Pewartanusantara.com – Since technologies took a pivotal role to transform the medieval age into modern times, there is the insistence that technological advancement would bring welfare to the society. The invention of the printing machine enables the circulation of scientific works and philosophical arrangements to flow smoothly. In such conditions plus the supply of natural resources from the colony European civilization grow faster. This is the beginning of the modernity ethos that is well known as the idea of progress.
The idea of progress is the vision of individuals and society to archive well-being. The meaning of wellbeing is nothing other than a condition in which the material resources is sufficient to fulfil the needs and the necessity of symbolic capital to guide and organize human being. In the other words, this concept has been accepted to be the mode of existence in modernity. Furthermore, this specific historical development has been transmitted across the world in order to establish the legitimacy of the Western framework. But one obvious thing is that the competition for power in the modern world is primarily about control over natural resources. Besides that, advancement in technology is needed to maximize the production process.
In the early twentieth century, the one-line manufacturing industry has been developed to increase production with a limited amount of energy. It is a combination between human capacity and machine power. At the time, we witness that electric power has been used effectively to reach optimum production. This is the reason why the motor factories such as Ford became one of the biggest factories in the first half of the 20th century. But the manufacturing industry is also the main source of state revenues. Therefore, the state has interested to make a policy about securitizing and prioritizing the industry.
Today, energy can be said as the “oxygen” of our globalized world. Without energy, all businesses would be paralyzed. Our secondary oxygen lies in two things, that is the electricity and the fuel. We frequently perceive such energies as taken for granted. It means that it always exists and is available. But the fact is not so, contrasted indeed. Energy, as it can be used for pragmatic goals, is a limited resource. It might be available because we enable to produce in constant amounts and establish an integrated chain distribution. In other words, energy is an economical management issue.
While we evaluate our energy consumption in daily life, the amount is higher when we possess electronic devices. Our daily activities, for example, watching movies, browsing websites, accessing social media, and working tasks, consume a certain amount of energy. But we seldom consider that the use of electricity or fuel in our daily life contributes to the worsening of the atmosphere and climate change. We tend to perceive our electronic devices as a sign of welfare. Further, the new launched electronic devices with smarter features are attractive when we have accepted the idea of progress.
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This is the irony of modern society. We have created a social condition in which the extraction of natural resources is required to generate energy and develop the economy. But as a member of society, we did not realize that the used energy surely has long-term and large-scale impacts that we call crises. And I must assert that the crisis of energy is more dangerous and lethal than the financial crisis. Maybe, this crisis would not have occurred as long as the natural source of electric energy such as coal and fuel such as crude oil is arranged to be available. From such analysis, the relation between energy and welfare is stronger when society utilizes technology to increase its productivity. Our modern society manages to ground out technological advancement as the locomotive to pursue wellbeing. This lie in the mechanism in which the technology (of information) gains a prestigious position and is valued with high expectation. This made the fate of modern society vulnerable and dangerous because the circulation of information and mobility necessarily needs a constant amount of energy and it is increasing every day. To supply that energy, diversified explorations of natural resource across the world is needed. One possible thing is that in the future the crisis of energy leads the human tragedy and lethal conflicts.
