In 1973 the Arabic world was the epicenter of a vast economic tsunami that rocked the planet. The stopped selling oil to the United States of America. From the October of '73 to March of 1974 the United States lost 35% of its energy supply (until 1950 we where self-sufficiant in energy). The price of a gallon of gas went from $0.30 to $1.20 in less than one year and never looked back. The price of a barrel of oil shot up from $3.00 to $11.65 in just 4 months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Went from a high of 1051 on 1/11/73 to a low of 577 on 12/6/74 a 45% drop in just 2 years. Without belaboring the details, this represented the greatest body-blow to the USA since 1941, (and arguably, far worse) in the aftermath We where, as a people, resolved to prevent this from ever happening again. A flush of idea's and projects involving alternative energy spring up, the trans-alaskian pipeline is started and finished by 1977. Ford developed a prototype hydrogen powered car and a great furor started about the relative safety of hydrogen storage (as if gasoline is safe and stable...). in 1973 the USA uses 74 quads of energy, in 1986 the figure is 74 quads, conservation more efficiant technology leads to nearly zero growth in energy consumption. As of 2002 the USA's consumption of energy is just shy of 100 quads. We Currently import 50% of our oil supplies and vehicles use 60% of that. By 2020 consumption is expected to increase to between 127 and 175 quads, potentially a 75% leap in demand. In the face of these facts is seems rather confusing to answer the question "Why?"

If the USA where to stop importing oil it would mean a savings of between 80 to 100 billion dollars per year. It would certainly change the international balance of power with the arab states suddenly dropping back to 3rd world status and the wind being knocked out of the sails of radical islamic fundamentalism. atmospheric emmisions of CO2 and other "greenhouse gases" would decline dramaticly. What if America's use of oil, coal and natural gas declined to less than 50% of total energy consumption with the balance made up from hydrogen and other renewalble resources? What if this had been done between 1973 and 1986 when conditions demanded it? Would 9/11 have happened? What about the gulf war? Would global warming be the growing crisis that it is? Consider the potential strategic advantage of becoming fully independant and self-sufficiant in energy during the cold war. The answers to these questions are obvious, the answer to the question of why is not. Why would the worlds most powerfull nation fail to impliment programs to create such an obviously advantagous set of circumstances? Choising a course that leads to decades of insecurity, conflict and damage to the environment? Kind of like declining a $200,000.00 per year job in favor of a carrer as a heroin addict. The First answer that comes to mind is the lobbying power of the oil industry. while being a compelling answer and very valid I don't believe that it explains the development of our current situation fully. I also refuse to believe that any group, organization or international "cabal" would have either the wearwithall or the power to cause such a chain of events over such a period of time. Even Hitler had to spin a good story to keep the public from finding our what was really going on and stopping it cold in its tracks. There are a host of socio-economic, political and cultural forces that would have pushed the situation either way, however, from 1973 to 1986 it was in the best interests of the US to move in the direction of alternative power. I belive that something more fundamental caused us to slowly falter in that effort.

The theory of group-mind doesn't require some mystical force or supernatural agency. Mob psychology is more than enought to support the idea of interpetation of world events as the actions of an individual. Beyond that level of interpretation the mind remains a mystery (for the most part) and we can not say what other mechenisms may exist that would support the idea. There is one factor that I think is very telling, 20th century history. Since the onset of the 20th century world events have been increasingly recorded, analysed, processed, archived and communicated to a wider and wider audience. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century (btw, does that weird the hell out of anybody else?) we are fully immersed in the Information age. Human Society is beginning to become cybernetic. self-referential in that the individuals who are most responsable (we) are now responding to the responces of others in our evaluation of a situation and what to do. The news media follows two rules, "if it bleeds, it leads" and "market share is truth". In order for that to happen, they must us Madison ave. and market analysis to determine what will elict the strongest response. Television producers use the excuse that since "Sex Sells" the closer that public television comes to hard core Pornography the better and its justified because you watch and pay for it. This then leads to a greater acceptability and then to greater availability and so on. A self-referencial feedback loop is created. its not as if the people producing the media aren't consumers of it as well, feeding it to thier families. So why would we quietly shrink from developing a renewable, sustainable, self-sufficiant energy source that would give us a major strategic advantage in global economic's and politic's? Could it be that there is something deeply ingrained in our collective unconscious that caused us to falter at the last minute? Viewed as an individual the first thing that you'd think is that the USA has issue's and is trying to avoid something. Perhaps its not just us but the whole of the human race and its most visable here. For 20 millenium we have lived under the idea of being controlled, ruled, guided by some agency or entity such as a government, king, shaman or God (through the "voluntary" intercession of a human intermediary). Perhaps the idea of natural, sustainable energy freely available to anyone anywhere triggered a sudden realization of the possibility of face a future without the external control of the human race and we just didn't trust ourselves.

The Theory of Group-mind doesn't in any way conflict with, or require the elimination of individuality. Only the recognition of a deeper, more fundamental strata of thought and consciousness that is the ultimate source of our idea's of God, self, morality. That and the fact that we share a common mindscape in the same way that we live on a common planet. I will try to post 3 times per week in the future and to be a little less rambling. Please be indulgent with me, my idea's may seem "crackpot" at first blush but they are based on what I consider to be some very rational basis's. Thank you for reading.