by Massimo Lapponi
We shall now try to examine in more detail what has been said in the tenth reflection.
One of the points that today are at the center of the attention of scientists and economists is the problem of energy. The first question to be asked is what exactly is meant by this term. Not having the competence to be able to give an exact answer to this question, we provisionally settle for the generally accepted approximate concept, and we wonder if there is an undue reductionism in current publications. Let us try to explain this point better.
The economist against the current Julian Simon (1932-1998), contesting the Malthusianism, widely spread among other economists for the alleged disproportion between available resources and consumption caused by the increase in population, opposed to their calculations the revolutionary principle that man, more than a consumer of resources, is himself a resource, indeed, is the fundamental resource – “the ultimate resource” – without which the others would not exist, because almost all resources become such only thanks to the intelligence and work of man. According to his principles, the decrease in available resources initially creates a shortage of goods and an increase in prices, and this triggers human research, which finds or invents new resources which, spreading abundantly on the market, bring society into a situation of greater wealth than the initial situation. To exemplify this economic mechanism, Simon recalled the transition from the use of plant fuel, to the exploitation of fossil deposits, to the use of nuclear energy.
Simon’s speech sparked a tsunami in the world of economists. The Malthusians, being dismayed, violently attacked him, but, as time went on, his principles ended up being taken seriously. The official international sustainable development programmes themselves now place the emphasis on man as a primary resource to be evaluated and developed. However, economic thought, like scientific thought, does not address the crucial issues that this revaluation of man as a “primary resource” should raise.
To say that man is “the ultimate resource” is to say that man is a source of energy? And if the answer is positive, how to frame man in the calculation of the energies present in the world and usable? Energy sources are generally considered to be those which can be accurately measured, such as wood, coal, oil and nuclear energy. Can man, as an energy resource, be measured in the same way, or in a similar way? And if he can’t be, how will we put him into the energy sources?
At this point we must note that Simon, like the other economists, whether they are in favor of him or against him, although he has placed man at the center of the energy debate in a brilliant way, was not, however, concerned to thoroughly investigate his nature and, consequently, his modes of intervention in the economic and energy field.
One could perhaps put the question in these terms: man, with his intelligence and free will, does nothing but know and value the energies found in the world, and which are external to him? Or, on the contrary, from his intelligence and will flow real new energies, which are added to those present in the world and are external to him?
Our answer is that man, with his conscience and free will, constitutes a real new energy, which not only enhances but immensely enriches the energy already present in the world.
A strong objection to what is stated here can be made by physics, and even more by theology. From two very different points of view, both will say that man cannot create and that, therefore, we cannot conceive of his real contribution of new energy in the world.
From the theological point of view, it is unquestionable that man cannot properly create. And yet this statement must be somewhat scaled down. It is certainly God who creates the human being who is born in the world, but this does not happen except through the cooperation of man – so much so that we speak of “procreation”. In this case, at least, it would be difficult to deny that the work of man, even if coordinated with the creative action of God, does not bring a new source of energy into the world. Physics itself should ask itself whether it has the right, in the face of the novelty constituted by the birth of a new human creature, to reiterate that “nothing is created and nothing is destroyed”. I believe that no person in the world would accept to be considered a “non-being”, something, that is, that adds nothing to the being of the world, which would remain, after his/her birth, exactly what it was before.
We have, therefore, at least the case of the birth of new human creatures – obviously the same reasoning should also be extended to the unconscious biological world, but now we dwell on the human case, which is what we personally experience in the most intimate of our being – in which man appears, if not creator, “pro-creator” of new energies. If so, why we do not try to extend the principle of pro-creation to other areas of human experience?
Every man brings to the world, as is most easily understood, his physical strength. But it cannot be in any way separated from the higher faculties that direct it: intelligence and will. Now, from intelligence and will arise ever new powers that direct and strengthen human action, with immensely effective effects even on the physical reality of the world.
We know that Marx had theorized the so-called “materialistic conception of history”, called “historical materialism”. But, in his theory, what would be the “material” agents that condition human action? He speaks of “means of production”, as “economic” realities that, as such, would fall into a “material” sphere. But it is evident that neither the means of production, nor the dynamics of the economy, nor the convergence of the working masses together for the accomplishments of work and for a common “class struggle” are conceivable if not as effects of human intelligence and will. Could we not, on the contrary, using the term in a similar sense, speak, also in this case, of “procreation”? It is evident that the energy that comes from one man is immensely multiplied when, thanks to the work of intelligence and will, it unites in cooperation for a single shared purpose with an incalculable number of other individuals. It was Marx himself, taking the cue from Proudhon, who asserted that the collaborative work of a group of associated men is much more than the sum of the work of each individual considered separately. But this principle necessarily results in the recognition of the “pro-creative” energy of human intelligence, which alone is able to “create” the unitary principles that gather together, for a single purpose, the wills and works of different individuals.
If this observation is correct, the “materialistic conception of history” automatically turns into an “intellectual and voluntarist conception of history”. But at this point, the expulsion from the determining factors of the historical process of the ideal, moral and spiritual dimension, advocated by Marx, appears pretext and unfounded. If the so-called “materialism” is revealed, in truth, a voluntarist intellectualism, every pretence of negation of the conscious and spiritual element of man melts like snow in the sun. The intellectual and voluntary dimension of man, as can be manifested in his activity of ideation and “creation” of the means of production and organization of work and of the class struggle, can thus be manifested in every other sphere of human interest and activity.
Let’s take the example of music. The first elements of sound are given in nature, but only in the consciousness of man are they manifested in the light of intelligence. At this point man is able to elaborate the whole world of sounds, adapting to this processing also the material structures of the world – such as wood, animal and vegetable fibers, metals etc.
From all this elaboration come sound “creations” that previously did not exist and that are so real as to move entire masses of people and huge economic resources, for the “creation” of spaces suitable for the performance of musical works, of instruments, of schools of music, of means to allow huge groups of people to take advantage of the musical “reality” that has been “created”. All these visible and tangible effects, even from the economic point of view, are evidently caused by something real, and not from nothing! And the new tangible realities, constituted by the adaptation of natural materials for the construction of instruments, the sound effects obtained, both by the individual instruments, and by their whole, and the changes that, by reflection, they have on not only human behavior, but also animal, don’t they have something very similar to “procreation”?
Such observations from music can be transferred to the most diverse fields, such as medicine, architecture, agriculture, politics, military art, and of course the spiritual, charitable, and ingeniously operative creativity of religion.
By further enlarging our perspective, we can also extend to the unconscious natural world what manifests itself in conscious form in the human world. In fact, just as human procreation is preceded by the fecundity of the natural biological world, so the conscious intelligence of man presupposes the intelligible structure of nature, that is, the presence in nature of knowable forms. There is, therefore, a sort of continuity and connaturality between nature and human life, both at the biological level and at the level of intellectual consciousness.
If we now return to the wisdom perspective of which we have discussed at length, we must see in nature the work of the Creator-Word, who “sows” in the still unconscious world the intelligible forms, which are a reflection of the divine Logos, as well as the “procreative” fruitfulness – at an unconscious level, and therefore of a lower degree than human procreation – reflecting its divine creative fruitfulness, in its turn the image of the Trinitarian procession.
All these “seeds of the Word” rise, in man, to the dimension of conscience and freedom.
And now we come to the crucial point of our reflection.
If there is continuity between the creation of nature and its assumption in human consciousness and between the animal unconscious lower procreation and the conscious procreation of man, there is continuity also at the energetic level between the energy created in nature, the “procreated” energy biologically in the animal world, the energy “recreated” by human intelligence through the assumption of natural forms in the new dimension of consciousness and the energy “procreated” by the conscious fecundity of man. But it’s not enough. We recall the metaphysical principle of the primacy of the act – in this case of the Pure Act -: to this ascending scale of “connaturality” in the field of energy, we must add a new higher step: the energy brought into the world by the birth of the divine Word himself in human nature, conceived by the work of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and spread by him, through participation in his life, to all mankind.
The consequences of this wisdom view of the energy problem are immense. In fact, they will lead us to introduce into the deepest substance of the energy and economic problems those spiritual and moral dimensions that a short-sighted materialistic vision had programmatically excluded.
Massimo Lapponi O.S.B. 