An Improved Context<\/h3>\n
To make sense of the deep contrasts between the societies that existed through history and the current moment, it is necessary to identify what the golden threads<\/em> (common or consistent themes) and distal drivers<\/em> (ultimate or fundamental causes) underpinning these grand historical shifts are.\u00a0 Much has been written by historians, philosophers and economist about the various political, economic<\/a>, social<\/a> and cultural<\/a> factors generally thought and accepted to be important, but on the most part, these narratives offer only incomplete, biased or too narrowly-focused perspectives.\u00a0 To get to the real insight we must listen to those who offer the biophysical perspective; the true distal driver of the transformations in human societies is energy<\/em>, or more specifically, the forms, quantities, quality and applications of energy and how this has varied through time.<\/p>\n Energy is a fundamental physical quantity and through improving mastery and scope of energy use, humans have massively broadened their prospects and opened new horizons.\u00a0 We have shown a clear innovative genius in the machines and devices we have successively created over time, but without energy sources (from oxen-drawn ploughs to coal-fired steam engines to moon rockets) none of these amount to anything.\u00a0 Taking this perspective of energy, it is possible<\/a> to trace the golden thread of energy transformations through human history, which is summarised as follows.<\/p>\n Humans first became \u2018anatomically modern\u2019 approximately 300,000 years ago, and for the vast majority of the time between then and now (around 95% of it) the only mode of living available was as hunter-gatherers.\u00a0 During this prolonged period humans lived in small (likely mostly in the range of 30-50 individuals), mobile and (at least partly) autonomous bands\/tribes that obtained their energetic needs (which covered endosomatic [2]<\/a> food energy and exosomatic [3]<\/a> biomass energy for fires) from their immediate environment on a continuous basis.\u00a0 Available energy was limited by that stored in photosynthetically-derived biomass that could be readily accessed, and this constrained and limited human population densities and ultimate numbers.<\/p>\n Despite being thinly spread, these human hunter-gatherer bands in time spread across most the planet\u2019s dry land and eliminated both genetically close competitors, and much megafauna (both of which were harbingers of humanity\u2019s future power and impact on the world).\u00a0 This way of life persisted for an extended period of time, but the spread of humans to a range of physical settings and biomes, combined with long-term shifts in climate, set the scene for a fundamental, pervasive and permanent change in the prevailing mode of living to take hold (starting from around 12,000 years ago) which changed human societies forever: agriculture<\/em>.<\/p>\n Agriculture provided the means for humans to more systematically collect photosynthetic biomass energy, supplemented by animal power (i.e., muscle metabolism) and in time environmental energy flows (primarily wind and flowing water).\u00a0 This provided an expanded and reliable energetic basis for human societies to become (amongst many other things) complex, hierarchical, technological and sedentary, and human numbers consequently grew to hitherto unseen heights.\u00a0 In time, the next revolution started as societies of ever greater size and complexity learned (from around 200 years ago) new technological tricks, and to exploit alternative energy sources at steadily increasing scales.\u00a0 A tipping point eventually occurred which changed human societies even more profoundly: industry<\/em>.<\/p>\n The key change was a switch from obtaining energy predominantly from environmental energy flows, to the huge stocks or reserves of energy in the form of fossil fuels, which had accumulated via geological processes over deep time (this slow accumulation and later rapid human use of these sources is akin to the charging\/discharging of a giant battery<\/a>).\u00a0 The mass exploitation of fossil fuels led to a paradigm shift far more fundamental and rapid than agriculture, and has allowed humanity to build a planet-spanning civilisation supporting more than eight billion individuals.<\/p>\n The imperative nature of energy to the current form of civilisation is captured succinctly via the concept of high-energy modernity<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 What is also apparent is that many of us alive in this time have only vague notions of just how differently most humans throughout history lived, and just how unusual it is to be endowed with such technological wonders and comforts as are widespread now.\u00a0 This generally limited understanding and lack of awareness has been described by energy and economics commentator Nate Hagens as ‘energy blindness’<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n The crux of this article is to offer a new framing or perspective on energy, and modern lifestyles and societies.\u00a0 The intent is to offer scope for improved understanding of the importance of energy and its role in past and current societies (to address energy blindness<\/em>); to illustrate the importance of this to our personal circumstances; and also, to highlight what dangers we collectively face if modern energy systems were to cease providing what we have become so accustomed to and reliant on.<\/p>\n The nature of changing human energy use has been written about<\/a> previously in several<\/a> places<\/a>, but the alternative framing presented here focuses on how changing energy use over time has led to major shifts in the nature and quality of the lives of individual people as well as collectively at societal scale, and what the current and future significance of this may be.\u00a0 This different perspective is based on a concept which traces its origin to psychology, sociology and related disciplines: the Hierarchy of [Human] Needs,<\/em> first formulated and defined by the psychologist Abraham Maslow in a 1943 study<\/a>.\u00a0 The central idea is that universal needs of humans can be arranged according to a hierarchical classification system, with the different levels related to factors such as successive phases of life and different individual and collective circumstances.<\/p>\n This is typically depicted in the pyramid structure shown below in Figure 1, with the most fundamental and basic survival needs located near the base, psychological needs which align with greater functioning and flourishing in the middle, and the most \u2018sophisticated\u2019 self-fulfilment needs at the top.\u00a0 A central theme is that once needs at one level are met and satisfied, the meeting of the needs at the next level then take precedence and start to dominate behaviours.\u00a0 Conversely, if needs cease to be met at one level, the needs at the next level down will become prevalent.\u00a0 \u00a0It is generally applied to individuals in contexts such as education and healthcare (e.g., to assess drivers of behaviour in accordance with the changes in needs from childhood through to adulthood).<\/p>\n Figure <\/strong>1<\/strong> \u2013 Maslow\u2019s Hierarchy of Needs <\/strong><\/p>\n The levels of the hierarchy refer to the following:<\/p>\n The perspective proposed here is somewhat different to the standard application of the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em>, namely to collective, societal-scale needs i.e., what proportion of large groups of humans are achieving the different levels of the hierarchy (which are of course continuous and not sharply defined).\u00a0 Different individuals in any given society may achieve higher levels due to their specific circumstances whilst others may not, but there is likely an \u2018average\u2019 level achieved across populations, enabled by the general conditions a society provides to its inhabitants.<\/p>\n These ambient social, economic and technological conditions are closely correlated with energy<\/a>, so there is logically a link with the average level on the hierarchy and the changing energetic paradigms of societies through time, as described above.\u00a0 Put another way, the characteristics of human societies as they have changed through time according to the types and quantities of energy they have had at their command and disposal, can be \u2018mapped\u2019 to the meeting of the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em>.\u00a0 Figure 2 places a different iteration of society through time against each level of the same pyramid structure as in the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em>, and Figure 3 the predominant energy paradigm that existed in each of these societies.<\/p>\n Note that the situations depicted in Figures 2\u00a0& 3 focus on the interplay of endo- and exosomatic energy sources (see Footnotes 1 & 2) available to humans over time.\u00a0 Many of the most profound changes were in the forms and applications of exosomatic energy which allowed technological structures to change, but changes to the availability of endosomatic energy were also crucial in enabling this (e.g., by driving population increases through rising food availability).<\/p>\n Figure <\/strong>2<\/strong> \u2013 Maslow\u2019s Hierarchy Applied to Societal Stages<\/strong><\/p>\n Figure <\/strong>3<\/strong> – Maslow\u2019s Hierarchy Applied to Stages of Energy Use<\/strong><\/p>\n The following points provide interpretation of how the levels of the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em>, the named past societies, and their associated energy use, relate to each other:<\/p>\n For a large proportion of (though certainly not all) the people alive today, armies of fossil slaves provide the energetic basis for the full Hierarchy of Needs<\/em> to be met on an abundant and continuous basis.\u00a0 It is in this context that people are freed from the chattels, obligations and hard labour that characterised the lives of so many in past eras.\u00a0 Instead, people\u2019s attention and efforts are freed up for anything and everything else, in ways that no previous era was able to provide at mass scale.\u00a0 Using the model presented above, energy use and lifestyle in the modern context can be described as a nexus, illustrated in Figure 4:<\/p>\n Figure <\/strong>4<\/strong> \u2013 Nexus of Energy and Lifestyle<\/strong><\/p>\n The energy-lifestyle nexus has manifested in a wide variety of ways, but the following bullets describe some key examples of how Self-Actualisation<\/em> and other self-focused needs and desires have been achieved in a widespread way in this context:<\/p>\n The model presented here integrates a few different concepts to provide a new perspective.\u00a0 Namely, that the changing nature of societies over historical time due to the types of energy they had at their disposal, and the rising capacity for individual and societal needs to be met, can be mapped.\u00a0 However, the most useful interpretation provided by this perspective may be whether this trajectory of progress (from the past through to now) likely can and will extrapolate, and what the implications might be of it not doing so.\u00a0 To frame this, we might need to think about a concept which is gaining increasing traction in discussion of the global predicament: polycrisis<\/em>.<\/p>\n Polycrisis describes the manifold and interlinked risks and potential crises that appear to be developing throughout the world, and which could overshadow the coming years and decades.\u00a0 As the world situation potentially becomes steadily more defined by this, the risk rises that expansive energy systems (and other societal systems they underpin) may be increasingly vulnerable to reductions and failures in capacity and function.\u00a0 This is largely because the underpinning systems of high-energy modernity are increasingly agents of their own downfall, due to factors including (but not limited to) dwindling economic reserves<\/a> of fossil fuels, accelerating greenhouse gas emissions associated with their operation, and the impacts of rising geopolitical tension<\/a> on the implementation of newer and greener technologies.<\/p>\n Should such a predicament arise, whether progressively or abruptly, it could result in significant sections of global society being rapidly driven down multiple levels of the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em>.\u00a0 Put another way, the lifestyles many of us have come accustomed to, and in many cases reliant on, could swiftly and irreversibly change.\u00a0 More significantly, the focus of many people\u2019s lives would likely have to re-orientate to the provision of more basic needs that had previously been provided by those systems.\u00a0 It could in essence be a reversion to past timeframes where esteem and belonging, and even food, shelter and safety were not so readily obtained.<\/p>\n Beyond just the provision of physical and financial resources, these underpinning systems have provided the basis for much of the civility and social progress (e.g., civil rights for women and minorities, as described above) in recent decades; this has been enabled in part because society has become less self-centred and more altruistic.\u00a0 The capacity for these gains has been possible as long as the more basic needs of large parts of the population have been \u2018taken care of\u2019 in the background by societal systems.\u00a0 Failure or degradation of high-energy modernity could therefore drive shifts in societies towards more selfish, less civil behaviours, which could act as a feedback which further drives polycrisis conditions.<\/p>\n It may be that much of the shift towards the political right in many western nations in recent years is related to the changes in the lives of many citizens; societal systems have progressively degraded and failed in widening parts of those societies, and the focus for many citizens has by necessity shifted to more fundamental needs.\u00a0 People in these societies who are genuinely worried about whether an unexpected cost could see them lose their homes, or where the next meal is coming from, are demonstrably less likely to vote for those politicians focusing on things like gender fluidity (a need associated with the higher levels of the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em>) than those promising the return of cheap groceries and energy, however unrealistic those promises may be.<\/p>\n The model presented here is that the higher parts of the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em> are closely correlated with high-energy modernity and its underlying globe-spanning systems, therefore the logical response to the risk of reversion to lower parts could be to seek to maintain, expand and intensify these systems.\u00a0 Proponent of such philosophies (such as eco-modernists<\/a>) would argue that this would surely secure the existing benefits of high-energy modernity, and then extend it to all people globally.\u00a0 At first glance, seeking to extend high energy, developed lifestyles to the whole human population could seem to be a just thing to aim for.<\/p>\n However, the feasibility of extending the levels of resource consumption currently seen in the developed world to eight billion people is doubtful<\/a>, and would soon drive the further breaching<\/a> of planetary boundaries to a dangerous extent.\u00a0 Furthermore, multiple aspects of developed world lifestyles, far from guaranteeing the achievement of Self-Actualisation<\/em> and other types of fulfilment, are instead increasingly making more and more their adherents acutely unhealthy<\/a> and unhappy<\/a> at the same time as mortgaging the future of the planet<\/a>.\u00a0 We may therefore need to think about whether there\u2019s a more nuanced relationship between high-energy modernity and the \u2018good life\u2019.<\/p>\n Calculations<\/a> have shown that modern lifestyles this could be universally achieved on far less energy than is consumed in developed countries; an annual per capita energy consumption figure well below that in the counties with the most energy-intensive lifestyles could underpin the majority of the metrics that define modernity.\u00a0 Aiming for this figure globally would give underdeveloped parts of the world the \u2018space\u2019 to improve lifestyles and achieve the upper levels of the Hierarchy of Needs<\/em> whilst driving down the bloated consumption of the developed world.\u00a0 Concepts such as Doughnut Economics<\/a> further underpin this by providing a structure in which a \u2018social foundation\u2019 and an \u2018ecological ceiling\u2019 bound a \u2018sweet spot\u2019 for general human flourishing.<\/p>\n It could therefore be possible to provide the benefits of modernity to all, with the freedoms to seek Self-Actualisation<\/em> and other higher needs, without the downside of mass energy consumption and planetary destruction.\u00a0 Although we are clearly a long way from achieving<\/a> such an idealised situation at global scale (though some parts of the world are much closer than others), this could be our best hope against a future mass \u2018slide down\u2019 the Hierarchy of Needs.\u00a0 <\/em>This is especially urgent as the accompanying lurch towards more extreme politics and weakening of civil society, which could occur in that scenario, could well become major contributors to future growing polycrisis situations.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that not everyone achieves any form of Self-Actualisation<\/em> even where widespread high-quality energy has been available, nor that it was impossible in the eras leading to this one where it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 In reality, achieving this is unique journey for every individual as they identify what it means to them and strive for this in their lives, but the current generalised application of the \u2018sledgehammer\u2019 of high-energy modernity to drive it at mass scale, will likely deliver increasingly mixed success as we head into the future.\u00a0 Whatever model replaces the current one in providing comfortable, well-nourished, safe and stable societies will clearly need a lot of work to define and drive, but should clearly aim to achieve these things without the need for lots of shiny but unsustainable toys.\u00a0 Time is short, but there\u2019s no time like the present to get started.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Clearly not all people and societies have access to all of these to the same extent in the modern era due to disparities in wealth etc., but this refers more to whether these things exist in current society, rather than levels and distributions of access.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> This refers to energy used within the body via metabolic processes.<\/p>\nAn Alternative Perspective<\/h3>\n
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Energy and Lifestyle Nexus<\/h3>\n
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So What? \u2013 Wider Implications<\/h3>\n
What Should We Do?<\/h3>\n