Financial Times - Valuable collection of ideas on moving forward

A senior citizen has suggested to the government that all subsidies that keep oil at an artificially lower price must be removed.

Nirmalan Dhas, Head of Mission of the Synthetist Mission, sent a letter to the Director General, Department of Fiscal Policy, Ministry of Finance and Planning – with a copy to the President – in response to a request for proposals to face Sri Lanka’s external challenge successfully.

The letter said:
The problem of rising world oil prices is not a new and sudden phenomenon but one that has been evident for several decades and in response to which adequate plans and mechanisms of management should long since have been formulated and set in motion. This rise in prices is most certainly not an external challenge and that it is this fanciful notion of rising oil prices being an external challenge and not one to which we have actively contributed ourselves as individuals and as a nation, that has prevented us from realistically assessing the situation and preparing for the context that has now emerged.

Let me state once more quite categorically that the rising world oil prices have nothing to do with external challenges of any sort.

They are the direct result of the demand for oil having outstripped global production capacity and each one of us contributes directly both as individuals and as well as citizens of a nation state to this demand for oil.

Global oil reserves are in any case limited. They will sooner or later become exhausted. Prudence would demand their conservation and careful utilization towards the achievement of selected objectives. Instead our current civilization seems to be based on the single totally irrational objective of consuming our environment as fast a rate as possible so that the faster the rate at which we consume our environment the more developed we are deemed to be.

It is important that this simple reality, be understood by those who wish to formulate responses thereto lest we seek to protect ourselves from external threats that simply do not exist. We – not ‘they’ or any external threat – are the cause of this crisis and we have to now respond to the crisis we have caused.

Having identified the crisis clearly the response becomes obvious:
* Adopt a more rational civilizational objective
* Use less oil
* Develop technologies that are less dependent on oil.

These three aspects are developed more fully below.
* Adopt a more rational
civilizational objective

To proceed along the currently dominant civilizational objective of consuming our environment at as fast a pace as is possible is meaningless and self destructive and will only serve to exacerbate the current global shortage of oil. People have to be proided with a more meaningful objective that will motivate them to conserve all available resources towards its achievement.

If not they will continue to consume their environment through the obsessive generation of desires and the compulsive search for their satisfaction that now constitutes the dominant behavior of the human species.

All subsidies that keep oil at an artificially lower price must be removed and a special tax added to oil products in order to finance the following changes that are necessary.

In the first instance the income from these subsidies must be utilized to ensure that every house or dwelling place within the country is fitted with an electronic communication device supplied and maintained by the state – in order to enable real time communication between the government and the citizenry in the seriously unstable situation that has begun to emerge due to –
a) a shortage of resources,
b) global warming,
c) rising ocean levels,
d) pollution,
not just in our country but all over the world and which will increase in the intensity of its impact over the coming years. Neighbouring Tamil Nadu seems to have opted for television, but we would do much better by using computers.

In the second instance the income from these subsidies must be used to project via all available media including the new media linkages described above, a new civilizational objective based on a wholistic understanding of ourselves as being the chaotic and relative behavior of an indivisible and universal whole that has neither beginning nor end and which proceeds along paths of its own perception towards the evolution of life through and beyond human being and towards its universal spread.

This universal objective of life’s evolution beyond human being and its universal spread must be accepted as that of our civilization as well and all available resources conserved and utilized strategically and sparingly towards this end alone. The adoption of this civilizational objective will permit the emergence of a new way of seeing the world, a new way of life, a new life for each of us and a new world for us all.

In the third instance movement must be discouraged as far as possible with instant communication being enabled by the government sponsored and maintained communication linkages installed in every home, and restricted to mass transit systems that run on energy generated by state owned but privately managed centralized energy generation systems so that pollution can be localized, contained and better managed. Where the physical presence of people is deemed essential for purposes of production such people must be housed within walking or cycling distance of such production units.

In the fourth instance, human powered vehicles must be encouraged. While buses will become redundant as they will not be able to offer the speed, comfort and safety of the mass transit systems, private motor vehicles will not have to be banned as their use will be restricted to the few amongst the wealthy who really do not care for the human race and who therefore do not share in the new civilizational objectives and who are content therefore to continue consuming their environment at as fast a pace as possible. Their activities will be carefully monitored and regulated to ensure that they do not cause harm to others but will be freely permitted.

Use less oil
This must be ensured by firstly ensuring that electricity becomes the primary mode of energy utilized by the citizenry for their day to day living and where necessary travelling. The generation of the required electrical energy must be centralized and generated by state owned but privately managed generation systems, and its pollution contained and managed. The use of this energy must then be made more efficient.

There are several ways by which this can be done but they lie beyond the scope of this submission and can be made available on request.

Develop technologies that are less dependent on oil.
The following are the basic requirements we have identified as being the bare essentials for the continuous support and sustenance of the level of human functional capacity that we have acquired.

* Food & Water
* Clothing
* Housing
* Health
* Education
* Communication
* Transport
* Recycling of waste
* Disposal of wastes.

As a first step, the energy required for all these supportive systems will be restricted as far as possible to the use of electricity which will be generated through centralized systems of energy generation which are owned by the state but privately managed.

Once this centralization of energy generation is accomplished the question of developing alternate sources of energy generation that are not dependent on fossil fuels can be addressed. Hydropower, Solar Power, Wind Power, Thermal Power, Nuclear Power, Biomass generated Power and any other sources as we may be able to discover will have to be rapidly developed.
Finally the support systems themselves will have to be restructured in a way that ensures that they utilise a minimum of energy.

There are many ways in which the energy they utilize may be reduced but an exploration of these methods is beyond the scope of this paper but can be made available on request.

These changes are those that all those of us who claim to follow the ancient path to enlightenment followed by the Buddhas of old, should have thought of and begun implementing over twenty years ago.
Instead we have not only fallen prey to the rampantly obsessive desires and compulsive search for their satisfaction that form the basis of the currently dominant civilization but have lost ourselves in classist and racist visions and their resulting conflicts as well.

Perhaps now at last in the face of this great crisis and the imminent disaster it threatens us with we will ready ourselves to abandon the dominant civilization with its irrational goals and consequent commitment to self destruction and adopt a synthetist perspective based on the emerging synthetist vision upon which the above submission is based and which seems to offer the only rational path to salvation from the disaster that lies directly ahead.

The collection of ideas as to how we can respond to the emerging situation is a commendable first step towards the formulation of such a collective response.

A credible second step would be to engage those who advance such ideas within a process whereby such ideas may be further developed at a conceptual level and the strategic competencies required for their implementation be identified engaged and activated. It is my hope that the government will chose to act in this direction rather than stand by in apparent helplessness as the crisis worsens.