Decades ago the obscure scientific field of Cultural Anthropology was made popular by its premier proponent Margaret Meade. Unfortunately with America’s advance into the technological era, the quaintness of anthropology was driven from America’s focus of attention by a new wave of writers who declared themselves to be futurists. As a layman, my understanding of the goal of cultural anthropology was to determine the cultural impact upon human society caused by trends and changes in economic and political processes on both local and global scales, while also monitoring the influential effect of interactive interplay between the two respective societal scalings. We must also include the impact of dominant revolutionary social inventions like television and the internet.
Western society unfortunately has failed to appreciate the necessity of this important branch of anthropology. The sterile clear eyed perspective commentary from the masters of cultural anthropology would provide much needed guidance to help mankind stabilize their management and the level of their subsequent dependence upon advanced scientific technology. The unchecked seepage of fossil deposited oil from eons past into the modern world of the 20th and 21st centuries is a continuing event that threatens the very future existence of humanity. I will attempt to describe the nature of our real dependence on oil below the fold
The overall behavior of human society is lemming-like by nature. The masses continuously scramble to acquire and exhibit the most popular norms. Locked away in the attic of our minds is the steadfast “Jiminy Cricket” of our conscience who counsels us to stop and consider the effects upon us of that which we rush to embrace. For the teeming masses of humanity around the world this role is normally performed by the cultural anthropologists. But in a manner similar to the way we treat our ever watchful cricket, society has little or no interest in what they have to report. I should like to take the reader on a quick trip into the past pre-war (World War II) society of America. I choose the timeframe to be somewhere around 1937 to 1939. On this journey, we are going to look at the little domestic day to day things that were common in American life.
Consider that we are entering a modest single family home. As we start to enter, we note the presence of four clean empty glass milk bottles sitting opposite next to the front door entrance. Upon entry, we notice that no one is at home, so we will have to observe everything on our own. If we turn into the well kept sunny front room, we will see a large sofa and comfortable arm chairs and perhaps a coffee table in the center of the room. Standing tall on the floor and centered on the outside wall is a three foot tall cathedral shaped wooden enclosure with a shiny veneer. The front of the enclosure faces into the room and contains a wide glass covered radio dial near the top. There is a vertical line of knobs on each side of the face, and all of the knobs are likewise made of wood. This large radio was the centerpiece for family information and entertainment, and the front room served as a routine gathering spot for the entire family. As we continue our journey through the house in room after room we shockingly discover NO PLASTIC anywhere, not even in the children’s toy box. In this pre-war world the use of oil was confined to automobiles, paint supplies, industrial processes and marine applications. The family sat by that big RCA radio in the front room every Sunday evening to listen to the exciting suspenseful broadcasts of the “Shadow” mystery program brought to our ears by its sponsor, “Blue Coal”! This was normal in those days as all of our homes were heated by coal, either coke or anthracite. People were practical and clever in those days. Especially during the war they learned how to shake the partially burned coal clinkers out of the furnace ashes for burning again in the furnace. Parked in the driveway was a shiny new Fordor Ford sedan which rolled on real rubber tires. The natural rubber base material was shipped to the United States from the Firestone plantations in Liberia. The pre-war days were the pre-oil days of America.
Please excuse my digression above, but my goal is to simply drive home the seldom discussed point just how dependent Americans and most nations around the world have become on oil based consumer goods, The Main Stream Media (MSM) has created an American/world obsession with oil simply as an energy source. Make no mistake; I do not discount the heavy use of oil for energy use around the world. However, the MSM mantra is that the oil problem will go away once alternative sources of energy are in widespread use around the world. This is pure and intentional fallacy. The MSM doesn’t want the public to know just how dependent they are on the everyday consumer items that are made from oil. THERE ARE OVER 6000 PRODUCTS MADE FROM PETROLEUM! 6000 everyday consumer items! I will provide an abbreviated list below. The MSM only talks about “big oil” but never about the real culprit, the Petrochemical Industry. Petrochemicals make everything plastic from plastic bottles to polyester and the main ingredient in petrochemicals is oil.
The next time you sit in your car, take a look around. Everything in your car is made from petrochemicals, the seats, the dash board, the door panels, the steering wheel, etc. If everything oil based was removed from your car it would virtually disappear (except for the metal and glass stuff.) Below is a partial list of consumer oil based products provided by http://www.ranken-energy.com/.
Solvents Diesel fuel Motor Oil Bearing Grease
Ink Floor Wax Ballpoint Pens Football Cleats
Upholstery Sweaters Boats Insecticides
Bicycle Tires Sports Car Bodies Nail Polish Fishing lures
Dresses Tires Golf Bags Perfumes
Cassettes Dishwasher parts Tool Boxes Shoe Polish
Motorcycle Helmet Caulking Petroleum Jelly Transparent Tape
CD Player Faucet Washers Antiseptics Clothesline
Curtains Food Preservatives Basketballs Soap
Vitamin Capsules Antihistamines Purses Shoes
Dashboards Cortisone Deodorant Footballs
Putty Dyes Panty Hose Refrigerant
Percolators Life Jackets Rubbing Alcohol Linings
Skis TV Cabinets Shag Rugs Electrician’s Tape
Tool Racks Car Battery Cases Epoxy Paint
Mops Slacks Insect Repellent Oil Filters
Umbrellas Yarn Fertilizers Hair Coloring
Roofing Toilet Seats Fishing Rods Lipstick
Denture Adhesive Linoleum Ice Cube Trays Synthetic Rubber
Speakers Plastic Wood Electric Blankets Glycerin
Tennis Rackets Rubber Cement Fishing Boots Dice
Nylon Rope Candles Trash Bags House Paint
Water Pipes Hand Lotion Roller Skates Surf Boards
Shampoo Wheels Paint Rollers Shower Curtains
Guitar Strings Luggage Aspirin Safety Glasses
Antifreeze Football Helmets Awnings Eyeglasses
Clothes Toothbrushes Ice Chests Footballs
Combs CD’s & DVD’s Paint Brushes Detergents
Vaporizers Balloons Sun Glasses Tents
Heart Valves Crayons Parachutes Telephones
Enamel Pillows Dishes Cameras
Anesthetics Artificial Turf Artificial limbs Bandages
Dentures Model Cars Folding Doors Hair Curlers
Cold cream Movie film Soft Contact lenses Drinking Cups
Fan Belts Car Enamel Shaving Cream Ammonia
Refrigerators Golf Balls Toothpaste Gasoline
Americans consume petroleum products at a rate of three-and-a-half gallons of oil and more than 250 cubic feet of natural gas per day each! But, as shown here petroleum is not just used for fuel.
There are numerous sites on the internet that provide similar information as the graph above. So the 800 pound question is what do we do about it? With this level of oil based products firmly entrenched in the daily habitual lives of mankind around the globe; removal of these products from the lives of mankind would beyond revolutionary at this point. Referring again to my introductory paragraph above, proper public consideration of the ongoing conclusions of an established cultural anthropologist would have likely prevented us from reaching this perilous position in our evolution.
Mankind is fortunate to be currently standing on the greatest inventive threshold in known human history, and the solution to our petrochemical dependence lies in the emergence in the new science of Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology can create other materials with the desirable properties of plastics but made from other yet to be created resources. Proper diversity in resource selection through engineering nanometrics will protect us from following victim once again to a single physical resource.
