We know that fossil fuels are poisonous, that they cause myriad social and environmental crises. Why then are we unable to stop using them? Our inability to deal with the problem of fuel invites a perverse question: does fossil fuel know that we don’t need it? This is a version of a joke told by Slavoj Zizek (regarding belief and commodity fetishism): briefly, a man believes that he is a piece of grain; he goes to a psychologist and he is cured of this delusion. Time passes, and he returns to the analyst and tells him, “There is a chicken outside of my house; I am afraid he will eat me.” The analyst says, “But you are cured of your delusion; you know that you are a man, not a piece of grain.” The man replies, “Yes, I know. But does the chicken know?” This joke helps us to understand how we could know that fuel is causing catastrophe, but because our survival is wholly dependent upon fuel, we could contain the contradiction; we could hold the two separate. This was the way in which Zizek hopes to explain our relationship to money and commodities, and the same insight, that in spite of our ability to describe the commodity and its effect upon our lives, our enacted belief is in those commodities and relationships – our paradoxical affirmation of what we claim to deny – can help us understand what fossil fuels mean.
The control of heat is a much more primal force than money
(though for our empire they have become inseparable – what would happen if
global oil transactions ceased to be conducted using US dollars?) Heat is necessary in an absolute sense, and
with the advent of modern fuel based technology, our relationship of dependency
has become one of total humiliation.
This is a deep human humiliation under the strain of which we have
uncoupled cause and effect, history and politics. What is the power of a man and his thoughts
in comparison to an airplane, or more to the point, what is the meaning of a
“community” which is entirely dependent upon imported sources of fuel for all
of its survival needs (for food, transportation, heat, etc.)? We have internalized this craven dependency;
it operates unconsciously even for those people who are consciously aware of
climate change for instance, or the fact that their commute is ruining their
marriage, etc. In this reduction of
ourselves, what remains held in common are sentimental images of human
interaction, and similarly man in this humiliated state, with labor, now wholly
machine and fuel, just the idyll of labor, is left only with romantic and
sentimental relationships with other individuals. This is the world of your town Christmas
party and the play-date trips with your wife.
Commonly our relationship to fossil fuels is called an
addiction. When we observe a drug addict
or drunk doing the same thing to themselves that we all do with fuel, we
alternate between hatred and pity of their apparent madness – ultimately their
desire through addiction to transcend unto death. Unlike fuel which is unconsciously accepted
as beyond our control, the traditional addict abandons what control we are
assumed to have; the addict intrudes upon our sentimental selves – our last pathetic
gesture toward virtue. Their rejection
of control is our proof of their madness.
But as we have walled off the reality of our dependency on fossil fuels
from our sentimentality, that which remains of our idea of humanity, we cannot
recognize or even describe our true belief in fuel’s transcendent power.
We have to replace combustion of fossil fuels for the
generation of heat and power in almost
every role in which they currently function.
Through politics and the reinvention of our infrastructure, we can
resolve the joke – we can let the chicken know that we are men not kernels of
grain. The very act of this replacement
of fuels is the process by which we will mature beyond pale sentimentality
toward actual virtue and community.
