today compared to 1975. We are probably extracting less per capita. Also, we probably expend more energy per kWhr recovered since we have to go out to sea to drill for oil, or transport it from far away places, e.g., Alaska, or dig deeper mines, or satisfy more stringent environmental constraints imposed by people who won’t allow strip mines to be abandoned without repairing the surface of the earth. If these things be true, and we certainly need more research to determine if they are true, then we have already begun the long “recession” that will take us back down to a level of energy consumption that can be sustained by nature.

Most experts believe we shall run out of petroleum by 2030, 2050, or 2093, i.e., soon. Taking 10,000 billion barrels of oil as a generous upper bound on the total reserves both discovered and undiscovered (more than twice the highest estimate I have seen in the literature) and using the CERA estimate of 68.3 million barrels per day or 24.93 billion barrels per year, we would run out in approximately 400 years. This assumes no American-style economic development anywhere in the world, no population growth, and no additional expenditures to reduce pollution. Neither does it take into account conservation measures that might counterbalance some of the other effects. We shall consider these effects below. In any case, the petroleum will be gone in a remarkably short time when compared with all of human history.

We have large reserves of coal, but the coal that is easy to get is nearly gone. People will no longer submit to having their neighborhoods strip-mined and deep-shaft mining might consume more energy than it produces – if it be done safely. Besides all that, the enormous difficulties of converting coal into clean energy must be overcome. Perhaps these difficulties are not entirely separate from the difficulties of consuming renewable biomass, but coal is not renewable. Also, the emergy cost to deliver coal to the consumer on an appropriate scale may be greater than the emergy cost to deliver forest and farm waste, municipal solid waste, and other forms of renewable biomass. Research must be done to see how competing technologies stack up on an emergy basis rather than on a dollar basis. I hope the reader understands by now that energy costs in dollars per kWhr are meaningless.

Of course, we are going to burn non-renewable natural gas. It is clean but does not avoid the greenhouse effect – if it exists. Perhaps we must use it or lose it; I’m not sure. But the important thing about natural gas is how small the reserves are. The known reserves amount to our energy budget for only a very few years. Even the most improbable upper bound on total available natural gas both discovered and undiscovered amounts to a very short period assuming today’s usage pattern. Please do not let anyone convince you that natural gas is the answer. Proponents of natural gas are either pitifully naive or else have a sinister hidden agenda. Remember that the natural gas is the common heritage of the entire human race – including posterity.

We have additional sources of fossil fuel such as shale oil, but the difficulties of recovering them may prove insurmountable and, in any case, they are not renewable – regardless of the size of the reserves. Let us now turn to alternatives to fossil fuels.

Large-Scale Alternatives

These remarks are going to be uncharacteristically brief. I do not view any of these options favorably, but I have insufficient data to prove that one or the other is infeasible. I must emphasize at least one more time the need for more research to determine how much emergy is required per unit of emergy produced by each technology. I suggest that we choose 1 kWhr of 60 cycle 110 volt AC as the unit of emergy (MU). This is easy to convert to fossil-fuel equivalents (FFE); namely, 3 FFE = 1 MU – approximately.

The most efficient manufacturing technology will produce 1 MU per MU input. We have discussed why this will not be the case in the modification of Odum’s methods that seems to be necessary to determine the feasibility of sustainable primary energy production technologies. If the emergy consumed over and above the emergy (1 MU = 1 kWhr) provided by the primary emergy source, i.e., if the emergy consumed by overhead exceed the (hypothetical) emergy produced by the most efficient primary energy technology we can find, the most efficient process would not be good enough and sustainable primary energy would be impossible!

A simple way to express whether or not an energy technology meets the criterion of the methodology for determining efficiency described above is as follows: If this technology were the sole energy source, could society sustain itself or would it wind down to the complete absence of all econo mic activity? Is the technology a net producer of energy of its own kind or a net consumer? We know that firewood, coal, and petroleum have produced sustainable economies in the short run. Around 1850, population growth and urbanization led to the first firewood crises. Coal and the railways saved the day for urbanization and industrial civilization, i.e., civilization itself (in the sense of urbanization). We are now in the age of petroleum, but that must end soon unless we permit the enormous disparities in wealth to persist with their concomitant control of population growth by famine, epidemic disease, and war. In point of fact, we do not know if any other energy technology can sustain a large population. I have not done nor has anyone else done the research to determine if a sustainable primary energy technology is possible. Therefore, the rest of this chapter amounts to no more than my best scientific guesses based on the limited information I can afford to gather.

Although no technology could be found to sustain a large population, we know that firewood can sustain a smaller population – perhaps as large as two billion souls. Even the pollution caused by burning wood might be tolerable, especially if we used the wisest and most considerate combustion technologies in a moral world informed by a humanistic minimal proper religion.

In this worst-case scenario, where we go back to a primitive sustainable technology such as firewood with the concomitant shrinkage in population to firewood-society limits, how this shrinkage in population would occur is unclear. Several possibilities suggest themselves:

1. Systematic birth control is the most humane route back to a sustainable population size, but it would be nearly as difficult to implement as anything suggested in this essay.

2. Survival of the fittest in a fair competitionistic society.

3. Make no changes in our behavior, which would probably lead to one of the following:

4. Brutal wars of extermination.

5. Intervention by nature, i.e., famine, epidemic disease, etc.

But, the survival of the most brutal seems most likely. Undoubtedly, in that case, the extinction of the human race would be preferable as some things are worse than death. This extinction might be facilitated by knowledgeable people (micro-biologists, perhaps) holding themselves to the highest moral standards.

Non-Renewable But Very Extensive

Nuclear Fission

We have discussed nuclear fission by way of explaining the methodology to be applied to each technology to determine feasibility. Moreover, it is insufficient to store nuclear waste unmonitored. The storage of nuclear waste should be an active process with on-going energy costs for thousands of years. Also, it is unclear that people motivated by profit are morally capable of running a nuclear plant safely. This will be documented in a special chapter listing the documented sins of business, government, and industry – all taken from the establishment (corporate) press, which is not likely to exaggerate the sins of its advertisers or their clients.

Fusion

As far as hot fusion goes, we are waiting. It will have to be justified according to the same methodology applied to other technologies. It has one serious drawback to begin with; namely, no working fluid can be found for the power cycle that is not considerably colder than the plasma. That means that heat must be transferred through a large finite temperature difference, which, according to thermodynamics (and discussed in Appendix I), results in a large lost-work term. The term lost work is nearly self-explanatory.

Geothermal

Geothermal is not really renewable energy. When the temperature of the core of the earth reaches the temperature of the surface, it will be gone. And, for that matter, so might we, since the cycles of volcanis m and continental shift are neces sary to sustain life on earth [6]. Moreover, we do not know what the effect might be of tapping large reserves of geothermal energy near the surface of the earth as in Yellowstone Park. The IIASA (International Institute of Applied System Analysis) estimates that we can capture at most 1 TWyr/yr from geothermal. I suppose we should use geothermal lightly on a personal or local (non-commercial) basis in the few places where it can be done, but it certainly does not represent a solution to our problem.

Renewable

Wind

One of the benefits of having a large pro-industrial / anti-environmental class in our country is that they save us the trouble of debunking the less w orkable sustainable energy schemes. Dixie Lee Ray, the former governor of Washington, is a good example. She wrote an anti-environmental book that is used in environmental classes at the University of Houston [17]. (I guess that makes the University of Houston officially anti-environmental, although it is innocent until proven guilty.) In her book, she shows that wind power is not the answer and I believe she is right. Most of the wind energy is above 200 meters. Can you imagine the capital (emergy) costs that go into buil ding a 200-meter-tall wind machine, which may be toppled in the next good windstorm! That’s a real problem. One wants the wind to blow hard but not too hard. The wind may not be willing to cooperate. Moreover, only a few places in the world are suitable places for large-scale capture of mechanical energy from wind. However, windpower can be used locally on an individual (non-commercial) basis to do something – at least pump water or grind grain (that’s why we call them windmills) as in olden times. IIASA allows 3 TWyr/yr for wind. I think that’s wishful thinking. Again, we need a complete economic analysis on the basis of emergy.

Tidal and Waves

We have already discussed the large thermal to mechanical energy ratio in waves. Not many locations i n the worl d are amenable to harnessing the tides. IIASA allows only 0.045 TWyr/yr, which we may safely ignore in our long range planning.

Hydroelectric

Hydroelectric turns out to have more adverse ecological effects than we previously imagined. Besides, the magnitude of the run-off is very small – only 5 TWyr/yr. The IIASA allows 3 TWyr/yr from this technology. They imagine that we can convert 60% of the run-off to electricity. I can’t imagine how that can be true. Nevertheless, where large hydroelectric plants are in place it might do even more harm ecologically to remove them. The power station at Niagara Falls is likely to be running into the foreseeable future – barring the complete collapse of our economic system as in numerous apocalyptic novels and movies, e.g., Road Warriors starring Mel Gibson.

Ocean Thermal Electric Conversion

It is a well-known undergraduate thermodynamics problem to determine the Carnot efficiency of a heat engine operating between the (relatively) warm surface waters of the ocean and the (relatively) cold depths. The efficiency is pitifully small. Now as I understand it someone intends to place multi-million dollar floating power plants in the ocean subject to the corrosive effects of seawater and the destructive effects of the ocean itself to operate at this pitifully small Carnot effi ciency, which, if you remember, can be approached but never attained. I wonder what Lloyds of London thinks about this. I do not, in general, admire scoffers, so I shall say no more about this idea, except that it must be subject to the same analysis as e very other technology.

Lunar Power Station

Criswell and Waldron [18] suggest placing solar collectors on the moon and beaming energy to the earth as microwaves. Only two transmitters are required and a lunar satellite or two to account for the short period of time when neither of the moon’s antipodes is in line of sight with the earth. Hundreds of decentralized collectors are required and I like that idea very much, but I am terrified of whoever will control the transmitters.

Criswell claimed privately that he did an energy efficiency analysis, but none appears in his papers. I am afraid this imaginative scheme would not stand up to the scrutiny required by the methodolog y recommended above. People working in space will need frequent rest and rehabilitation. (Space sickness is real.) Imagine the cost of shuttling hundreds of workers back and forth from the moon to the earth – even with a permanent space station (which I believe is beyond our means as well). But, I now wish to give one of my heretical arguments for rejecting this technology.

Space is the common property of all of humanity or of a population larger than humanity or of no one. To invade space, especially with commerce (viewed metaphorically as a disease like cancer in this essay), would be improper even if every single human being signed off on it. But that is quite impossible as I shall not sign off on it and when I am gone someone will take my place. In effect I am saying that I share th e custodianship of space and you may not invade a domain of which I am the steward. Just stay out of my space; I don’t permit it. What’s that you say? The common will must prevail. Only if it can be defended according to the principles of aesthetics, reasonableness, and utility, and the intrusion of commerce into space is guaranteed to be defeated on all three counts. Someone said that the exploration was a joint international effort, therefore it was sanctioned by all of humanity. My reply is that the leadership of the sovereign states of the world and of the United Nations does not represent all of humanity. On the contrary, it is opposed to it. Leadership represents essentially – itself.

The bottom line, though, is that we can’t afford the emergy to go into space. A scientist who represents NASA at scientific meetings (twice while I was in attendance) was unable to tell me how many kWhrs are consumed on a typical space-shuttle mission. That’s something he should know. That’s the first thing I want to know. You can bet the number of people who have to starve to death to pay for a shuttle mission is shocking and, as previously shown, it is proper to view it from that perspective. (There may be a thousand problems that would have to be removed before one could say that space research was the cause of their deprivation; but, when all those problems were removed, space research would stand between themselves and life itself.)

Permit me to make one more observation with respect to who has the authority to permit the exploration of space. Let us begin by asking who has the authority to permit the exploration of earth? We all know the famous explorers, e.g., Columbus, were not truly explorers but rather invaders. America had already been “discovered” by the people who lived there. When I bought my five acres in Upstate New York, I did not buy the mineral rights. Who retained the mineral rights and why? But, what about the deed to the property that I did obtain? A title search was made (at my expense) and the history of the transfer of ownership was traced back through several “owners”, but not very far back. What would have been discovered if the title were searched back to Columbus? On the wall of the local barbershop hung a map with huge areas of the county ceded to John Doe, say, by King George III. Where did King George get the authority to cede parts of Upstate New York to anyone? By the sword, that is, illegally and immorally by every rational law of God and man. Now, if the title to every piece of land in the United States is in doubt, how can authority to explore outer space be valid? Outer space is unoccupied, so you say. I’m sorry, but that won’t wash. Who has the authority to give one person the right to occupy it rather than another? The answer is no one. I have provided a short essay in Vol. II [12] of my collected essays elaborating my position on space research.

Photovoltaic

Odum and Odum [5] claim that photovoltaic solar energy is a dead loser. I believe them, but I would like to see the data. I think the methodology suggested here should be employed. A cursory calculation seems to indicate that it might be feasible – at least locally on a non-commercial basis. In any case, I think it is a viable means for transporting energy from biomass-rich regions to biomass-poor but sunny regions, such as deserts. Even if more energy goes into the cell than comes out, this unusual mode of transferring resources may be superior to other methods of pipelining energy.

Solar Chemical Reactor

The work of Jim Richardson of the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Houston and co-workers [19] will be discussed here. In solar chemical reactors sunlight converts reactants with lower Gibbs free energy (CO2 and CH4) to products with higher Gibbs free energy (2CO and 2H2). These products are pumped to a chemical reactor where the reaction is reversed to release the energy to the consumer. The original reactants are returned to the solar reactor to repeat the process. Even if this technology cannot produce net energy taking into account the pumping costs and the construction and maintenance of the equipment, it certainly can be used to transport energy and, in some cases, it might be the best choice.

Table 2-4. Sustainable Energy
Source	TWs
Geothermal (not renewable)	1.0TW
Solar (passive )	small
Solar (photovoltaic)	negative
Wind (very questionable)	3.0TW
Hydroelectric (ecological. danger)	3.0TW
Tidal and Waves	small
Ocean Thermal Electric Conversion.	negative
Biomass (pyrolysis and fermentation)	6.0TW
Improbable Total	>13TW
Conservative Total	<10TW

Passive Solar

Passive solar for pre-heating bath water in tanks on the roofs of our homes, for example, definitely should be used. It is not clear that the effect is large enough to include in Table 2-4.

Biomass: Fermentation and Pyrolysis

These are the technologies that seems to have the most promise – in my opinion, however they must be subjected to the same rigorous analysis as the others. The reason I favor biomass technology is that the producers of biomass are alive, therefore they reproduce and maintain themselves “automatically”. It must be admitted that the percent of incident radiation that is absorbed by living plants is very small; but, since plants take care of themselves and would essentially cover the earth if we let them, who cares? (This business of planting trees as an environmental act is almost silly. If we leave trees alone, they can plant themselves at a rate that puts to shame anything we can do.)

The area of the United States is about 9,363,397 sq km. According to L.W. Atkins, a political conservative, the area of the forests amounts to 2,954,310 sq km, which gives 31.6% of the U.S. covered with forests. That is a respectable figure and, perhaps, a source of hope. I don’t know if the rest of the world is doing better or worse. We have all heard about de-forestation in the Amazon Basin, which is considered catastrophic by most environmentalists. Whenever we find a conflict between the economic benefits of cu tting forests and environmental concerns, we shall have found a contradiction in our conventional economic theories. I shall use these contradictions to discard the institution of The Job and other old-fa shioned and obsolete economic notions. After careful analysis the IIASA has come up with a figure of 6 TWyr/yr (maximum) from all forms of biomass. This is insufficient to support a population of ten billion people. We shall need to supplement this with other forms of renewable energy and, perhaps, improve upon that figure – somehow, perhaps, as I have suggested, by turning the earth into a garden. (Place me squarely in the soft-energy camp.)

I do not favor large-scale energy farms of a single biomass crop because nature loves diversity and dislikes monocultures. A single disease or parasite could wipe us out completely if we build commercial monoculture energy plantations. I picture this technology used on a decentralized non-commercial basis where human labor does not enter the economic equation because the people who do the labor will consume the energy. (I do not charge my usual hourly rate when I chop wood gathered from forest debris on my own lot.) The sun supplies about 100 TW according to the IIASA chart – perhaps more (certainly more if we turn the earth into a garden and abandon industrial civilization as in my fondest dreams).

Two promising approaches to energy from biomass are (1) alcohol from biomass [19-22], and (2) pyrolysis of biomass [23-27], but no emergy analysis has been done as far as I know. An advantage of alcohol from biomass by fermentation is that the reactors are living creatures that reproduce and maintain themselves. This is the same advantage enjoyed by biomass as a whole. The advantage of pyrolysis is that the reaction times are very short, perhaps a tenth of a second; therefore, the equipment should be smaller and cheaper. I am hoping that either technology can be constructed in a small shed a safe distance from the consumer’s home and barn but definitely within walking distance of the biomass source and the end use. The conversion of pyrolysis to diesel fuel [28] could save the world from mass (perhaps total) starvation because when the petroleum runs out we will be stuck with tons of agricultural machinery that runs on diesel fuel.

Much of municipal solid waste is amenable to pyrolysis and the interesting thing is this: The compositions of the pyrolysis products are almost completely independent of what is pyrolized – whether it be agricultural wastes, whole trees, or garbage! The fundamental design parameters are simply reaction time and temperature. It should be mentioned, though, that some of the energy input to the pyrolysis process is consumed by the process. Of course the fermentation bugs need energy to live and increase their population, but I don’t know how the efficiencies stack up.

The pyrolysis or fermentation of agricultural products and waste is another possibility. About 100 TWyr/yr of solar energy is absorbed by photosynthesis, but only 2.5 TWyr/yr is harvested as agricultural and sylvicultural products and much of that is not available for energy. Odum and Odum [5] claim that Florida agriculture is fossil-fuel subsidized by a factor of 3.5. (I’ve heard of factors as high as 7.0.). Clearly, this availability-intensive agriculture cannot persist. Extracting energy from agricultural waste might reduce this ratio of kilocalories in the fossil fuels expended to kilocalories in the food we eat; but, clearly, new agricultural methods are needed. (The calories we count when we diet are kilocalories, i.e., the energy required to raise one kilogram of water one degree Celsius.)

I have not mentioned biogas. A burnable gas, absolutely suitable for cooking without fear of bacterial contamination, can be recovered from human and animal excrement. Part of the food that we eat still contains useful energy when our bodies are through with it. Biogas is used in India and it should be used everywhere. It is easy to implement in rural areas and, with any luck, the deurbanization of America will be complete in a few decades, even though we might need much of our remaining petroleum to achieve it.

When deurbanization is complete, almost all of the world will again be – rural. If we wish to play with words, we can refer to this as the end of civilization – since civitas is the Latin word for urban society. And, if you ask me, good riddance. I lived in New York City for twenty-five years; and, at one time, I would not have considered living elsewhere, mainly because of the art and music, especially, for me, jazz. But, after living four years in the country (upstate New York, 100 miles from an interstate), it was much harder to move to Houston than it had been to move to the country. In the society of the future, as I envision it, we will have as good art and music (and better) in the country than we ever had in the city (and I am not referring to what folks call country music, most of which is just commercial trash and bears no resemblance to any kind of music.). That’s one of the reasons I am hoping we can afford the recent advances in communications technology and even more exciting advances over the horizon as discussed below. From an emergy viewpoint, communication is cheap; transportation is dear.

Demand

Table 2-5 shows a conjectured expenditure of a 1-kilowatt (kW) energy budget without any attempt to solve the emergy matching problem, which, of course, will vary from region to region. (We would not want to use biogas to generate electricity for electric stoves, since nearly everyone prefers to cook with gas.) For the sake of argument, let us suppose that the matching problem, which will require a little thought and the continuous application of good judgment, is solved. If we need 0.05kW for cooking, we will have 0.05kW of biogas; if we need 0.15kW for bathing and comfort heating, we will have 0.15kW geothermal or passive solar. We actually eat slightly more than 0.1kW biomass, although some energy remains after we have eaten it; but, for this analysis, it is assumed that somehow we can restrict our use of liquid fuels and other energy costs for agriculture to another 0.1kW. (Currently, we consume between 0.25k

The Preservation of Species

A New Political Philosophy Is Needed

Political Theory

A Vision of the Future

What Freedom Means to Two Very Different Types of People

The Plan of the Book

Additional Remarks

On Method

Difficulties

Beyond the Comfort Zone

Saying Everything First

Anger

Changing My Mind

Disparities of Scale

Not Being Famous Enough To Be Heard or Read

Bias against Visionaries

My Expectations

Acknowledgments

References

On Government

The Social Contract

Introduction

Our Current Social Contract

The Constitution Itself

The Constitution Is Unacceptable Because of Our Desperate Need for Autonomy (Freedom)

Our Constitution Is Unacceptable Because of Its Inconsistencies Due to Fundamental Religious Content

Religion and Philosophy

Improper and Proper Religions

Separation of Church and State

Separation of Church and State Fails

Argument 1. The Rule of Precedence

Argument 2. The Religious Nature of the Bill of Rights

Argument 3. Our Need To Espouse Religious Values

Other Reasons Why the Current Social Contract Is Irrational and Perforce Invalid

Indoctrination in the Schools

Government Propaganda and Gratuitous Private Propaganda

Tradition

A De Facto Caste System

Brute Force

Our National Religion

Superstition and Old Wives Tales

Community and a New Type of Social Contract Based on Rational Morals

Community Replaces the State

On Morals

Rational v. Taboo Morality

Taboo Morality Is Coincident with Hypocrisy

Rational Morals Are Easy To Satisfy

Morals Are Preferable to Laws

Absolute Morals Approachable But Unattainable

The Basis for Moral Axioms and Philosophical Assumptions

We Are Not Yet in a Position To Live without Laws

Laws and Morals Should Be but Are Not Consistent

Rational Morals Provide the Nucleus of a Set of Common Assumptions in a Rational Society

Summary

On Philosophy

Abstract

On Existence

Avoiding Infinite Regression

Reasonableness and Aesthetics

Utility

Occurrence Implication and Occurrence Equivalence

Occurrence Equivalence as Evidence of Divinity

A Minimal Proper Religion as a Social Contract

Minimal Proper Religions

Building Upon a Minimal Proper Religion

A Rational Philosophical Basis for a Minimal Proper Religion

The Subject of The Varieties of Religious Experience Compared to a Proper Religion

How a Social Contract Based on Consensus Might Work

Becoming a Party to a Valid Social Contract

Rejecting a Social Contract

Definitions of Terms Employed in Fundamental Theorem

Sustainable Happiness for All of Humanity

Definition of Happiness

Hypothetical World W′

1. Intrinsic Motivation

2. Happiness in the Colloquial Sense

Hypothetical World W"

1. A Stable (Human) Population

2. Adequate High-Grade Renewable (Sustainable) Energy

3. Sufficiency of One Kilowatt Per Capita Renewable Emergy

Occurrence Implication and Occurrence Equi valence

Occurrence Equivalence as Evidence of Divi nity

A Minimal Proper Religion as a Social Cont ract

A Rational Philosophical Basis for a Minim al Proper Religion

How a Social Contract Ba sed on Consensus M ight Work

Becoming a Party to a Valid Social Contrac t

Definitions of Terms Employed in Fundament al Theorem

2. Adequate High-Grade Renewable (Sustain able) Energy

Negotiable and Non-Negotiable Fame and Inf luence

Occurrence Equivalence of Wealth, Power In cluding Negotiable Influence, and Negotiable Fame As S*

Preconditions for Happiness as Defined by Me, Not Popper, Who Doesn’t Bother To Defi ne