Tradition Energy: Calculating Our Educational Power Bill
Seeing an orbital image of planet Earth at night you immediately become aware of two things. Firstly, how much energy is used to maintain the human experiment; secondly, how inequitably it is distributed around the globe. As James Lovelock recently observed, civilisation is energy-intensive yet the real energy that is involved in human existence cannot be seen as easily as the orbital photo of our nightly planet suggests. The real energy driving the human experiment is psychic energy. There is undoubtedly some correlation between the physical energy emitted each night by our cities and the psychic forces that are driving late-modernity, yet this tells only part of a much bigger story. Much of the psychic energy driving the human experiment is bounded by traditions. In fact it is quite a plausible proposition to claim that traditions are energy streams that draw on energy from the past, condense and focus energy in the present and, like a torch light, channel and project energy into the future. The fibre optic cables and satellite transmissions that bring speed and flexibility to the planet and its globalising economy and culture, as well as the urban incandescence of...
