We are already solar powered

I was once watching an interview with Michael Jackson. The interviewer asks him about his creative work in music. Michael Jackson says something which stuck with me and continues to serve me. He said that the mistake an artist makes is to get in the way of natural creativity… let it all flow out freely. Likewise, Albert Einstein once said, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” They may appear as totally different statements said in totally different contexts by totally different people in completely different fields. However, to me both men are actually saying the same thing. We may overcomplicate the natural course of events with our human input.

Sometimes, the solution or the right way of doing things is not to be searched for because it might be right in front of us. All we need to do is let it happen. Free thoughts and the natural world can find solutions to problems we find unsolvable, provided we are really paying attention.

I receive a lot of emails from various people asking me to teach them how to write. If I can reply, I always tell them nothing different than what Jackson and Einstein said. I tell them to jot down their original thoughts, whatever they may be, and once everything has flown out then get down to organising it on paper. I wish there was another way. When we get into the way of those natural thoughts and try to manufacture them so that they can fit into whatever frame of acceptable understanding is out there, we only end up creating a boring narration.

Humanity made the same mistake when mankind realised that it would need a lot of energy to support the new way of life after the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps that is humanity’s original sin of the previous millennium, the consequences of which would live on with us and affect us. In order to power the machines mankind made, energy started to be generated using fossil fuel.

There was a time we had water machines. They were powered by the fast moving water of the streams. They were abandoned and fuel powered machines became the new way of generating energy. We went from stream to steam. Instead of looking up, we looked down in search of energy and started digging up raw and filthy fossil fuel, which had to be refined and transported in order for it to be useful. The burning of those fossil fuels creates an enormous amount of carbon dioxide that accumulates in the atmosphere. The heat that the sun sends to the earth rebounds back into the sky and gets trapped in the atmosphere of the earth because of those accumulating carbon dioxide. We literally got in the way of nature. We not only did not use that free energy, we turned it into our enemy.

The earth was always solar powered. Our star, the sun, is this massive power generator that sends us light and energy everyday, which supports life on earth. We could have made machines that were an extension of the natural world, which were designed to harness the energy of the sun. We could have avoided climate change that threatens the entire life on earth. We could have avoided the situation where few companies hold the ability to power our cars, machines, and the entire grid. No nation with superior guns in their hands would have invaded another land with inferior guns in hands but more oil under their feet. Nobody can lay claim to the rays of the sun. We would be breathing fresh air, drinking water from the hose, not rushing to fill our cars when the government announces an increase in prices tomorrow. Africa perhaps would have been the most advanced, at least the most energy rich. And a lot of other evil won’t have existed that does exist today- if we had not gotten in the way of nature.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2023.

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