And Soon I will be free...

How about, subjective "freedom" represents the perceived socially-acceptable options available to a person and to groups of people. Real-world freedom would be the actual physical options available to those persons or groups.

The latter is closely tied to energy and resource availability, although arguably in a nonlinear way. The former is a state of mind. They are not necessarily highly correlated with one another. A heroin user may feel more free than a CEO.

Just a short note to prime the pump; defining "freedom" in the USA on the 4th of July is a delicate business... as it's also a hot-button meme.

The freedom to live on a healthy world, to have a couple kids, and reasonably expect one's species to be around for a million years; that would have been nice. Reasonable deep freedoms like that have been supplanted by shallow freedoms.

At $70 a barrel, oil is far cheaper than gatorade, milk, lemonade, beer, and bottled water.

I used to think that this statement made sense, but now I'm not so sure? All the things listed are currently only made, indirectly, from oil, so the final product will have to cost more then the wholesale price of oil.

Anyway, I think that there is far more energy put into every bottle of water then there is water.

Ed

Oh the horror when oil passes Gatorade in cost..

Are you kidding me? I assume you mean that when the price of oil passes the CURRENT cost of Gatorade. When the price of oil rises, the price of Gatorade will rise higher because oil is an input to all of the processes that produce Gatorade. This is similar to the law of receding horizons that appears for things like shale oil or other renewables who have low eroi's and require huge subsidies to operate. It usually means that product or process is a energy sink or a < 1 EROEI process. I hope this was a joke, but I seriously see a lot of people confused about this concept and you of all people Nate, I hope are not confused.

Brilliant timing for this post Nate!

You touch upon one of those deep ironies in America. The history and rhetoric of freedom with the absolute dependence on global finance and energy flows. I think freedom in a structured society is largely mythical. Does the myth serve a purpose? Does it give people a sense of control while keeping them chained to social bonds and norms?

And I don't thinks these chains of bondage are necessarily bad. I have a spouse and a couple of kids. I therefore have less freedom to do as I please unless I decide to skip out on these responsibilities and place them onto others. Don't most of us feel such obligations and aren't they essential for a social species?

But what do we do in a culture of so much entitlement during energy descent? This does worry me. I try to talk people into starting on their own energy descent paths now, while it IS under their control, because I know how important that is for their sense of well being. However, most people aren't paying much attention and simply adapt to change in the moment. Losing a job = energy descent, not a planned powerdown.

So I am wondering if the same basic message warning people to get ahead of the curve works once they are in trouble? Be more self-reliant, establish local economic relationships, an informal economy, focus on the basics of shelter, energy, food, water, transportation and communication using fewer resources and money. Does it matter that much if they hear it later than sooner? Will people still accept this as a legitimate form of adaptation or wait around for the new recovery?

Please give me an answer. Thanks. Jason

I think people are starting to realize, that the USA, was given an aweful lot of free Capital, when they took the country away from the natives. Now they have spent so much of it, they are finding it difficult to replace all that they have wasted.

"At $70 a barrel, oil is far cheaper than gatorade, milk, lemonade, beer, and bottled water."

Sure they are all liquids, but we don't put beverages in our gas tank and we don't drink oil. Thus, comparisons of their prices seems misplaced. Simmons often talks about how cheap oil is in comparison to coffee. But no one drinks 18 gallons of coffee in the time it takes for my Ford ranger to go through a tank full of fuel.

According to this article, each one of us goes through 60 barrels a year of fossil fuels. 60 x 42 = 2520 gallons, which is 6.9 gallons a day. Who drinks 6.9 gallons a day of any form of beverage?

I think that cheap energy has an effect on freedom, but the increase in freedom per extra unit must diminish exponentially, in a similar way that we see when we look at GDP vs. actual quality of life. For example, in Europe the average citizen uses half as much energy as the average American citizen but you wouldn't seriously consider Europeans less free that Americans.

Also, if we consider what each individual freedom entails, then we can see how to maintain these as energy availability drops. Eg. If I want the freedom to be able to visit friends and family who live far away then I could move house, or a more efficient public transport system could be developed that would enable me travel the same distance with less energy.

Also, consider that if there is less energy available and we have to overcome some amount of adversity to achieve tasks that we now find effortless then we may start to actually feel more proud of these more difficult achievements which may make us feel more subjectively free overall.

Hello Nate,

"She comes down from Yellow Mountain.."

Your Quote: "Irrespective of declines in resources/capita, assuming basic needs are met, we might be able to 'trick' our wiring into responses that are less stressful as long as we feel ownership in what's happening."

IMO, seems like a good reason for full-on Peak Outreach to All so that All 'feel ownership in what's happening' and then All want to move to some degree of Optimal Overshoot Decline so that 'basic needs are met' as best as possible.

Imagine if the global pop. agreed that Asimov's List [P is #1, S is #2..] was to take the same priority in our economy as it is in Nature, and we then legislatively encouraged the FF-producers to massively stockpile recovered-S, not only to hoard it for the next seven generations, but to gradually drive I-NPKS prices skyhigh.

I guarantee you everyone would ramp O-NPK recycling and minimal water usage strategies to the max to reduce their stress and increase their feeling of ownership by activation of their Innate Territoriality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw-u5wazi_w
--------------------
Wildfire Reloaded [4:52]
--------------------
Can you hear the very faint music 'that sets our minds afire' when very gentle winds blow across Spiderwebs 'strung with silver wire'?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Spider_web_with_dew_d...
-----------------
Picture each dewdrop as just one converted golf course of our 16,000 in the USA... EDIT: in this photo: the big sticks represent the 'Spine & Limbs' of Alan Drake's standard gauge RR & TOD.
----------------

Are there any kids today that are tightly hugging their bags of NPK?

http://deltafarmpress.com/corn/corn-yield-0529/
-----------------------------
304-bushel corn — in 1955?

He was the rock star of corn.

..A state record corn yield of 179 bushels in 1950 for his first 4-H project, when he was just 10-1/2 years old...

..“I broke it deep, rowed it up in 28-inch rows, subsoiled, and used 30 wagonloads of barnyard manure, 1,200 pounds of Vigoro fertilizer, 1,000 pounds of soda, and planted Dixie 17, thinned to 12 inches, cultivated once.”

..“I made the crop with our eight-year-old mule, Dolly.

..I’d get up in the middle of the night, go down there with a shovel and a coal oil lantern, wading barefooted in mud ankle deep, to turn the water across to another row.

..After my first state record yield, companies gave us some 13-13-13 fertilizer and that made a big difference. We’d dump fertilizer in the irrigation water and you could almost see the corn change color before your very eyes. It was beautiful, and people came from all over to take photos.”
-----------------------
Are there any kids today that have abandoned their videogaming record attempts to pursue new agriculture records? Try to wrap your mind around the concept of a postPeak pre-teen working in the midnight loam with only the feeble light "of the cold-hearted orb that rules the night..."

That is certainly not 'Nights in White Satin, never reaching the end..."

How many kids will yearn to feel the 'white satin' of beneficiated fertilizers slipping from their fingers to the final square foot below? Borlaug: Without I-NPK, Game Over!==> so lets move to ramp O-NPK as much as possible before it is far too late.

How many will eagerly fall to the ground to stir in the O-NPK they so laboriously saved?

"Remember when the music
Was the best of what we dreamed of for our children's time
And as we sang we worked, for time was just a line,
It was a gift we saved, a gift the future gave..."

"Remember when the music
Was a glow on the horizon of every newborn day.."--Harry Chapin

Or are we just going to let as many as possible newborns just fall to the ground?

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/odds_and_oddities/ultimate_in_unfair.htm

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

I see "Freedom" as the lack of external controls on ones decisions. With the increasing level of elected dictatorship in the US we have continuing levels of declining freedom.
Freedom is primarily a struggle between government control of our decisions and being in control ourselves of our own decisions.
I don't really see that oil, coal, natural gas or any other form of energy directly affects this government vs individual struggle for control of our lives.
Back in 1776 there were no fossil fuels used, but the struggle to remove government control took place anyway.
Sometimes I think there is too much emphasis at this site to tie fossil fuels which have only been around for maybe 200 years at most to all of our problems.
Many of our current problems are not the result of having fossil fuels, but the result of human GREED, LUST for POWER and SLOTH. Those three human flaws are the primary cause of loss of Individual Freedoms. The Greed and Lust for Power persons want to control individuals to acquire more money or to obtain or maintain Power while the Sloth in individuals prevents them from taking the necessary steps to prevent the first two from taking control of their freedoms.
If all of the electronic/electrical devices in the world (which have only been around for a bit over 100 years) were to suddenly disappear, most people would gain increased freedom as a result of the failure of the Greedy and Lusting for Power groups to maintain the level of control they currently have.
There are those on this list that continually wish to control the lives of others (Lust for Power) by mandating where they live, where they work, how they get around, what they eat etc... and there are those who wish to maintain the freedom to make those decisions for themselves. I don't really see oil or other fossil fuels being a significant factor in these differences.

What is freedom?
One man's freedom from is destroyed by another man's freedom to.
I think a better word to consider is "opportunities", or "options". But that didn't make such a catchy political slogan.

How much are we entitled to?
Meaningless concept unless it is referred to some legal or political policy.

How could less energy per capita equate to more freedom?
Freedom from or freedom to? Freedom for whom?
Energy under the control of whom?
Those who control their own energy have the greater freedom thereby, providing they don't allow it to somehow blinker them (e.g. into thinking they mustn't walk or bus to the store as it would be beneath their dignity).
But that man's freedom To reduces another's freedom From.

There are few more gigastupendanormous violations of freedom that that constantly imposed by motorists on non-motorists. Just about all the public spaces are turned into death-metal blockades thereby. The freedom to safely walk, cycle, along "rights of way", or just stand around or play hide-and-seek are massively stolen thereby. So the end of the car age would be a massive positive in that respect. And also in respect of less crime: www.energyark.net/urbna.htm.

Energy in the hands of government could be very antithetic to freedom. A tank defending us against invasion by the dictator Saddam Badman would increase our freedom; that tank being used to support a Washington dictatorial regime (perish the perverse thought) would be reducing it.

......(cheap being anything under $500 a barrel)
I somehow think this en-passant parenthetical needs a post of its own.

The freedom to breed to overshoot on a finite planet ultimately curtails other freedoms.

Such as the freedom of other species to exist.

Too often, the vague definition of "freedom" in our minds has been conflated with an entitlement to do anything which is not expressly forbidden, such as dumping waste into streams, overfishing the seas, logging the rainforests.

The "Freedom of Beliefs" entitlement often includes the freedom to enslave others or diminish the global commons. The tragedy of the commons is all about freedom, after all.

But there is no freedom from freedom's consequences.

An awkward word, freedom. It's inherently relative, referential.

Once we had the frontiersman or the mountian man as the symbol of all we supposedly hold dear-rugged individualism,self reliance ,freedom from the necessity of bending the knee to lord or employer.

These incarnations of our dreams gradually morphed into the cowboy, a character perhaps not quite so free as the "long runners" who risked the tender mercies of Airdales ancient kin,when they were still numerous and strong,to trap the beaver,but nevertheless a freespirited soul beholden to nobody beyond his little tribe of fellows bound in brotherhood by the "brand".

The cowboys are for all intents and purposes gone now and thier replacements,the farmer and the trucker,the most recent reincarnations of the myth are,if not threadbare,at least badly shopworn.

The farmer,that reputed pillar of free enterprise,has rooted himself out a spot at the trough that has allowed him to become,on a per capita basis,one of the biggest and fattest socialist hogs around.

(The msm created the farmer as myth and has since been rather reluctant to revisit the state of his symbolic health.)

He is furthermore,as things stand today, an utter and absolute prisoner of the ff industry.

The independent truckers are in even worse shape in regard to the diesel merchants-the farmers do have the necessary resources as a group to throw off the fossil diesel yoke by brewing thier own fuel- but the truckers have no option,other than the hat in the hand.

Who will wear the cowboy boots and drive the pickup trucks in the future?

(A few July 4 brews can put strange hic!thoughts into your head and lead to trying your hand at flowery old time July 4 urp!rhetoric.I mean tryin'to caricature -never mind,my glass is empty and my fire is just about ready.)

The trouble with tryin'to compose lies when you're drinkin is that you are apt to forget in the middle and tell the truth at just the wrong spot.

Long live the Dream!

Every action a human takes is a motion, a search, for freedom. Freedom is our universal goal. The drug addict and the priest are both searching for freedom. They are both seeking to satisfy desire. They want to be free of desire but they only satisfy a single desire.

We are all seeking a palliative to our disease of desire. Desire is our fundemental bondage.

But instead of ending all desire we satisfy our simple desires. The spiritual masters today are all hidden and so the average person is left with consumerism or politics to be our guides. The capitalists , doctors, and politicians know our simple desires and they sell us temporary freedom in thousands of different packages, knowing that these things only temporarily satisfy our suffering.

No thing, no product or concept or ideology, can permanently end our desire. When we get the new political leader or the new cell phone, something or someone comes along to remind us that we still have desire. And we are off on another search.

Seek the freedom that depends on nothing. A freedom that does not depend on a concept or an object. That is the only true freedom. That freedom does not depend on words, or lines on a map, and is not the result of "getting" anything. Our natural state is the bliss of freedom. It is not given to you by anyone. It is. And you are already it. The only thing one needs to do is renounce. We need to let go of control, let go of the idea that we need to do something to get free. Then cortisol will be lower! We do not need scientists to figure this out but if it helps you to understand the wisdom of the sages it is all well.

Most of you here are still seeking that control, through numbers and charts and plans. You figure if you just "know that one thing" then everything will be alright. This is good because it helps those who still cannot comprehend the greater freedom. It helps those who are still addicted to desire and are afraid to get rid of desire because they are afraid they will lose the high. So we need to teach everyone that all "things" can only give us a limited, impermanent, freedom. "Things" gives a feeling of freedom that is bound by the very thing that makes us feel free.

Oil does not make us free. It only gives us a taste freedom. Like a psychedelic drug, it only lasts while it is coursing though our veins. It is so silly to hear you state that freedom depends on something! Think of that!

"we might be able to 'trick' our wiring into responses that are less stressful as long as we feel ownership in what's happening."

I have noticed this racing sailboats. Those who are afraid often retreat into non-action where they feel even more afraid. Those who begin laughing at the rush of wind and spray of water stay happy and functional. Those who are "forced" into situations beyond their control often develop a fear of the sport (say a storm blows up) even though when racing, they might be putting the boat in far more dangerous situations every 15 min as they round a buoy with a pack of other boats.

As far as freedom and energy, I think those are less related than zero growth economy and freedom.

When I think of freedom I think about doing the work you enjoy (or have a skill or passion to pursue), loving who you want, learning what you want, saying what you believe, as well as being protected from others killing, maiming, taking what you have, poisoning your air, water, etc.

So I feel freedom is directly opposed to competition. As competition increases the ability to have a choice decreases.

People start to band together to protect themselves under competition (in anything from gangs, to churches, to national governments). Or they ally with stronger powers (Medieval families would often write powerful people into wills that the powerful person (a bishop say) would inherit should they leave no direct descendants, so that the powerful person would protect their land from hostile takeover).

The same is true with land ownership. If you have more kids than you have land, then some will have to do without. How many bible stories are about brothers killing brothers? Lots.

Today kids are turned loose with the expectation that they will make their own way in the world. And mostly, they do. But in a zero growth economy where there are no new jobs, it will be vitally important to parents to make sure their children get, at least, their parents job. Suddenly what you want to do or what you are skilled at doing is no longer important.

This spills over into love and child raising also. No longer is your spouse selected on the basis of love, but instead on the basis of politics. Just read any Jane Austin novel to see how constraining a zero growth society can be. Lots of rules and laws about which children are legitimate (and thus can inherit) and those who are not. And the rights of women (restricted I feel to block them from competing with men).

When the new world was opened up, it allowed economic growth. And people could and did escape to be part of that (often with fatal results). But it made "freedom" possible without an large increase in energy. Just unfilled economic positions. Check out the novels Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations. The military life (soldier or seaman) was often a death sentence, but like a lottery ticket, could also win big.

Energy, of course, creates more unfilled economic positions without needing new land.

So, my musing, unsupported, and shaky view, is that freedom is not in conflict with low energy precisely, but in conflict with resource competition, which has been reduced, first, by conquest of large pieces of territory, and later by the discovery of large energy sources.

The problem with the whole "Freedom" question is that it is primarily a male value or goal, just as safety and security is primarily a female value or goal. It is one of the reasons old guys don't psychologically adjust too well to seniors residences, while many women flourish in the environment.

US at 114 in happiness index:
Link

Freedom has been turned into another sensation, as in 'feeling free'. It's a feeling you get when you are sitting in a car and driving down an open road with no traffic and a beer in your hand.

:)

You are tethered to the car, you have to work to pay for it, it breaks and you have to pay for repairs; the gas costs money and you have to pay for that, too. You live in a house that you have to pay for, it costs so much the only way you can pay for it is to live in a house a long way away from anything which means more and more paying for the car/gas/repairs.

Some freedom.

You are free to chose whatever consumer product you like, the blue one or the brown one. It's that fleeting sensation of having a choice. The sensation of freedom that comes from walking away from the mall with bags full of stuff.

You are tethered to your choices; you have to pay for them too, you are going into debt because you need the thing to be creditable at work and in society. Television makes all the rules. When you get to the point where the rules stop applying, you get fat. Then you pay some more at the doctor's office and the hospital and eventually wind up in the geezer warehouse with the drooling, mindless, pathetic inmates of that bedlam all wishing they were somewhere else if they have the wits to wish with.

Life condensed into a handful of words: Some freedom.

You are free to do what you like with yourself. It's another fleeting sensation as the things you like to do don't equate with robbery, which has become American business's operating system.

You are tethered to your choice, you can hate your job then it disappears and you become an economic refugee with nothing for support outside of a small and fleeting amount of money compensation. You want to be a painter or a jazz musician but there is 'no market for that'. There is a merket for people willing to work at a box- store. Without the job you cannot pay for the house. When it goes you live in a box or the auto unless that is repossessed as well. The freedom of job choice is a form of gambling on forces you have no control over.

Freedom has become 'feeldom'. It's another scam.

I know one thing, I'll never be free until I get rid of all the stuff.

I lived with Inupiat Eskimos in northern and northwestern Alaska for several years back in the 1960s and 70s, including two years of cultural research. From the point of view of a material standard of living, the great majority could be classified as poor in comparison to the general American population. Their homes were usually small and crowded often lacking running water and electricity. Wresting a living from a harsh environment exposed them to severe weather, difficult work and danger. Many older villagers had experienced prolonged hunger and had witnessed starvation that took the lives of family members. While certainly not the stereotypic "happy Eskimos", they impressed me with their love of laughter and sense of pride in their accomplishments. They had a strong sense of community, willingly sharing with others and expecting little assistance from outside sources. I considered them some of the most satisfied and freest people I had ever known.

The above description of the northern Inupiat has been altered by time and increasing exposure to Western influences. Most now live in modern houses supplied with modern amenities. They rely much more on purchasing food and other goods from stores for basic needs. Virtually every home has a television set, telephone and, increasingly, Internet service. Motorized vehicles (snowmobiles, ATVs, etc.) have virtually eliminated the dog team and other forms of non-mechanized transportation. The need for cash income is far greater forcing many to reduce traditional seasonal subsistence activities in favor of more regimented wage employment. Substance abuse and related social problems are sadly common. Diet related health issues are endemic. Generally, there are much greater opportunities for travel to other regions, formal education, modern health care and commercial forms of recreation. In summary, I have to conclude that an important degree of personal satisfaction and freedom have been lost.

Marketing and propaganda is based, in large part, on making people dissatisfied with what they have and promising them greater satisfaction through new purchases or practices. Artificially creating dissatisfaction is a highly effective means of controlling people and, ultimately, reducing personal freedom.

The ideals of freedom and independence have at times been tied to a concept of patriotism.

I have little use for nationalism, but I think that on a holiday which is meant to stand for ideals of freedom and independence through sacrifice, it might be appropriate to mention planetary patriotism and the war raging around us, this assymetrical assault on the future of life.

If ever there were a cause worth living and dying for, surely the health and survival of our home planet, the life systems which nurtured us, is one.

We've all been born into the teeth of overshoot and decline, of a scale which will not be repeated on this planet or by our species. We are spectators to and participants in a mass extinction event. One of those rare and terrible events which endangers and changes life itself and will eventually extinguish earth life entirely.

It is natural to be horrified at this realization, and its implications for those people and things we love. Yet the wild species are not yet all dead, the earth not yet entirely despoiled, and the end state of the human energy/resource/population crush not determined.

In a way we're lucky. Being alive now, on the cusp of great change, lends an incongruous gravity to our individual actions. Like people suddenly waking from a pleasant dream into a burning house, our panic - or our resolve and levelheadedness - during a short span of time may make a huge difference in who and what is lost or saved; in what options the future has to work with.

We have minds and the potential for selfless action; and are faced with deep existential challenges and terrible choices. Not esoteric and theoretical, but as gritty and real as anything our anscestors of the past billion years ever faced. And we worry about how we're going to drive our cars?

I'm glad I have the freedom to choose my own fights and my own risks, and I'm indebted to those who made that freedom possible for me. I choose to fight for the earth of 1000 years from now, and its inhabitants; whose quality of life and very existence likely depend on the decisions, large and small, we are all making now. I wouldn't choose to be alive at any other time, since this is when a difference can still be made.

This website is one of the best of the best, and its readers are some of the least delusional people around as near as I can tell. It's what always pulls me back, and what occasionally causes me to write something here that sounds corny.

To the extent that we have freedom, let's use it to make a difference as well as blogging about it. There will be no more worthy cause or convergence of crises to ever justify taking individual risk. If we don't use our real freedoms of action to save our planet, then what was freedom good for other than a dopamine fix?

Survival isn't the only thing; there's also duty. I won't presume to say what that might be, but if we appreciate the improbable gift of our own awareness and existence, then we each have a heavy responsibility to the future. And many of us here have the freedom and intellect to engage that responsibility, even knowing the odds.

So to freedom, entitlement, and energy I'll throw in the consideration of patriotism and duty, knowing that it will resonate with some here, and hoping it will cause others to think about it in those terms on this holiday.

best...

Independence from oil means freedom from fear of walking, or riding my bike, on the road. Freedom from worrying about speeding drivers striking me, or my granddaughter, or my dog. Freedom to paddle a canoe on a quiet lake, without fear of being run down, or swamped by somebody’s wake.

Independence from oil means freedom from the disgusting stench and sickening poisons emitted by all the cars and trucks infesting every city and town, and the vast highways in between, and the giant sulfurous bunker fuel-gulping boats infesting all the harbors and oceans. Freedom to smell the flowers, or the coffee, or anything more interesting than exhaust fumes.

It means freedom to enjoy peace and quiet sometimes. Freedom from the constant, never-ending noise of internal combustion and turbine engines.

Independence from oil means freedom to eat fresh locally produced food from a neighborhood market, or a garden. Freedom from the tasteless, nutrition-free stuff the supermarkets call fruit and vegetables, and all the other processed corn syrup-sweetened crap they sell. Independence from oil, for many of us, means a chance for freedom from obesity, and all its attendant health problems.

It means freedom from the solitary torture of long-distance commuting, unless it’s by rail. Freedom to safely sit back and read, enjoy a conversation, or take a nap while enroute.

Independence from oil means freedom for our sons and daughters from being caught up in the next senseless resource war, and freedom from forcible extraction of more taxes to support the wars.

Independence from oil, if accomplished soon enough, may mean freedom for our children and grandchildren, and maybe our great grandchildren, to live in a world with a climate somewhat resembling that to which we have become accustomed and adapted.

The transition certainly won’t be easy or painless. We will no doubt dearly miss certain freedoms supplied by our cheap energy slaves. However, we need to bear in mind that it is only independence from oil that can return some of the many freedoms that have been taken, or will be taken from us.

Nate,
I am surprised that you are suggesting that because the US used 25% of the world's oil it has more freedom than say Europeans that use less. Does a Prius driver have less freedom than a Hummer driver?

What I found amazing about many people in the US is the thinking that gasoline at $3 or $4/gallon is expensive! Virtually everywhere else, most people have just moved to fuel efficient vehicles.

Because oil went to $147 at the time of the sub-prime banking crisis there seems to be the acceptance that an oil price above $150/boe will destroy any economy. I think drivers in the US are going to discover that $300/boe oil is not so high once the average fuel efficiency of vehicles is >39miles/gallon, and for PHEV drivers gasoline will still be a minor expense. In the US, 60% of energy is not from oil, and a considerable amount of oil energy is lost in refining and distribution, and even higher losses when used in ICE vehicles.

Nate,

Great post--I love the direction you took this. It gets a little more complex when extending the notion of a less stressful life due to energy availability. I think an alternative is hinted at in the Lundberg and Frankenhaeuser: the more self-determination (one could logically substitute self-sufficiency without much of a reach) an individual has, the less stress they will experience (c.p.). There are a lot of studies that have shown that US citizens are more stressed than any other industrial counterpart, despite much higher per capita energy use. Energy is certainly important in all this (I'm trying to figure out just how much so myself, from a different starting point), but I don't think it is the direct causal force acting on individuals.

I love America. I state this as a plain fact

Really? You love the land that gave us McD's, Monsantoh, various scam cults such as skientologism, built-in-obsolescence and the throw-away culture, Guantanamo, Vegas (a whole city based on the deceitful scam that is casinos), the hiv-causes-aids hoax, the only country in history to launch a nuclear attack (let alone unprovoked and unjustified though I appreciate some will insist on their rationalisations for what was really an exercise in global intimidation by a country exceptionally well-defended by wide oceans), the land that includes the revolting inner Detroit, that only ended its racial apartheid in the face of major insurrection and race riots (though still going strong in Houston I've heard), a country that has led the world by a long shot in planet-trashing in general...(and I'm sure others could add plenty more here).

That's notwithstanding the so many great things, from Levine and the NY Met, Dylan, Hendrix, ...(, some scientists who have actually appreciated my own publications!,)... to no less than theoildrum itself.

But wouldn't you agree better to say "I love some aspects of America"?

No resident of round my way would ever say "I love, [errm,] England/Britain/the UK"... we aren't even quite sure whether we are English, British, UKlish or whatish, and that's because we don't really give a four letter word beginning with d for such parochialism. (And that from the only country with "great" in its name, as after all, no other country has so stellarly dominated history.)

Well, at least the US is not to blame as the UK has been for introducing the energy-addiction disease to the world in the first place....

[P.S.--And to be fair to the US at least their FDA has now warned that dental mercury amalgam restorations could be neurotoxic etc whereas the UK equivalents continue to insist that my illness does not exist, backed up by a scam civil "justice" system that the US couldn't possibly outdo.]

I think of freedom in political terms. In that context freedom is self ownership, while the opposite, slavery, is being owned by another or others. Of course, nature commands us by her constraints, but this is quite different than being coerced by the force of other humans.

Slavery really began with civilization. Before that there was little excess production, so there was little benefit to be derived from spending energy to capture and control another person; he produced only enough for himself and there was no excess to steal through enslaving him.

When agriculture began to produce excess, there was motivation for plunder (the excess) as plunder and control of those producing the excess became economically advantageous. The random plunder of roving bands gave way to the systematic plunder of government as producers cut deals with the stronger bands for protection in return for regular tribute (tax). Wars between governments, essentially as attempts to expand their business, made available a pool of defeated workers, who were enslaved by the victors, giving rise to the institution we call slavery.

Increase in energy usage mitigated the need for individuals keeping slaves so the institution of slavery diminished, but the enslavement of the population to the government and to those with government granted privilege continued and expanded; there was increasingly more to plunder after all, and who driven by power and greed would pass up such easy pickings.

I think that as we lose more and more energy slaves, there will be an unwinding. There will be less and less for government and special interests to plunder, giving rise to resistance from the general population (fortunately well armed in places like the US) and at the same time there will be increasing advantage to individuals to acquire slaves to replace the lost energy slaves. And the struggle between the future smaller governments (wars) will create a supply of slaves as the victors capture the population of the losers.

Of course life will become more difficult for most of us as the loss of the energy slaves will far exceed any possible gain from the return of human slavery (from the masters point of view), or from escaping some of the plunder and control of government and those with government privilege.

Much of the energy can be transformed into little dopamine pulses, some packaged in cellophane, others bottled, ready for purchase and consumption as the body signals its need. But the cost of consumption is production and the cost of production is submitting to the inhuman abuse of factory schools and then factory work. We must become a part of the machine. I dislike being a part of the machine, the FICO scores, the packaged sports for your yelling and screaming rush of excitement, the mass produced food for mass produced people, the cars, the concrete and asphalt and so on. All of those energy slaves may provide freedom from want but it also provides freedom to become a degenerate society focused only upon the next feel good moment which is intensely needed to extinguish the pain of having to work in a technological dystopia where people become overweight and stupid by the ease of their high energy trajectory through life.

Maybe we all should try to find a way to obtain our little pulses of dopamine while avoiding the noxious necessity of working in degraded and unnatural environments. The Chinese have been sending us little dopamine packages in exchange for paper (and our jobs) for quite awhile now. Perhaps the best result for someone like myself is to end up on a farm of some sort within a relatively natural environment producing a high value product to exchange for the factory doo-dads I need. Maybe set up a Macedamia nut farm over in Greenish's neighborhood. You are not free if the clock and employer rule your life, regardless of the amount of dopamine drug you can buy to obscure your unfortunate reality.

"Freedom" on the global farm?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P772Eb63qIY

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“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and school teachers.... The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."
~Aldous Huxley

The late Donella Meadows on her energy slaves - and Thomas Jefferson

http://www.pcdf.org/meadows/jefferson.html

How could less energy per capita equate to more freedom?

If we electrified transportation, energy use would drop substantially, and we'd have better cars as a result. If people produced their own power via solar panels on their roof they would have more freedom, both physically and psychologically.

What is stopping this? Chevron's patent on the NiMH electric car battery which prevents manufacturers from making series PHEV's with a range of 700 km, for less than $25,000. We will, however, see them on the road in 2014 when the patent expires.

I am much more optimistic about our energy future. Once we get off oil, we will have more energy available to us than we could really use.

To do this we need to keep idiots like Alaska's Airhead out of power, who seems to reason that the way for America to become energy independent is to drill for more oil in the Arctic.

I guess my first question should be freedom to what?
You can have all the energy in the world and still be forced to wear a veil, whether you like it or not. Energy allows a society the option of freedom, but there are always those out there who will try to force others to live the same way.
Was this country free 100 years ago? 200 years ago? Not if you were Native American…, or black…, but for the settlers…, yes; because the native population was small and lived on very few resources. So the invaders could keep marching westward and develop more and more until…, someday soon…, they’ll be nothing left for future generations.
Yes…, to some degree energy makes a difference. Industrialism created the middle class from a mostly rural peasant population. It allowed for the abolition of slavery, which I believe probably would not have happened without the invention of machinery to the same job faster while also increasing profits.
But…, Latin America also had whole continents to conquer, albeit, with much less oil then the U.S., and developed much differently. There’s less freedom in Latin America, even countries with oil, like Venezuela.
Mexico has Cantarell, the second largest field in the world and uses the Napoleonic system of justice – Guilty until Proven Innocent.
So I guess the reality is that burning Hydrocarbons helps to allow societies the opportunity to be more free…, but societies do not have to accept the offer. The middle east is a much better example because gas is pretty cheap in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but the masses are all expected to live a certain way.
Freedom is complicated and cheap energy helps, but there are always going to be people out there who want to tell you how to live.

  To me, freedom is the ability of an individual to behave according to internal directives from the brain (both rudimentary and cerebral), without social restrictions or responsibilities. Freedom appears to be a relative thing. Being totally free would amount to living in a social vacuum ( like a mountain man!).
  On a planet with finite resources, the average degree of individual freedom is inversely proportional to the total human population. Other major factors might include employers, governments, and religious entities. A relatively high degree of freedom might not be so desirable, since many factors that restrict freedom, also serve to improve one's quality of life, e.g. being restricted by the responsibilities of a job or a local community from which one acquires essential physical and emotional needs. The restrictions of family, community and employer give us a sense of purpose and very real worth. We are mostly interdependent ( except for a few mountain men :-) .

  I would contend that the powerful human reproductive impulse (along with other irrational drives) that may well end in decline, or even a collapse of human civilization, should not be considered as a kind of freedom but rather as a form of enslavement, with freedom being understood as one's ability to learn from experience and not just follow primitive impulse, to better understand nature through observation, to think and apply logic so that one can more rightly predict future challenges and restrictions.
  Until humans develop a stable and lasting social system in which reproducing is no longer equated with 'being free', then civilization will be destined to repeat cycles of exponential growth and collapse, perhaps until the sun grows dim, or until the earth has been so altered by human activity that we find ourselves no longer welcome.

  It may be that the freedom to reproduce will always consist of a war among individuals, who then reactively struggle against every other kind of natural limit, to transmit their genes into the future, and I suppose one can never be free from Nature; but might we learn or evolve in such a way that we are free from certain aspects of our internal natures, such that human civilization might be more enduring?

The ovarian lottery created me 1/2 Scot, 1/2 Italian. I spent the first 16 years of my life in Scotland. After 2 months in Italy during my last High School year I felt I'd discovered myself as an Italian "I'm not Scottish!". This faded in time. 15 years travelling the world I'd notice meeting Scots here and there that I did have a strong bond, but sometimes this only lasted as a brief buzz for 5 minutes. The accent, the background, then it was gone. Other times I'd bond for hours with someone from Japan, Germany, Italy the USA....Here I am, 15 years after the 15 year walkabout back in Scotland.

When travelling I felt free with $2000. Enough to get anywhere, find a place to stay, make contacts. Now, I have much, much more in $ terms, but, truthfully and sincerely, no more freedom. Freedom has very little to do with $. (I say this to Oil Drum readers, respecting that for billions of souls from North Korea to Darfur freedom is absolutely and probably rightly seen in $).

It is very easy for most of us to have a comfortable life with very little money. It depends upon your wants.

Money buys freedom and insurance buys anxiety.

It seems to me that there is only one true freedom, the freedom to choose our next action. We cannot always choose the context, and we certainly cannot always predict the response, but we can always choose what we do. This is the one and only truly inalienable right. Unfortunately, we rarely exercise it for the precious gift it is.

All other "freedoms" and "rights" are those we agree to give ourselves and each other as societies. Whether they be found in constitutions, laws or societal norms and morays, these are all agreements between people to accept certain behaviors and not accept other behaviors.

I suspect that in most societies, the "accepted" behaviors are highly correlated to the available energy/resource combination. Where human labor is the primary provider of energy or where resources are scarce, I suspect (but do not know for fact) that societal norms might focus on shared resources and freedoms. In western industrial societies, especially those like ours (USA) with rich resource endowments and, heretofore unlimited, access to energy, I think different "freedoms" evolve. In these cases "freedom" is focused more on individual rights, what the individual may gain/lose, and less on shared rights, what the collective whole may gain/lose.

The USA is a great country. However, just like all other societies, our "rights" and "freedoms" are entirely formulated within the context of our history. Our founding fathers lived in a land that must have appeared if not infinite, then at least mostly empty. History, with minor hiccups, would more or less reinforce that view until fairly recently, e.g, when oil peaked in the early 70's or when we became a net energy importer (or pick your moment, it's probably in the last half century, if not the last 3 decades :). For the last few decades we have been living in a different place, a crowded, resource-declining society whose "freedoms" and "rights" were all tailored to an empty, resource-rich time.

If you feel like our rights and freedoms are constantly under assault, possibly from all sides, possibly all seemingly reasonable on a case-by-case basis, perhaps this is part of the reason. Maybe it's just nature letting us know that the rules that we wrote once upon a time are going to have to be revisited. The game has changed. It continues to change. Perhaps the time is approaching where we, humans, will have to utilize our one true freedom and make some tough choices about the the very nature of the rules by which we play this new game, and about the optional "freedoms" and "rights" that make sense in this increasingly crowded and resource-poor planet on which we are so luckily stranded.

Brian

Shorter, Fatter Americans, plus Shrinking sheep:

Is the "encroachment" of the earth by sovereign nation-states fueling out of balance "over-population" and "under-population"?
2. Is that also the rootcause of several other resource imbalances by their segregation and unnatural barriers to movement?
3. Is this too big a question to ask, or is this OK?

Dryki wrote: Freedom, as Americans see it, depends totally on those energy slaves. Nate does call them slaves for a reason. But he goes off track with the word "freedom". That's for Arendt, Fromm, etc.... What we're really discussing here is our American "way of life" - which we are brainwashed to call "freedom". Americans are consumers, not citizens. The freedom they enjoy is the freedom to consume and to do so irresponsibly - that is "freedom from".

I sympathize. Being free from ‘want’ and over-consuming are not “freedom” (taking into account that the concept is hard to define.) They might even represent some form of subservience - a requirement to act, consume, etc. in very set, conventional ways.

Nate: Our daily volition, free will and perhaps even confidence likely has direct ties to our natural resources; both our geographic endowment...

Nate’s post suggests a close relationship between freedom and control. Being in control - that is able to take and implement decisions, act, involve oneself, have an effect, participate, influence, interact, makes tasks - lab psych experiments, work, schooling, etc. etc.- challenging and fun or at least worthwhile, possible. Having no control, being a passive observer, or a “slave” whose only choice is to obey or sabotage or check out is so deadly that ppl don’t put up with it for long, depending on the extent and form of the “slavery.”

Babies as young as 3/5 months exhibit the same mind set. Offered an interesting display or moving object, which is remote controlled and which they can’t manipulate, couldn’t even if they could touch it, pleases and interests them when their own movements have an effect on it. If it is just moving about randomly, they rapidly ignore the dumb thing. Heh. They are ready to play Super Mario by kicking one leg! (no links) We are programmed to interact, exchange, share, with others and the material world. Control - as a bidirectional interaction - is heady. Other situations, not so favorable or agreeable.

The relationship between control and energy use seem tangential at best - with one exception, agriculture /infrastructure and stuff like moon shoots..which looks more like domination of as opposed to interaction with the natural world.

As for freedom, this meme, I think, is a direct descendant of US history - escaping tyranny and oppressive rule - and being able to branch out into virgin, lush, territory, acquiring land. Land.

Today, all these events and concepts are muddled by buzz words and the garbled, nonsensical discourse of politicians.

A long, long time ago I was part of the crew of the USS Independence, an aircraft carrier displacing 64,000 tons. With 6,000 men, about 80 airplanes and a few helicopters squeezed into about 4 acres meant no one had any independence and very little freedom. We were told where to sleep and where and when to eat with little choice in what to eat, and what to wear and when to wear it. It had to be that way due to the population density and technological sophistication of the immediate environment. Without all those restrictions on freedom of choice the ship would be totally useless and the crew would not survive very long out in the ocean.

Now contrast that with the freedoms that pre-Columbian North Americans enjoyed. What one person or even a mall group of people did had little effect on folks just a few miles away. If they disagreed with the local boss they simply could walk away to the next valley and start their own village.

This led me to conclude that freedom is inversely proportional to population density and technological sophistication. The closer we live to each other the greater the impact our choices have on others and therefore more rules to follow. Put the hazards created by modern technology on top of high population density and even more rules are needed if we are to simply survive let alone enjoy prosperity. The unintended side effects of fossil fuel use now means nowhere on Earth is free from the harm it causes. If we are to prosper over the time scale of decades to centuries then we are subject to more and more limitations on what we can choose to do.