Modernity actually and always aspired to Total Autarky in relationship with Nature : reducing all Biology and Life to a matter of Geology, making absolutely everything , including Life itself, synthetically out of rocks - the famous "air,water and coaltar" of 1940s chemistry.
But until that glorious day, Modernity knew it got its energy from non-renewable energy sources.
It was non-renewable in a peculiar sense of that phrase, at least in today's eyes.
Modernists didn't really feel that the world itself was about to run out of coal, gas and petroleum - not at least for many many centuries to come --- but they all fretted that their nation - and their's alone - would soon run out, before their enemies or competitors did.
This is what gives that special frenetic, panic-stricken, edginess to the supposedly optimistic Age of Modernity .
Could their nation learn how to break up atoms to produce endless amounts of energy and new elements, before their country ran out of its reserves of fossil fuels ?
Ultimately, Modernists like Hitler and Stalin and Churchill believed that the only real energy in reality was human mental energy, the Triumph of the WILL, but until the human mind unlocked the secret of the atom, petroleum would have to serve a very poor second....
No comments:
Post a Comment