Thinking Beyond the Age of Fire

Human society without fire is unthinkable.  But a new book says we need to think of a world where fire gives way to electricity.

Humans cannot go back to the beginning and start again, but if they had to, Walt Patterson’s new book would be as fundamental a guide to the challenges as any.

It doesn’t contain many helpful prescriptions about the most efficient exploitation of the emerging technologies that could deliver renewable energy, or deliver more bang for the megabuck of investment.  But that’s not the point.

Patterson’s point is that a new start means a fresh attitude, and Electricity vs Fire is as nice a statement of the essential simplicity – and the scale – of the challenge as I have yet seen.
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Patterson explores the inventive ways we can control heat efficiently without fire, and concedes that domestic cooking “is not, in the main, a significantly wasteful way to use fire. In rich countries the waste occurs much more in the increasing prevalence of processed food.”

“Infrastructure changes only slowly.  But minds can change in an instant.  Today could be the day you start thinking beyond the Fire Age”

He delivers analysis, and instances better ways of doing things, but the value of a book such as this is that it simply frames the important questions.

On the exertion of force, for instance:  “Many people might now argue that most of the undertakings that use lots of brute force, such as large dams and river diversions, mountain-top removal coal mining, tar sands extraction or uranium mining, are at best ill-advised and frequently destructive.

“Closer examination suggests that such undertakings proceed only because those promoting them do not pay the costs of their actions.” 

He points out that the whole global economy is based on fire and its consequences, and the consumer society exists to turn resources into waste.  The phrase “consumer durables” becomes an oxymoron.

New values needed
To move beyond this “stupid and dangerous” situation, humans “need to rethink the whole value structure that governs what we do and how.”

This is more easily said than done, but he foresees human activity switching towards natural systems, functioning not with the brute force of fire but the elegance of electricity.

One bit of this reviewer murmurs:  “Good luck with that!”  But another bit endorses his final words: “Infrastructure changes only slowly.  But minds can change in an instant.  Today could be the day you start thinking beyond the Fire Age.”

Read more at Thinking Beyond the Age of Fire