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The Oligarchical Collectivism of The Petrolithic Era
In the late 1700s people in servitude to their respective oligarchies began to question exploitative conditions and revolt against harsh treatment. Around the world there were revolutions with new ideas being discussed. There were revolutions in Scotland, the Caribbean, the Americas, Russia and France. People grew tired of monarchical and empirical control. The people wanted fewer restrictions, but the few at the peak of the pyramid tightened their grip and increased their hold. Revolt was a result of repression and exploitation.
Monarchical exploits initiated global shipping institutions. Monopolization and institutionalization expanded all around the world. The sun never set on the British Empire and other European monarchies violently tried to keep up. The world was becoming globally interdependent with global institutional entities.
To question the authority of oligarchical institutions was a veritable death sentence in most places. To suggest that their power was not absolute and not absolutely derived via God, could get one absolved of life. Yet people the world over began to question. At first in whispers over tea and eventually people boldly and loudly questioned the institutions among them. People broke free from the shackles of fear holding their tongues.
FACT: Caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant. In small doses it can have a positive effect on one’s physical performance and stimulate mental focus. It also produces faster reaction time and heightened short-term memory.
It is hypothesized that caffeine and the cafe were essential in the advent of free thinking and open communication of enlightened ideas, ideas of liberty. The cafe provided just the right stimulant, in just the right environment to enable discussion of questions. The cafe was a gathering place for the community to come together and communicate. The cafe may have been the first place where people openly proclaimed their resentment of monopolization and special privileges of the royalty, nobility and clergy.
CAFFEINE HISTORY
3000 BC: Chinese began steeping and drinking tea. Yerba mate and cocoa consumed by South Americans for unknown thousands of years.
~1500 AD: The Sufis began to drink coffee to stay awake and meditate.
December 1600: Queen Elizabeth I commissioned The British East India Company for expeditions to Asia. They were to seek out the best tea, opium and other spices to bring back to the British Isle. For years tea is so expensive only royalty partakes.
1601: The Company embarked as the world’s first multinational corporation. It extorts, enslaves, and murders for profit until 1858.
1610: The Company marketed tea as a medicinal beverage. As the years passed there was so much tea in England and Europe that it became affordable and popular.
1650s: The first coffee houses are opened in London.
1670: Charles II granted The Company the privilege to act on its own, soon it ruled South Asia. Charles II also created the Hudson Bay Company, which colonized much of Canada.
1675: King Charles II attempted to ban coffee houses, but the proclamation was revoked immediately.
By the late 1700s there was a major tea market established in the Colonies. At the time, most English people were quite fond of coffee, while most in New England preferred tea. Some colonists felt increasingly exploited and began to express their dissatisfaction. Individuals resented the laws of the distant monarchy and their local authorities. Tea was not the only commodity that was being unfairly levied against the Colonists. The Tea Act was just one of many exploits enacted by the King. The Pine Tree Laws, the Stamp Act, the Townsend Act, and the Sugar Act all subjugated and exploited the colonists.
Throughout the 1700s many colonists considered themselves to be essentially Englishmen. And as Englishmen, they believed they were entitled to the rights provided by the English Bill of Rights, but the perception of the English institutions was that the colonists were not English and therefore did not have the same rights. Freedoms were afforded to a few according to pyramidal classifications; outright liberty did not exist.
No taxation without representation was a theme even in the early days of English constitutional documents, when less than five percent of the population was allowed to vote. This idea was originally exclusive and not meant for the likes of colonists in the far-off new world.
“Taxation without representation is tyranny.” ~James Otis
The Pine Tree Laws were made to produce gains for the empire, but moreover maintain and expand control. No matter who supposedly owned the land in New Hampshire, if there was a white pine tree that was yay tall and twelve inches wide, it was the King’s tree. Obviously American Indians were unhappy about this, but newcomers too chose not to obey the law because they felt exploited. King George III intended to monopolize the land and sea, and all commerce therein. The straight pine trees were used for the masts of ships for the King’s Navy and Company John vessels.
A Deputy Surveyor of the King’s woods found that the owner of a mill had chopped down the King’s trees in Weare, New Hampshire. He informed the sheriff, and on April 13, 1772, the Sheriff and his deputy rode into Weare. The pair arrived to collect the fine from the mill owner, a prominent member of the community, under threat of imprisonment. It was late when the sheriff and logger met; both agreed to meet again in the morning to settle the fine then. The sheriff and deputy rested the night while the logger made other arrangements.
The logger and his peers might have been up all night, possibly hyped up on high-grade cameillia sinensis, tea, for the crew of loggers disguised themselves with coal-blackened faces and armed themselves with switches made of pine branches and went to the inn where the sheriff slept. Just before daybreak they woke him up with beating. When the deputy tried to help the sheriff, they beat him too. They strung the two up, cut the hair off of their horses and sent them out of town on their devalued steeds. Known as the Pine Tree Riot, a white pine tree stands in the area commemorating the event. Eight men of Weare were identified through their thin disguises and were eventually caught, tried, and, to the disdain of the sheriff, ordered to pay a small fine.
Months later, in May 1773, the Tea Act was passed. This gave the Company a monopoly on tea in the Colonies and eliminating some of the Company’s costs. The Tea Act made tea more affordable to the colonists, but it also gave the Company monopolization of the product. The Company needed money and the profit of tea was immense.
The Company monopolized tea to increase their power and maintain their grip. At the time, the Company was facing financial troubles and needed an income boost. The recent costs of the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years’ Wars and The War of Conquest, among other names, fought in 1756), along with rampant starvation in the Asian Colonies, financially devastated the Company. The French and Indian War was fought all around the world, but was concentrated in the Americas, over its resources.
FACT: George Washington and those under his command fired the first shots of the French and Indian War. George was known as a bold and impulsive young officer. The British and Natives fought the French and other Natives for seven years. George hoped to become a British officer for many years. When the promotion did not come, he became a farmer, until the Revolutionary War.
The British Empire owned South Asia and had virtually removed the French, the major alternate empire, from the Americas. Monopolization was instituted and expanded. Some people grew dissatisfied and expressed their dissatisfaction in terms the powers would understand. At times patriots defy law to directly and symbolically express, “no more, shove off.” Exploitation instigated people to throw boat-loads of perfectly good tea into the sea to express exactly that.
Rebellion, civil disobedience and nonviolent dissent arrived to Boston Harbor. In addition to the exploitation of the King and the Company, other events precluded the big steep with the same sentiment as the Pine Tree Riot. People remembered the Boston Massacre, which occurred three years prior. Five colonists were shot and killed by British soldiers; six others were injured and survived.
The Boston Massacre started over an unpaid wig bill. Words were exchanged, snowballs were tossed and the situation escalated. The event was marked by capitalizing on the situation to stir up more resentment of the soldiers, who were already seen as bullies by many. The Boston Massacre was used to influence how people perceived events. Paul Revere was involved in the antiestablishment propaganda producing a famous engraving of the Boston Massacre. John Adams defended the English soldiers in court and later became President of the U.S.A., believing in the right to a fair trial no matter what.
Overt oppression was increasingly perpetuated on the Colonists, who believed they had the rights of English people. Boston was especially rebellious and problematic for the authorities. The Boston Massacre was a small massacre compared to the massacres of indigenous people at the time. These massacres were conducted on an exponential scale and labeled expansion, battles, theft, treaty violations, and many names other than massacre and murder. Language is key to the presentation.
Paul was possibly present at the tea toss and an Adams family member, Samuel Adams, may have assisted in planning the event. The Boston Tea Party wasn’t only about tea; there was an array of transgressions precluding and surrounding. There were mounting questions concerning colonial exploitation and repression. Tea became the catalyst symbol.
The original patriots planned their protest, their defiance, their civil disobedience, perhaps while drinking tea at the Green Dragon Tavern, in Boston. It would be against the law, but no violence and no thievery was part of the plan. It was a protest and not meant to advance anything except statement. There would be destruction, but no violence. There would be drama and insult, but no theft, no harm.
In order to be a patriot, first one must question the tea. Why is there a monopoly? Why is it sanctioned by the King? Why must we pay for war? Why should we serve to benefit the distant monarchy? Who benefits? To obtain knowledge of the possibility that tea is being used to exploit requires questioning. The original patriots questioned the entirety of the situation.
After questioning, the original patriots called out to peers and communicated their information. They let the whole community know that the tea they enjoy leads to their exploitation, the exploitation of others, and the profit of uncaring company strangers. No matter how good the tea is, no matter how pleasing, if it is enabling exploitation, patriots question, reject exploitation and literally or figuratively toss it into the sea.
GAS IT!
“The future depends on what we do in the present.” ~Gandhi
If there is any commodity today comparable to tea in 1773 it’s dino juice, bubbling crude, burning water, black gold, petrol, or Texas tea. Texas tea is comparable to black tea as both are liquid. They are more comparable and similar in that tea was, and oil is, a means of exploitation. Tea was a tool for exploitation centuries prior, while Texas tea is today, only in an exponential fashion. The potential of tea to exploit was minute next to petrol to do the same.
There was merely a casual physical dependence on tea. There is an overwhelming, ever-infiltrating, global, industrial, institutional and individual dependence on petroleum products. It is not a natural dependence; it is an institutionalized dependence. Today tea, coffee and all things caffeine make up the most widely consumed beverages on the world. Coffee is second only to petrol in global trade. Yet, tea, coffee and caffeine are but a sideline venture in terms of global use and exploitation, compared to petrol and octane. Caffeine may be part of a nice drink, but petrol is literally and figuratively in everything.
Today petrol is needed in order to obtain and distribute everything, even petrol itself. The movement of people is dependent on petrol. Production and shipment of everything is dependent on petrol. The tea business and every other business are all dependent on petrol. Nearly all individual and institutional energy needs are met by burning petroleum products.
FACT: Over 30% of world’s electricity comes from burning coal.
Humanity revolves around petrol; the burning of it is a global phenomenon. The status quo of today is interconnected with fossil fuel; it is everywhere, in everything. All institutions and individuals are dependent on it and use it. Petrol is everywhere, burned up and spilled into in the world’s environment. Take a breath, have a sip — it’s in there. It is one of our greatest detractors and greatest liberators. With it we have fueled war and the means to explore. There is no getting away from it, whether one lives next to a processing facility or in wild seclusion.
Petrol is our liberator. Through its octane, people are enabled. People can drive thousands of miles in a few days or simply race cars in circles. People can fly around the world in hours. People can transport every whim and wish wherever by petrol-powered machines. Petrol has enabled and inspired architectural feats equivalent to the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Petrol is decayed carbon matter from the distant past buried under extreme pressures. The decaying mass is pressurized and, over time, creates carbon fuels. Coal is essentially oil that has not aged as long and liquefied. A less acceptable theory is that instead of being pressurized and decayed biomass, fossil-fuel is from much older, Earth forming, geological processes. Either way, petroleum is a nonrenewable resource. Practically all of the world’s industry, farming and transportation are dependent upon this nonrenewable resource.
FACT: Many new chemicals and previously unknown substances came into existence as a result of petrol experimentation. Many petroleum products such as plastics could be replaced or manifested through other renewable, less-toxic resources. A short list of petroleum products includes: asphalt, antihistamines, aspirin, cosmetics, disposable diapers, linoleum, insecticides, fertilizers, pesticides, trash bags, bubble gum, shaving cream, crayons, plastics, synthetics, deodorant, dyes, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, paintbrushes, paint, stain, sun glasses, rubber cement, carpeting, preservatives, lotion, lip balm, balloons, toys, and on and on.
Petrol is our detractor, because it fuels destruction. Without petrol the ability to go to war would be diminished, the capacity to wage large-scale war would be eliminated, and often any reason to go to war in the first place would fail to materialize. Is it worth it? What time is it?
Petrol is a detractor because of the resulting pollution. The consequences of abundant and constant use of petrol are leading us to who knows where, but it doesn’t appear to be a clean and accommodating place. Future generations will perhaps wonder at the splendor and intense consumption of this time period. People may wonder how we could have used such a dirty fuel at all, or perhaps how we could have used it all.
Many wars since WWI have been waged over petrol and all have been fueled with petrol. The Persian Gulf War in 1991 was absolutely about oil. Iraq invaded Kuwait to reclaim oil. Kuwait, once part of Iraq, was partitioned by the colonizing and monopolizing British Empire. Iraq claimed that Kuwait was siphoning oil from fields on their land. During that war a few hundred U.S.A. soldiers perished while tens of thousands of Iraqis, both combatants and innocents, were killed. It was a war for oil; oil is precious for it powers machinery of profit and control.
Oil enables the exploitation of people. It disrupts ecosystems and beings through its toxicities, as well as enabling war. The result of the global use of petrol is directly a polluted environment. Indirectly, the global use of petrol results in war and reinforces oligarchical collectivism.
Tea was not nearly as integral to living in 1773 as oil is today. In 1773, the commodity of tea and the surrounding institutional exploitations came to symbolize institutions treading on individuals. Today the symbolism is the same, only exponentially magnified in petrol. The oligarchical collectivism, the institutional integrations with petrol, are much more intricately intertwined and more significant in numbers than tea was.
Tea was seen as a means for slanted exploitation and the people reacted to the wrong of the increased slant. All of the other related and unrelated unfair taxes and exploits did not go unnoticed; they were despised as well, but the tea became the symbol and catalyst for action.
Why then is oil not seen in the same manner? It is all pervasive; it is everywhere. Tea provides caffeine, while oil provides octane. Both are powerful resources of revenue, but the power of octane dwarfs caffeine. Petrol and its accompaniments perhaps make things so easy that people ignore or choose to remain unaware of its exploitive capability and environmental side effects. If caffeine was addictive as opium or cocaine, if tea powered as much as petrol, the big steep might have never happened. Great addictions result in great tolerations and the colonists would have been waiting at the docks with their life savings for a fix. Petrol is this addicting. Petrol equates to everything, so people forego everything for it.
The similarity between tea and oil is somewhat constricted as the scope and power of octane is near limitless compared to that of the healthful beverage. Tea is the brew that provides nutrients and prevents illness, while petrol is the liquid that supplies power and denies clean water. Tea was exploitive to North Americans and Asians, but it was avoidable; petrol is not. Tea was exploitive directly, while petrol is exploitive directly and indirectly. If one was disgusted and sickened by tannic acid in tea, one could avoid it, but there is no avoiding petrol and its sickening accompaniments; it’s now everywhere.
Despite all the wrongdoing perpetuated by the Crown, the item that represented the perpetuation of exploitation was tea. Tea was enjoyable and healthful, a hot drink in a cold world. A hot drink, to which there were alternatives in the expanse of the Americas. It wasn’t until the abandonment of tea that new distinct and equally enjoyable alternative beverages were enjoyed by the colonists. Herbal teas were harvested from the vast expanse of wild plants in the new world, introduced to them by the local indigenous people.
That was the new world, continents and oceans, an entire hemisphere open and new, undiscovered, never previously institutionalized. Wealth of wondrous proportions captivated and catapulted the pyramidal European monarchies. European institutions recognized only other European institutions and stomped and swept over the Americas for land, timber, gold and skins. Genocide was instituted and regimented, but also wild and random; however the result was the same. European institutions and individuals plundered, murdered and then claimed discovery and colonialism. Thanks to the trinity of liberty, empires were slowed somewhat in the New World.
Today there is a different new world, though no new previously unknown isle has been discovered. Today, it is literally a new world, an altered environment. Every hemisphere is changed in this new world, rather an altered world, manifested by global pollution and environmental destruction at the hands of mankind. The new world is the petrolithic era.
All sorts of great successes and horrible setbacks have been accomplished with petrol as a fuel and resource, resulting in all sorts of consequences and calamitous conditions. The petrolithic era is represented by a distinct layer of polluted sediment on the Earth and all the elements. The pollution preceding the petrolithic era has also laden the waters and air and all life on the planet. The petrolithic era is a distinct, physically detectable time period leaving a permanent mark on the Earth.
“Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change (both elapsed and imminent) for recognition of the Anthropocene — currently as a vivid yet informal metaphor of global environmental change — as a new geological epoch to be considered for formalization by international discussion.” ~Geological Society of London
Cities and nations are built to accommodate petrol-powered machines. People have steered the seven seas in gale storms and at great depths with petrol. People have been catapulted into outer space with petrol. People have risen parts of the world to magnificence with petrol, while other parts continue to experience a downward spiral. Pollution and smog ride the tide and wind. The legacy of the petrolithic era may not be the cities, highways, but the pollution and depleted resources.
FACT: Many structures in ancient Babylon were built using asphalt. The tower of Babel is said to have been built with asphalt.
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Asphalt is a petroleum product. People in Persia, Asia and Japan used petrol millennia ago for fuel and building material, but the petrolithic era began much later in history, when petrol became a worldwide phenomenon, a permeation encompassing and surrounding everything, reaching into all the elements through and through. The petrolithic era began with the unheralded globalization of, by, and for petrol.
Petrol pollution has been growing since the early 1900s, the ongoing effects of which are still being calculated and accumulating. Petrol and its accompaniments are all pervasive, measurable in every climate on the planet, detectable in every stratum. Millennia from now, the consequences and conditions of the petrolithic era will be a stain in this geological layer, physically defining the time.
Rudolf Diesel was born in France in 1858, the same year the Company handed control of South Asia to governmental authorities. Rudolf invented different types of engines and received his first patent in 1893. He was a dreamer, a thinker, and a doer and was nearly killed when one of his early engine designs exploded. He had to spend months in the hospital and suffered throughout life due to the accident.
After years of work, he perfected the diesel engine. Rudolf moved to the U.S.A. to make and sell them in the biggest market. Originally, his design used, and was intended to use, a mixture of bio-fuels. Rudolf promoted and advocated bio-fuels to power his engines, along with petrol if it was locally accessible. At the time, petrol was the alternative energy source, as bio-fuel is today. Bio-fuels, renewable resources, were the accepted, sensible norm.
Rudolf believed that his engine would enable individuals. He envisioned his engine would be powered by locally available fuels to enable local industry. Rudolf never wanted to use petrol. Of course if petrol was accessible locally, he wouldn’t argue its use. Still to name a petrol fuel after Rudolf is insulting and misleading. He became a powerful business figure when the diesel engine exploded on the world market instead of on him. His ideas for bio-fuels were not environmental or extraordinary departure, just sensible.
Rudolf and his invention eventually were caught up in the arms race leading up to WWI. Before his death, he was paranoid and suffered several nervous breakdowns. He was of Germanic heritage, but did not support the German build-up to war.
While crossing the English Channel on the S.S. Dresden, Rudolf disappeared, lost at sea. He was on his way to sell his new technology to the British for their submarines amid the arms race leading up to WWI. It is unknown whether Rudolph committed suicide or was murdered; either way, Rudolf disappeared at sea. Ten days later, possessions were removed from his presumed corpse and the badly decomposed body was set off to sea. There are better ways to kill oneself than submit to the sea, but there are not many better ways to murder than to plunge someone overboard. After Rudolf died, people would forget about the bio-fuels. The petrolithic era began September 30, 1913, when Rudolf mysteriously disappeared.
“The fact that fat oils from vegetable sources can be used may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become in course of time of the same importance as some natural mineral oils and the tar products now.” ~Rudolf Diesel
Rudolf intended his engine to be powered by bio-fuel and/or petrol, enabling individuals worldwide. He did not intend his engine to be used specifically with petrol to enable global institutions. Today, petrol is presented as the standard while it is just one option. Petrol is the best option for institutions and monopolization; bio-fuels are the best option for individuals and independence.
At the beginning of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil was the world’s wealthiest individual and the U.S.A. was the world’s major supplier of petrol. John D definitely made petrol standard, institutionalizing it the world over. At the 1900 World’s Fair, one of Rudolf’s engines was featured running on peanut oil. After Rudolf’s death, the petrol would flow, the submarines would go and the bombs would blow. The petroleum business began to globalize, as did weapons manufacturing and sales. The War to End All Wars began after the June 1914 assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by a member of a Serbian secret society. Yet in reality, the war was bound to happen and sprouting before Rudolf ate his last meal in 1913. Since the death of Rudolf and WWI, war and oil have been as intertwined as math and science.
Rudolf opposed the use of his invention in German submarines, but after his death, Germany gained access to Diesel technology. Petrol became the fuel of choice for the German submarines. One such German U-boat sunk the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing over 1,000 people, including some 128 U.S.A. citizens.
President Wilson merely protested. The U.S.A. practiced isolationism until April 6, 1917, when Congress declared war on Germany and entered The War to End All Wars. Perhaps it took that long to convince people to go to war. Ultimately conscientious objectors in the U.S.A. and Britain were imprisoned. The Espionage Act and the Sedition Act made stating facts, or anything deemed disloyal towards the U.S.A., a criminal act.
In different parts of the world there were different reasons to raise arms. War had been expected, and prepared for and fought for many ends. India fought for the United Kingdom, expecting to receive self-governance in return. They did not get it. While India remained loyal to fight, Russians left the front and revolted at home against their royal oligarchy in 1917. Millions died in fighting there and subsequent starvation separately from WWI.
FACT: During WWI, German agents and Kaiser Wilhelm II tried to ignite Jihad in the Middle East against Britain. Turkey obliged and declared Jihad against England, France and Russia. The Ottoman Empire and the German Empire eventually fell side by side, but not before the Ottoman Empire vanquished roughly 1 million Armenian people.
For four years, man killed man at nearly every corner of the globe in every manner imaginable. Those souls that fought in the war were hence known as the lost generation. Many survivors suffered mental trauma and were permanently tweaked; many more lost limbs and were otherwise disfigured. WWI was fought on old battlefields with old fighting theories in the new petrolithic era. Thousands perished charging impenetrable machine gun fire, mortar and artillery under the threat of being shot by a superior if they refused.
Many zealously believed they were on the killing fields for God, or against those who believed in a false God. Many zealously fought for a king, whom they believed was exalted by God or against those that believed in such royal order. Old warring techniques used with new weaponry of the petrolithic era resulted in charge and slaughter. Many of the slaughtered and slaughterers on both sides believed that they were pursuing the greater good.
During and following WWI, bio-fuels and any alternative to petrol became a load of hot air. Many battles of WWI were waged over oil. Warring institutions knew very well its power and potential. Rudolf’s ideas for an engine powered by the oils of local plants to empower local people was shot down and killed, like so many people in the trenches of WWI.
When the War to End All Wars ended, petrol became the institutional choice. The petrolithic era enables and benefits institutions. Petrol is limited and is mined, refined and distributed by elite institutions. Bio-fuels are grown, renewable and near limitless, open to all. Petrol enables institutional control, oligarchical collectivism. The petrolithic era has been an affront of pollution and war since its inception. Petrolithic pollutants fuel war, and war fuels further use of petrol and reasoning for violent conquest.
Petrol and its accompaniments now permeate all the elements. The global burning of petrol creates C02, but also pollutes and poisons every part of the Earth in a mostly subtle fashion depending on one’s powers of observation or one’s location. C02 is one factor of pollution, the likely major contributor to global warming, but there’s more. The burning of fossil fuels is completely toxic, as are its additives and accompaniments. Bio-diesel has a more complete combustion than petroleum diesel and less-toxic accompaniments. The exhaust, in turn, is cleaner than petroleum diesel. Today, petrol and its accompaniments are in every drink and every breath as is invisible radioactive waste. The toxic results are the result of energy oligarchies, those of petrol fashioned after WWI and those of nuclear coming of age after WWII.
Some places experience direct and destructive pollution, while others receive an accumulation of dispersed and diluted poisons that casually and slowly add up. Petrol is spilled, burned, morphed, sprayed and shipped on every continent and across every ocean. Petrolithic toxins are everywhere, in quantities both casual and overwhelming, whether noticed or not.
Petrol and its byproducts will accompany every living thing physically, until its global distribution is ceased and cleaned. It has been distributed across the environment and has been deposited in every stratum of the Earth. It is gathered and consumed by people, but it affects every living thing on the planet. Petrol and its spooky accompaniments can be found in water of deep and remote wells and in ice of the most remote glacier, atop the highest mountain, in the most distant lands.
Our mutual ancestors were affected by their environment. Factors such as the amount of sunlight, the mean temperature, and the local flora and fauna affected development. Past environmental factors made us who we are today. We continue to be affected by our environment, by the sludge in our food, the toxins in our water, and the particulate in our air. The recorded changes transcribing the future are not merely of light and heat. The main factors for environmental change arrive through the global use and ingestion of poisons. The consequences are sometimes seen, but mostly unseen and steadily accumulating. People today, cursed with unstable mammalian DNA, are perhaps passing on pollutant-distorted genetic information to offspring.
When and if archeologists of the future, thousands of years from now, dig down to the layer of sediment we exist in today, they will find a global, poisonous layer of soot and muck splattered in the strata of this time period, the petrolithic era, which led to the nuclear age. The intense global use of petrol and oligarchical energy has accumulated to form a distinct layer forever imprinted on Earth. For whatever reason what we know may be lost in time, but the pollution of the petrolithic era will persist as a physical layer indefinitely. Perhaps generations in the future they will know that civilization created such conditions or maybe they will hypothesize that an asteroid hit the Earth and spit up all the chemical/nuclear debris.
“I think our problem uh, really is our reliance on oil.”
~James Woolsey, CIA
FACT: In 2004 the U.S.A. burned 140 billion gallons of gasoline. Automobile exhaust contains many poisons including benzene, formaldehyde, and sulfur dioxide.
The petrolithic era has resulted in endless pollution and fuel for endless war. Petrol also fuels industry’s overdevelopment. This too, is sometimes blatant and other times difficult to see and understand through the presentation or misrepresentation of conditions. Clear-cut forests cannot be seen from the road. Overdevelopment is exemplified in the decline of salmon and the closing of salmon fishing along West Coast of U.S.A. in 2008. Overdevelopment is the result of petrol’s power used in a poorly planned manner. Dependence is instigated and independence eliminated.
Civilization’s growth is currently dependent on resources that have negative consequences to development of the simplest functions of civilization. Despite creating necessity for more resources, despite creating actual and imagined dependencies on resources, distribution is jaded. Clean water alone is difficult to obtain for most of the world and growing more difficult.
The physical residuals of petrol and its accompaniments are undeniable and ubiquitous. The poisonous deluge and the thorough destruction of Earth’s fragile ecology is the most impending consequence of the petrolithic era. Sickening pollution is the most blatant consequence and global warming the most dooming.
Global war fueled by petrol is the most abrasive and obvious example of having the fuel to do what is possible and not proceeding with what is practical. With unlimited fuel, vast poisons and constant war arrive. Petrol enables overdevelopment. Petrol also allows for reckless war. Total destruction and annihilation has become easy.
Quicker construction, faster transportation, accelerated exchange of money and of goods and services, overall accelerated development, exchange of information, and increased destruction of physicality all result from the fast pace of the petrolithic era. Vehicles are capable of tremendous velocity, delivering people and resources far and wide, while information zaps practically instantly.
With the advent of the World Wide Web, the speed at which information is distributed is limited mainly by the rate at which one can consume it. Everything glides forward at an ever-increasing pace, physically and mentally. Change is constant, slow like an old mule drawn to green fields and also, in increasing frequency, swift and sudden like a stampede of stallions.
Without oil, institutions and individuals would not have instigated many undertakings, both benevolent and malevolent. The two world wars would have been local and minor without petrol. Certainly they would have been less destructive and maybe they would not have happened at all.
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because the U.S.A. stopped oil shipments to Japan. Petrol fueled and reasoned WWI and WWII. The petrolithic era is toxic, instigated by earthly chemical poisons. It is a mechanized, institutionalized and chaotic structure that provides for war. WWII ended in Europe only when the Nazi war machines ran out of fuel. Their synthetic fuel facility was destroyed and they failed at attempts to conquer and pillage more oil; finally their tanks stalled. The allies bombed Germany’s fuel depots and prevented the Nazis from acquiring more fuel.
People cast our ancestors as barbarians and yet, it was only in the 21st century that bombing cities became possible, then acceptable. After WWII, most European cities were ruins. After WWII, two super powers emerged and another war began, the Cold War. Troublesome Germany was split in two. The USSR represented the east side of Germany and the U.S.A. represented the west.
Within this time is another epoch, the information age. The information age is completely man-made and oriented. Often information is not actual, existent solely in people’s minds as reflections of reality or reflections of thoughts. Today, information may exist only in electrical format, but move as fast as light and be relevant and concrete as a hefty book on the most immediate matter.
SYMBOL — SWASTIKA
The swastika symbol is used by cultures all around the world, from Hindu to Hopi. It is a form of the cross. It symbolizes peaceful tidings and happy travels across the Earth. The Nazis flipped its meaning; their swastika went the other way. Instead of peaceful, carefree travels, their swastika meant violent travels with intent to monopolize the world.
Today, secrets, science, news, events, paradigms and bullshit are all circulated via multimedia machines. Today it is possible that anyone, not just those in elite institutions, can be among the most informed people in world history. In the past, information was strictly distributed to only a few, if shared at all. Today, there is a vast amount of information available; however some pertinent information is restricted, and a lot of less-pertinent information is distributed. Many people who want to know relevant information might not be permitted access to it. Many more people don’t want more information pertinent to their conditions or may believe they know all they need to know.
The premise of the Cold War was one of information, a war in which direct conflict between the nuclear nations would be apocalyptic. There were proxy wars, stealthy battles, communistic versus democratic wars the world over; yet directly, between the two nuclear nations, it was a battle of information. Both super powers fought armies that had support from the other in some way, but never fought each other directly. The Cold War was a war fought with information and disinformation.
The Cold War was fought with secret files, secret weapons, covert manipulation, lies and spies. Information is power and in the Cold War, it was the main weapon. It was a space race, an arms race, and a race to convince people and to capture their hearts and minds. Secrets could make or break battles of information. The information age began at the advent of the Cold War when the power of information, and at times just information, was the main device of war.
FACT: After WWII many Hitler henchmen found employment with the U.S.A. and other western nations. Reinhard Gehlen was Chief of Intelligence Gathering on the Eastern front for Hitler and subsequently recruited by the U.S.A. as a spy for the CIA. Walter Kopp — operative, Hans von Ohain — USAF, Arthur Rudolph — NASA, and Wernher Von Braun — ASA. These and many others began work with the U.S.A. and many more began working for the USSR.
The information age expanded with radio, telephones, television, computers, pagers, cellular phones, and the internet, but it began with the secrecy of the Cold War. The information age began with the global war of information. Now, despite secrets, it is easy to obtain new information, and society is frequently exposed to potential paradigms. There is an overload of information, yet still some is unavailable.
FACT: Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the movable-type printing press. His invention made news and books available in Europe and is considered to have instigated the Renaissance and later scientific revolution.
FACT: The first computer was the International Business Machine, by IBM. These punch-card machines were used to keep track of prisoners in the Nazi regime and organize slave labor. The numbers categorized people. Slave laborers received tattoos on their arms; these were their international business-machine ID codes.
Information is everywhere, just as petrol is everywhere and abundant. Though some ancients used oil and all ancients used information, the petrolithic era began with the death of Rudolf and the initiation of global petrol use and global war. The nuclear age began with the first atomic detonation. And the information age began with the birth of a worldwide battle of information and secrets.
The information age began with the legislation of the National Security Act, July 26, 1947. The Act created the CIA and morphed and expanded the military-industrial complex. Since the information, disinformation, lies, half-truths, and secrets have been used in worldwide power play and metadata has been increasingly collected.
FACT: One of the first missions of the CIA was research into mind control. The Agency experimented with LSD; this included dosing unknowing U.S.A. citizens and observing their delirium after poisoning.
The Cold War was a war of secrets, information real, and unreal, truth and lies suppressed and hidden. Both sides presented the sleek and shiny portion of the status quo for show and hid or built over the crumbling and rotting underbelly. Fittingly, as the information age arrived, the consequences of the petrolithic era were beginning to bear fruit. Environmental catastrophes however were considered inconsequential to victory and national prosperity. Extinction of other species was a small price to pay.
WWII heralded the ultimate man-made environmental catastrophe: atomic bombs. Information on this horror was well distributed. Obliterating cities to smithereens, vaporizing people and perma-frying surroundings was presented as a necessary evil toward the greater good. Tolerations for total and violent environmental destruction were instituted–for the greater good.
Whole cities were obliterated instantly. This fear of violent obliteration and environmental destruction was and is delivered persistently. There were still many unknowns about nuclear bombs, but the knowns were frightening enough and well distributed. Nuclear invention sped the information age, powering it with atomic fear. Nuclear knowledge presented reasoning that not knowing was better than knowing. Being killed was possibly a better option than surviving nuclear war.
Nuclear information is well-known and would strike subtle fear into generations. The potential to be instantaneously killed or morbidly radiated is more frightening than many a gloomy fate. A war to end all was now possible; perhaps nothing is more frightening. The bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, ended WWII. The atomic bombs cost the lives of an initial 66,000 in Hiroshima and 39,000 in Nagasaki. The information on the devastation of nuclear bombs would circulate, creating fear, but also manifesting the logic that avoiding information was logical. Individuals avoided information on the fact that and institutions developed the need for more nuclear-detonation devices.
The understanding of the term blast radius and the effects of radiation became as well-known to school children as the story of George Washington crossing the Delaware. When the actual facts are as dire as such death and destruction, avoiding information might be practical. Yet, if it is actual, if it is real, it is important to know about. If the subject is disagreeable, it cannot be changed by ignoring it. If there is a frightening situation, the only way to surpass it and the fear is to question it and face it. Many of the ideas and phrases used by the nuclear-experimentation industry are Orwellian misleading euphemisms. Spent fuel is one. There is nothing spent about it; it needs to be actively cooled and cared for a long, long time. Depleted uranium for ammunition is another example of a misleading idea; there is nothing depleted about it.
If there are dangerous miscreants tricking people in a certain way, it is important to know about their tricks. If there are bombs out there that can destroy all life, it might seem sensible to hide at first. One may not want to know, but one should. One may want to hide, but there is always the possibility of evil, and being afraid, hiding in a cave, solves nothing.
FACT: After WWII, the U.S.A. and USSR began experimenting with different radio waves and their effects on people. The U.S.A. Embassy in Moscow was repeatedly attacked by varying radio frequencies, sickening and maddening many.
The information age eventually would have occurred, independent of the petrolithic era, but as it happened, the information age began in the petrolithic era and grew with the nuclear age. The nuclear attacks magnified the escalation of the information age. Fear is always induced by information, normally false evidence appearing real. The nuclear attacks spread fear of very real events and information circulated faster with the heightened fear.
The nuclear age is invisibly global. There have been thousands of atomic and nuclear detonations into our atmosphere, waters and earth. There has also been the most severe meltdowns/meltthroughs/meltouts imaginable of multiple reactors in Japan. The nuclear age is capable of making us no more. When the nuclear age is upon us in war there will be no more us. The nuclear attacks globally affect mentality, inducing fear of very real events and physicality in cancer and decreased immunity. We are still escalating into the information age and, like it or not, we are sliding deeper into the petrolithic era and nuclear age. The consequences of their daily use are globally apparent and accumulating.
These oligarchical energy systems burden us all with cancerous toxins and looming, radiating and immediate poisoning, depending on one’s location. There is likely no petroleum or nuclear product that cannot be replaced by some renewable and cleaner alternative, including energy. Yet if the use of petrol and oligarchical energy were to cease tomorrow or be vastly curtailed, the consequences and conditions of piling toxins would persist.
Petrol is power. Information is power. Today acquiring information is easier than ever; information is available to all, but not all information to everyone. Unfortunately there are still too many secrets. Too much information is kept from too many. Information is more powerful when it is kept from some. Information has the potential to sway opinion. This is why there are secrets, because if people knew differently, they could conclude differently. Controlling petrol is powerful; controlling information is total power.
It is difficult to obtain some information. Secrets may remain secrets for centuries even though the information existed. At the same time there is an overabundance of information; a potential for information overload. There is also occasional overload of petroleum pollutants. Institutional presentation of information is ground-shaking paradigm mixed with bogus inconsequence. The petrolithic era makes drastic change and the information age delivers news of the changes among other inconsequential information.
Many people don’t want to know the information available, information that concerns them, let alone the secrets that may, or may not, be pertinent at all. Paradigm or otherwise, people may ignore information, but no one can ignore pollution. Information of the mental must be acquired, one has to ask. Physicality does not and cannot ignore information in the environment.
The petrolithic era is a constant, mostly subtle bombardment of pollutants and poisons. The petrolithic era is physically detectable, measurable, and globally layered; it is impossible to ignore and will likely be impossible to hide as long as the Earth is. The petrolithic era is defined by man gathering and burning earthen minerals that disperse and layer back into and onto the planet.
There is also a constant bombardment of information with its own subtleties as well. Its change into the information age is undeniable, but it is not globally layered and calculable in the earth, sea, air and ice, as is petrol defining the petrolithic era. The information age is actual and the petrolithic era and nuclear age are real.
The Complete Patriot’s Guide
Ethan Indigo Smith’s book, The Complete Patriot’s Guide to Oligarchical Collectivism: Its Theory and Practice, is an insightful exploration of history, philosophy and contemporary politics of today’s heavily institutionalized society.
An inspiration for positive, peaceful individual action, The Complete Patriot’s Guide is pro-individual in its perspective and, although political, discusses our society and its institutions from neither left-wing nor right-wing perspectives, exploring history, philosophy and contemporary politics relative to the fictional work of George Orwell. Layered with insight, it is in part a literary exploration of the themes of Orwell’s 1984, and provides solutions for individual and collective empowerment.
The Complete Patriot’s Guide to Oligarchical Collectivism is available here on Amazon.
The Terraist Letters
Ethan Indigo Smith’s controversial book, The Terraist Letters, humorously contrasts the very serious issues of global nuclear experimentation and global marijuana prohibition. It is a funny and provocative political satire that attempts to brings some sanity to the most serious subject matter of nuclear experimentation, in a way that only Ethan can.
“Ethan’s work will titillate, irritate, but most importantly, stimulate some serious thought concerning current conventions. Give it a read. Your brain might thank you.” ~ New York Times Best Selling author, Jim Marrs
The Geometry of Energy: How to Meditate
This article was excerpted and revised from the book, ‘The Geometry of Energy: How to Meditate’.
In ‘The Geometry of Energy’, author Ethan Indigo Smith explores meditation and meditative energies through the sacred four dimensions of geometry. Simple and profound, it is an empowering four-step meditation designed to lead to individuation, self-development, an enhanced understanding of energy, and psychological and spiritual cleansing.
Useful to meditation newcomers and longtime practitioners alike, ‘The Geometry of Energy’ provides insights into a variety of meditative processes for psychological and spiritual cleansing and enhancement.
About the author:
Activist, author and Tai Chi teacher Ethan Indigo Smith was born on a farm in Maine and lived in Manhattan for a number of years before migrating west to Mendocino, California. Guided by a keen sense of integrity and humanity, Ethan’s work is both deeply connected and extremely insightful, blending philosophy, politics, activism, spirituality, meditation and a unique sense of humour.
