Ask Dr. Catboxx

Dear Dr. Catboxx:

Why is the world we're living in such a screwed-up place?

--Ann T. Pasto
Sequim, West Nebraska

I'm glad you asked that question, Ann. And to answer it, I'm going to tap into the expertise of one of the few people I know of who knows more than I do, my history teacher, Dr. Will Jacobs of the University of Alaska at Anchorage.

Back in 1984, at my very first Will Jacobs lecture, at the beginning of the first semester of freshman Western Civ, this distinguished-looking man mounted the podium and, dispensing with unnecessary preliminaries, got down to it.

"The primary difference between modern times and premodern times," he said, "is that in premodern times there were no efficient means of energy conversion. And because production in premodern societies was limited by the available energy sources -- primarily muscle power, delivered from the muscles either of humans or domesticated animals -- premodern economies were regimes of low productivity. Ninety percent or more of people living in premodern societies were engaged directly in food production, and low productivity generated a small food surplus which supported the society's ten percent who were specialists -- rulers, priests, artisans, scribes, soldiers, and so forth.

"And what I just described were attributes of the French Ancien Regime of 1750 as much as they were of the Egyptian kingdom of 2500 years before the current era. Societies have changed much more in the last two hundred years than they did during the previous five thousand.

"Late in the premodern era, there was extensive application of wind and water power added to muscle power, but these things, while big improvements, did not come anywhere near matching the energy-generating capacity of modern societies, with their modern, industrial methods of energy conversion.

"And while premodern societies were characterized by low productivity, they were also characterized by low levels of capacity for destruction. Wars were either long and intermittent, or short and intense, but never long and intense. And it becomes very obvious, as we examine the revolutions in production that are the story of the rise of modern societies, that the tremendous amounts of energy and wealth that have been unleashed in the last 200 years have been used as much for destructive purposes as they have been for creative purposes.

"With the advent of James Watt's steam engine in the mid-18th century, for purposes of increasing productivity in textiles manufacturing, the modern era could be said to have begun. With the introduction of rifled firearms and paper cartridges, for purposes of increasing death and destruction on the battlefield, the advances in creative capacity made by Watt and others were equalled by a corresponding increase destructive capacity.

"Later, even more spectacular methods of energy conversion -- petroleum and electricity especially -- further escalated and accelerated both the creative and the destructive aspects of modernity, whose reliance on modern, effective means of energy conversion can be measured, as always throughout history, by the numbers of people in any given society who are engaged directly in food production. Today, in a fully-developed, modern industrialized society, that number is slightly less than three percent."

Doctor Jacobs did not stop there, but I'll interrupt his lecture to point out that modern times and modern methods of energy conversion are still relatively new, full modernity having arrived in western Europe and North America only after 1800.

Now my great-grandfather was born in 1838, so we've been at this modernity thing just a short time (a few generations), and we're still not used to it. And considering our inability to live in peace with each other, the unintended consequence of environmental degradation created directly by all these wonderful modern methods of energy conversion, and the anxiety, angst, and mass psychosis accompanying our modern way of life, I'd say we're pretty much like the Sorcerer's Apprentice; we can't control what we've called into being, because we have neither the knowledge nor the self-discipline to be able to do so.

We will all, I'm certain, forever picture the Sorcerer's Apprentice as Mickey Mouse, as he appeared in the segment so titled in the Disney film "Fantasia." This is the image of the human being in modern times -- living in a threatening, dangerous world, a world which he has quite possibly already destroyed, because even though he created it, he doesn't have the power to control it.

And that's why the world we're living in is so screwed up. Thanks for asking.