Not so smart...

During one of my recent reads I ran across the idea that modern gadgetry serves the same function as witchcraft did centuries ago, namely it enslaves a population with ignorance and dependence.  It's an intriguing statement, because I believe it to be on the whole true.

I think we make the mistake in our society of looking on the people of yesterday as inferior, primitive, I believe people have always been people, and that those who came before us are fallible in the same way we are.  People are people, primitive and modern describe more or less the degree of pampering.  In some ways I believe those in ancient cultures to be far more advanced and intelligent than we are, and history has proven this out.  Example - the Egyptians built the pyramids, we have no idea how, the Vikings built houses in such a way where there was ventilation for the smoke without a hole in the roof, we have no idea how.

Here is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, cheap energy.  We've built our way of life on cheap energy.  We have the modern world completely addicted to technology.  If the cost of energy went up significantly, but not prohibitively how would life change?  This is something we should be thinking about, because our world, the world we know is based on CHEAP energy.  Say the lights in your house could stay on, but powering them cost $48 a day.  Energy is no longer cheap.  Powering up your cell phone costs $10 for every charge.  I'm not talking about rising costs that make you just want to "go green" but rising costs that make you question whether to even use the devices you use.  How would life change?  If you had to really think about turning on a light, or powering a computer, what would life be like?

I'm asking this because I'm not sure how our way of life would survive.  Modern homes are not built for the possibility of life without cheap electricity.  Big open designs are created for multiple lights and lots of heating and cooling.  Many homes don't have gas stoves, they have electric, they have electric everything.

Last week the temperatures went freezing in Texas and the power went out as a result.  If we had to survive a winter without electricity we would be okay here in the Houston, but what about those just six hours north?

I've wondered if our society will crumble under the weight of the faith we have placed in technology.  In 200 years what would they know of us if electricity went away?  The dependence we place on these devices around us, we don't know how to grow enough food to feed ourselves, and many of us don't know how to cook it without buttons if we did.


The thought of all of this is enough to drive a paranoid man such as myself crazy.  You can't worry to much about these types of things.  There was a message from Tom Nelson he talked about how Solomon could identify problems, but came to the conclusion there were no solutions.  The stimuli that govern our world are so fixed, reaping and sowing, I guess I just worry that we are sowing a harsh payday that will come, if not in my lifetime, in my son's or grandson's.