The Paradox

Jevron's Paradox is the idea that increased efficiency creates more demands and therefore immediately negates the original efficiency. Its a very simple paradox to see in everyday life, as we make something easier to do more people do it. The best example in the essay, in my opinion at least, is about typewriters. Dardozzi states that when typewriters were slow and expensive but with the creation of computers and the "paperless office" the price per word to print decreased and paper consumption skyrocketed.

Dardozzi also uses highway improvement as an example. Stating that improvements in the highway increase carrying capacity which in turn leads to increased traffic congestion. Then more maintenance is required due to the fact that the highway is being used by more cars.

Dardozzi argues that we are already in the Paradox and that no current approach to climate change and peak oil will get us out. Our current attempts will have a worse effect in the long run.

There is an emphasis on consumer spending because in a way, spending fuels the paradox. When prices go down due to increased efficiency, more people purchase the product who couldn't afford it before. The decrease in price opens up a whole new level of consumers to the product. How ever increased spending stimulates the economy and keeps things moving. Also like to purchase things, it's a social symbol for wealth. We are basically told everyday to purchase goods, we get personal satisfaction out of it and it helps to boost our economy but it also keeps us in Jevron's Paradox. If consumers immediately stopped purchasing things the economy would crash and our country would go into another economic crisis. How ever according to Dardozzi making people see the flaw of buying a lot would help to bring us out of the Paradox.

When Adam Curtis mentions the "sea of selves" in his documentary Century of the Self, he is referencing how corporate America has created a sea of individuals who need to consume for them selves. This demolishes any idea of a collective survival according to Dardozzi.

Bailey's idea of the civil and divine aspects of human cultures are two ideas of what Dardozzi thinks we as people have lost. The "civic" alludes to a setr of rights and obligations that bring an individual into a large collective. The "divine" is the idea of something greater than the individual and that your groups actions are significant on a world scale.

While I do believe some of this essay, I think a lot of it may just be banter. I strongly agree we need a larger sense of the civic and the divine but not so much so that we become individually mindless. Yes increased efficiency does sometimes cause increased use but a lot of the time the relationship is indirect. Even if energy is renewable it will still be limited to some extent and it wont be harmful to the environment so increased use wont be much of a problem. Also to agree with this essay you'd need to accept that techno logic inventions are putting us down the wrong path. I would say that to be true if we played by the "rules" of this paradox but when in the history of mankind have we decided to simply play by the rules? It's perhaps one of our greatest assets, it is our ability to constantly overcome challenges by consistently "cheating" or working outside the laws of nature and now we are closer then ever to doing so without harming nature in the process.

This is appropriate for Veterans day because the mentality shared by soldiers must be a model of Bailey's civic and divine. To put their lives on the line, to go through horrors untold, these men and women must believe in their unit and in something more then themselves. This is the very thing that Dardozzi argues we all need in order to escape catastrophe.