ok, so we understand that we human beings are matter/energy.
we have energy… so the question becomes, how or in what way do we use
that energy? We have noted that in the past, say during the long period
of the hunter/gatherer stage of human existence, our energy was
dedicated toward procuring the necessary items for our continued
existence, thus we spend energy on gathering food, clothing, shelter,
educating the young so they knew what to do to surviving… in fact,
anything we do, we must expend energy to do that anything…
so the gathering of and expending energy is one of the primary
functions of human existence… even such a task as sleeping
requires energy to do so………. so one of the key questions of
human existence is this question of energy…….
how are we to gather the energy we need and what are going to
expend that energy on?
so think of human existence as a question of energy expenditure…
how we get it and what do we spend it on?
so far we haven’t gotten to any questions of values or anything besides the basics,
but now we reach the point of the questions of values… for it is values that
help us make our choices as to what should we spend our energy on…
we can spend energy on creating ART or we can wage war or we can dance the
night away… the choice in being human is what are we to spend our energy on…
and values help us decide or determine what we should spend our energy on…
I am old… I have far less energy then I used to have… so I can use my off days
watching TV or going to movies or to reading or to doing what I am doing right now…
I have limited energy, so I must expend my energy carefully, with real thought behind it…
when I was young, I could waste my energy because it didn’t matter, I had plenty of
energy to fuel me… I could be inefficient and wasteful with my energy… it didn’t matter…
so when we think in terms of energy, we cannot allow ourselves to focus exclusively
on energy to fuel our cars or home or airplanes… we must engage with
an understanding of we humans are energy and plenty of it…… so how are we to
spend that energy? sending kids to war is a wasteful and inefficient way of spending
their energy… we must be smart in how we are to use our energy, both
our mechanical and our biological energy…as with anything, energy
in the form of tree’s and oil is limited… but other matter has energy…
we can discover new ways to convert matter into energy…
for any matter can be converted into energy… we just have to
figure out how…but because there is no loss in either matter or energy
in the universe, we really have a source of energy as long as there is matter
in the universe. we can turn anything into energy……. we just have to make sure
it is not a finite resource that we are converting…if we can convert water into
energy, that is great however when we run out of water, we then have some
serious issues……. but the overall amount of energy/matter in the universe
never changes…… that is the point… and we must use this knowledge to
our benefit…….
so human existence is a question of energy and how are we to spend that energy?
Kropotkin