Articles

Pluto In Capricorn
© 2006 Maurice Lavenant

In our current troubled and volatile times, there is no doubt that an important astrological factor soon to come into play will be the Capricorn ingress of Pluto. This will take place in early 2008 and the entry of Pluto, the bass drum of the solar system, in this earthy sign should herald some significant changes. Simply put, such a configuration radically changes the management (Capricorn) of power (Pluto), whether it is the politico-religious power or the socio-economic power derived from the management of natural resources. But perhaps it might be just as accurate to say that we will also be facing essential questions concerning the power of management.

A lot is already known of Capricorn and its ruler, Saturn. Capricorn is a Cardinal sign the first degree of which corresponds to the winter solstice. Degrees corresponding to solstices and equinoxes are considered to be crisis points in the zodiac. This is because they correlate either with times of energetic highs (solstices) or with times of precarious energetic equilibrium (equinoxes) in the yearly cycle. In Capricorn, the northern hemisphere experiences the longest night. The Yin force, having reached its fullest level, begins to wane again. On a personal level, Saturn rules the bones and the skin both of which are related to structures and limits. Here we are dealing with fundamental and essential aspects of the human body. Perhaps worthy of interest, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) connects the bones with the kidney which is also perceived as the body’s deepest, densest and most fundamental level of energy (called Jing in Chinese translated as Essence). It is understood to be inherited from both parents (genetic potential) and it cannot be replenished. The kidney energy is subdivided into Yang and Yin and is frequently compared to an oil lamp, the Yang aspect being the wick and the flame and the Yin aspect being the lamp itself and the oil. When the oil runs out the light goes out and the body dies. Obviously, the same analogy would also apply to a transpersonal appreciation of Saturn and its related levels of energy.

With Pluto, we can initially expect to see the dredging up and exposure of some unpalatable facts and damaging patterns related to the management of resources and people. We can also expect a fair amount of denial and institutionalised hypocrisy to cover up and justify whatever abuse has taken place and the inevitable guilt, shame and remorse these carry in their wake. This is the first known step in Pluto’s work: what needs to be radically transformed and healed is first exposed in unequivocal terms. Providing we can accept and recognise this situation for what it is with as little complacency as we can manage, we can then let the healing begin although this is by no means guaranteed.
On a psychological level, Pluto has been associated with obsessive-compulsive behaviour patterns. In my observation, this is applicable to both personal and transpersonal levels. Although these patterns cause a lot of pain, they are ways for individuals and for groups to avoid addressing deeper issues. Unless they are brought to the surface to be transformed and healed, the patterns are habitually acted out till the end of the person’s life; an end that is sadly often prematurely brought about by the patterns themselves.
But before I speculate about the future, let’s take a look at the past and see what Pluto has yielded while in this position. To gain a significant perspective on the meaning of Pluto in Capricorn, let’s first turn our attention to the last two ingresses.

Pluto transited throughout Capricorn from the 24th of December 1515 until the end of 1532. These years were indeed very important as they saw the dawn of the Reformation (1517) in Western Europe. This was a hugely important and meaningful phase for a large portion of humanity. Although the Reformation was essentially a religious movement, it had and still has a massive impact on the human psyche and consequently, on human activities. Even if the breaking down of the fairly rigid medieval order could be perceived as a welcome improvement for humankind, it would be naïve to fail to address the deep despair and anxiety felt by large numbers of people at the time. Their livelihood was threatened by emerging large companies and their salvation had become uncertain because the theory of predestination now stipulated a person’s total inability to determine his/her fate since god had already decided of it in advance.

Paradoxically, Luther praised work and effort as part of his religious doctrine although at first, it would seem quite futile to put work and effort into anything to attempt to improve one’s lot, whether materially or spiritually, since he also claimed that all had been predestined. Certainly, human beings have a knack both to create impossible situations and to find equally convoluted solutions to escape from their self-made predicaments. As a result, it wasn’t too long before much effort was invested in one’s occupation and on the results of this effort, that is, success or failure in business. Success became a sign of god’s grace and failure a sign of damnation although, of course, there were others. But providing a person achieved some reasonable success in business, the levels of anxiety were kept under wrap and given an outlet, indeed the only outlet. Effort and work in this sense assume an entirely irrational character. They were not to change fate since this was predetermined by god, regardless of any action on the part of the individual. They served only as a means of forecasting the predetermined fate; while at the same time, the frantic effort was a reassurance against an otherwise unbearable feeling of powerlessness. This new attitude towards effort and work as an aim in itself may be assumed to be the most important psychological change since the end of the Middle-Ages. And while it is true that in every society human beings have to work in order to live, it is also true that, although very unequally distributed among the different classes in the medieval social hierarchy, the burden of work was essentially perceived to be a necessary response to a concrete demand and a concrete aim: to earn one’s livelihood. In the old order, there was no particular urge to work more than was necessary to maintain the traditional standard of living. It seems that for some groups of medieval society, work was enjoyed as a realisation of productive ability; that many others worked because they had to and felt this necessity was conditioned by pressure from the outside. Work did not have the abstract character of producing some commodity that might be profitably sold on the market. What was new in modern society was that people came to be driven not so much by external pressure but by an internal compulsion that made them work as only a very strict master could have done in other societies. So, it can be said that this shift enabled the flourishing of capitalism that simply could not have developed had not the greatest part of people’s energy been channelled in the direction of work (1). This change in our attitude to work thus exemplifies the emergence of obsessive-compulsive behaviour patterns operating both at personal and transpersonal levels to cover up deep fears and anxieties.

Although hugely important in the Western world, the Reformation was by no means the only significant sign reflective of Pluto in Capricorn. Indeed, there are plenty others and the early part of the 16th century saw an enormous amount of expansion mostly driven by the desire to gain access to resources of one kind or another. In 1519, Magellan set sails to circumnavigate the world for the first time we’re told, thus paving the way for the forthcoming colonialist era.

Meanwhile, Cortez with Diego Velazquez conquered Cuba and settled there until 1518 when Velazquez appointed him to lead an expedition to Mexico. With his force of 700 men he landed on the coast of Mexico and founded the settlement of Veracruz. Cortez burned his ships behind him, thereby committing his entire force to survival through conquest. Cortez then moved to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), the capital of the powerful Aztec Indians. After some bitter struggle, Cortez captured Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) in 1521 and terminated the Aztec empire. Notably, the first African slaves arrived in present day United States as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón in 1526.

Suleiman the Magnificent ruled during 1520-66. He developed the power of the Ottomans to its greatest extent - from Asia Minor to North Africa. He captured Belgrade, subjugated Hungary after the battle of Mohacs (1526) and besieged Vienna (1529). After his fleet became the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea, he conquered Tripoli in North Africa. After the abdication of the last Abbasid Caliph he took Persia (1534); Baghdad declined subsequently to the rank of a provincial city; and the Persian Shiites became the Ottomans' bitter enemies. In Istanbul Suleiman surrounded himself with poets, architects and lawyers and introduced most of the characteristic achievements of Ottoman civilization, he is therefore also known as Suleiman 'the Lawgiver'.

China also expanded its already considerable economic might. The commercial revolution of Chinese commerce, which lasted from 1500 to 1800, is considered the "Third Commercial Revolution" in Chinese history. In particular, small business grew that specialized in paper, silk, cotton and porcelain goods. This commercial revolution included extensive trade with foreign countries, including direct trade with Europe. By the late sixteenth century, China was intimately a part of the growing global economy. The Chinese were trading actively with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Japanese, who exchanged silver for Chinese silks and porcelain. The Ming, however, had built their own merchant marine using the trees planted by the Hong Wu emperor in the 1390's. With this fleet, which rivalled that of any European power, the Ming shipped silks, cotton, and porcelain to Manila in the Philippines and there traded with the Spanish for silver, firearms, and American goods such as sugar, potatoes, and tobacco.

The last Capricorn ingress of Pluto took place in early January 1762; Pluto stayed in this sign until the spring of 1777. For all intents and purposes, this could have been an opportunity for humankind to review its attitude to work, to the management of resources and consequently to wealth. And to an extent this happened but not in the radically different way that might have been needed from our current point of view.

In 1765, James Watt invented the steam engine that powered the industrial revolution. From there on, just about everything was produced and moved by steam engines until the middle of the 19th century when it was taken over by the internal combustion engine. So, the last transit of Pluto through Capricorn coincided with another impulse to increase by several folds the output of goods that were released on the market. The mechanisation of tasks on a larger and larger scale was acclaimed as “progress” since it “freed” human beings from the burden of strenuous and repetitive tasks.

Certainly, this improvement had some welcome effects as the slave trade had reached a peak during the 18th century. African slave trade and slave labour transformed the world from the early 16th century onwards. It contributed to an accumulation of wealth on an unprecedented scale in human history, the costs of which were paid in blood, sweat and tears by the slaves. Africans were forcibly removed from central and Western Africa, a human catastrophe for Africa, a holocaust that the African continent arguably never recovered from. The number of slaves traded between 1500 and 1900 are estimated by historians to be at least 28 million although this figure is controversial as no one bothered to keep tabs. Why should they? Had not god himself predestined some special human beings to be saved, the cardinal sign of which was wealth and others to eternal damnation, the sign of which was a predestination to subservience and slavery amongst other signs such as a person’s skin colour that made them all the more identifiable?

So, it is only when a mechanical tool became available and that consequently the toil of work, as defined under the previous passage of Pluto through Capricorn, could be feasibly transferred from a human operator to a machine that the principles of slavery increasingly came under stronger and stronger scrutiny. Were the slaves in particular and humanity in general freed from this swap? This is arguable as the vast majority of people throughout the civilised world increasingly became the servants of the machines that were supposed to free them.

The American war for independence kicked off in the spring of 1775 after much bickering about unfair taxations from Great Britain. The arbitrariness of such a system was inbuilt in the lunacy defined by relatively rich people who saw their wealth as a sign of god’s love and who therefore also saw themselves as naturally privileged. This, in turn, was challenged by a nascent nation that functioned according to the same lunacy and whose wealth was largely obtained by the exploitation of Africans. Consequently, with so many human beings victims of genocides and slavery for the sake of wealth, the notion of human freedom became a burning issue as the human psyche can only cope with so much abuse. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”, aptly wrote Voltaire at the time.

Because this system is the product of a neurotic attitude that tries to resolve existential problems it called for neurotic solutions. So, instead of freedom defined as a natural state of being and as an expression of one’s own existence, it had to be redefined by such contrived responses as legislation, philosophy, revolutions and wars. In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his “Social Contract” that attempted to redefine the place of human beings and their interactions within a progressively more complex social network. Thus, Pluto in Capricorn this time round also saw the implementation of a relatively new type of government then required to manage and regulate humanity within a newfound framework. But human beings failed to challenge much of the fundamentals defined during its previous passage.

To further our understanding of Pluto, let’s take an additional look at its fairly recent passages through Scorpio and Sagittarius. Pluto entered Scorpio on the 5th of November 1983. The most significant correlation that can probably be made is the discovery of the HIV virus deemed responsible for the AIDS epidemic that exploded on the world scene a couple of years earlier.
It certainly seems that the notion of “death through sex” fits very well with the attributes traditionally associated with Pluto and Scorpio although this association has always been obvious in any case. Other of Pluto’s qualities, such as shame, guilt, projection on scapegoats, intense fear, mass paranoia, etc were also readily identifiable. It was primarily male homosexuals that were affected by AIDS and consequently further stigmatised by society. Having said this, there is no doubt that this situation brought to light some fairly disturbing obsessive-compulsive sexual behaviour patterns. For example, the notion of promiscuity took on entirely different meaning and dimension when it was disclosed that some male homosexuals had sex with several thousand partners in a single year. Certainly, the notion of Scorpio sexual activity acting as a binding social energy rather than the purely reproductive level seen in the opposite sign of Taurus couldn’t be better illustrated. In any case, the discovery of this little virus had a massive impact on human sexual behaviour worldwide.

Yet, if we look a little deeper into this situation, we find that even today some people are projecting a different picture from the agreed model. Peter Duesberg, a Berkeley virologist, joined by others such as Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry, say they have seen “no scientific evidence” proving that HIV causes AIDS. If this is true, this has very serious implications. Not least is the amount of resources wasted in research in the last 25 years. The money spent is far more than that invested in the space programme for the last 50 years and the research has amounted to nothing tangible so far. When dealing with the AIDS pandemic, an essential question must be asked: why now? The monkey host theory is problematic since African hunters have come into close contact with monkeys for millennia and have never been known to develop AIDS or anything remotely similar until fairly recently. Indeed, there are plenty of factors aside from one single virus that could adversely affect human immunity. Why not also take into account the unprecedented changes in lifestyle that took place after WWII for example? These could arguably have a considerable and unknown impact primarily on the generations reaching adulthood in the 80’s. Indeed, taking these factors into account would fit with Pluto’s holistic nature and balancing functions much better than focusing on a single causative factor.

Pluto entered Sagittarius on the 17th January 1995. Basically, this combination radically changes our ability to conceptualise and to manifest these concepts into political, religious and social structures. And although there is a definite healthy need to infuse and renew these institutions with new concepts to avoid stagnation and staleness, the manifestations can sometimes be rather brutal owing to the fundamentalist, dogmatic and largely socially oriented Sagittarius trends. The individual’s needs weigh little in the Sagittarius mind and they are frequently sacrificed for what is perceived to be the benefit of the whole. There are many examples encapsulating this somewhat extreme tendency, a most striking case would be the Spanish Inquisition.

When Pluto entered Sagittarius, I could not quite conceive that some sort of religious war could take place in the 21st century although the thought crossed my mind several times. I was wrong not to take my hunch more seriously. A modern crusade, the “War on Terror” started following the tragic events of 9:11 that doubtlessly manifested a large scale fracture, a clash of ideologies, dogmas and cultures in which thousands of individuals are murdered, sacrificed or maimed. 9:11 was signified astrologically by the opposition between Saturn and Pluto at 12º Gemini and Sagittarius respectively, exact on the 5th of August 2001. The Sabian (2) symbol for this particular degree of Sagittarius is particularly fitting as it reads “the karma of past actions as it affects opportunities presented by a new cycle”. It seems obvious enough that the religious extremism leading to sporadic suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings as well as the systematic carpet bombing, imprisoning or torturing of a large portion of a country’s population are good examples of obsessive-compulsive behaviour patterns in operation.

Perhaps in contrast with the doubts still surrounding the connection between HIV and AIDS, I don’t think there much of a need to try and expose the rhetoric and the actions/reactions of the “Coalition of the willing” for what they are. The fact is that there was never any connection between Iraq and the terrorist attack of 9:11 and all the evoked reasons to invade the country only turned out to be lame excuses to gain control over their oil. And perhaps in parallel with the AIDS situation, there are still some serious doubts about the origins of 9:11. The conditions surrounding the collapse of the twin towers as well as building 7 together with the lack of plane wreckages outside the Pentagon cast a huge shadow on the official report and its conclusions.

To some, it might seem unthinkable that a government would mount a secret attack on its own people to provide an excuse for committing atrocities. As disturbing as it might be, this has already been done several times. Two famous examples spring to mind: Nero who used the great fire of Rome to subsequently persecute the Christians and Hitler who ordered the Reichstag fire that was blamed on the Communists and that effectively terminated the Weimar constitution; of course, there are dozens of other examples. Astrologically,it might be worth noting that the Reichstag Fire took place during a square between Pluto and Uranus. And as we shall see in the following paragraphs, Pluto and Uranus are set to form another square in the fairly near future.

Altogether, the passage of Pluto in a sign seems to bring up deep and relevant issues. In both of the above examples, the usual Plutonic ingredients are present: power, resources, sex, death, deviousness, shame, guilt, obsessive-compulsive behaviour patterns and so on. In both cases though, there seem to be persistent, essential and disturbing questions left unanswered. It appears the truth is still hidden behind an inadequate, partial or incomplete version of reality. What is Pluto trying to teach us here? And who is going to dig further to get to a better approximation of the truth?

The next Capricorn ingress of Pluto will take place on the 26th of January 2008. From what we’ve observed above about Pluto, it seems reasonable to expect some deep changes in our relationship with work, in the management of resources, of people and of wealth. Indeed, the last two ingresses have brought about drastic new trends in why and how we produce, market and consume goods. But the world is very different this time around as the means of both production and destruction are vastly more powerful than they were in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively. In spite of, or perhaps because of this, I think it would be fairly unrealistic to expect the same spectacular leap forward in productivity seen during the last two passages of Pluto in Capricorn, on the contrary; here is why.

The General Exhaustion of Biodiversity.
It is not much of a secret and it should come as no surprise to anyone reasonably well informed that the world is rapidly running out of life. Another way of putting this would be to say that the natural world has been seriously damaged perhaps to a point of dying, for the sake of the artificially created human world we like to call civilisation, particularly the dominant Western brand of it. Consider that biologists have estimated the rate of loss of biomass to be about 100 times (some say 1000 times, in some places) faster that it would be without human intervention. While species are quietly becoming extinct without much of a noise or a fight in the moist and shaded recess of some ever-shrinking distant jungle, the civilised world governed by a business class has largely ignored, overlooked or simply denied the reality of this situation. For sure, there are pressure groups and organisations increasingly successful in bringing these issues into focus but not enough, it seems, to halt this trend and even less reverse it, so far. Astrologically, it is entirely possible that the struggle of nature to survive the onslaught together with its relatively powerless championing is reflected by the long lasting opposition between Saturn and Chiron, from 1985 through to 2007 during which these issues came more sharply into focus. While the disappearance of some obscure species of butterflies, frogs or plants has had seemingly no or little impact on the daily life of the civilised world, the fundamental holistic nature of the earth’s ecosystem is revealing itself in more concrete evidence as familiar species are slowly beginning to join the scrap heap of dodos. Such is the case of the delectable anchovy, for example, whose fishing has recently been closed down by both France and Spain as the livestock are nearing exhaustion. Also, according to various reports, this is apparently soon to be the case of the North Sea cods and of the British salmon whose livestock are also becoming dangerously depleted. The fact remains that, from a particular point of view, it is a remarkable achievement for humanity to have been so successful. Unfortunately, the price of this outstanding success seems to be reflected by some serious damages done to the planet in only the last 500 years of its long existence.

The End of Cheap Oil.
From the point of view of our modern civilisation, oil is by far the most important resource as so much depends on it. So what is the current oil situation? The mathematical model known as the Hubert’s peak theory was used in the late fifties to predict with a high enough degree of accuracy the timing of the peak of oil extraction in the U.S. It occurred in 1971, one year later than the predicted projection and extraction rates inexorably declined ever since. The notion that global world oil extraction rates would follow the same course, a phenomenon known as peak oil, has now been discussed for several decades and although no one seems to agree on when exactly this should take place, hardly no one argues that it will take place. Unless the abiogenic theory of petrol formation is correct and there are unlimited supplies of black gold tucked away deep in the earth’s mantle, which most geologists doubt, it is projected that peak oil should happen anytime between 1999 and 2040. Perhaps it is worth noting that one of the main reasons that prevent experts to compute a fairly accurate picture is the fact that oil companies and Governments are exaggerating their estimated oil reserves. My guess is that peak oil will happen while Pluto is in Capricorn, probably in the early part of the transit and more specifically around 2009-11. Certainly, by the time Pluto reaches mid-sign in 2015, I don’t think there will be any doubt left that the emperor has no cloth. Once world oil production has peaked, the price of oil can only go up and there is no chance for this trend ever to be reversed. The consequences of peak oil are far fetched. In its current form, agriculture in particular is extremely dependent on fertilisers and pesticides made almost exclusively from oil. Given this fact, it is likely that productivity will eventually have to return to levels similar to those obtained from farming methods hardly seen in the West since the end of WWII. As an added difficulty, this situation could also be somewhat impaired by both adverse climatic factors and by the return in increasing numbers of various pests and parasites made fairly immune to traditional pesticides by years of unbridled use of relatively stronger chemicals. Meanwhile, a large proportion of marketable goods currently manufactured also require a fair amount of oil for its production and for its transportation. Hence, it is very clear that running out of this most central resource can only have a massive impact on the world economy.

Worldwide Economic Crisis.
One of the main consequences is likely to be a large scale economic crisis. This is likely to trigger a deep reviewing of the money system which would be well in line with the meaning of Pluto in Capricorn. The current debt based system is likely to be eventually replaced by a debt free system such as Social Credit, for example. However, this will not happen without a bitter struggle as we shall see in the following paragraphs. From an astrological point of view, there are strong indications that the crisis is set to intensify from the summer of 2010.

Deep Reforms in Politics and Governing Methods.
Any change in the money system is inevitably linked to deep political reforms. The main tenet of our current Western civilisation and its fairly uniform so-called democratic political system is doubtlessly the notion of private property. Our relationship with ownership is likely to fall under intense scrutiny and the basis for its validity will probably be deeply questioned.

The Reversal of Globalisation.
The growing trend of globalisation can only fail under the circumstances described above. Although we will probably be able to carry on transporting goods around the planet as we’ve done for millennia, it is unlikely that the current fast pace can be sustained. As a result, communities will increasingly have to revert and rely on local farming and manufacturing of produce and goods for their supplies.

Genetic Technologies.
It is likely that genetic technologies will develop rapidly during the passage of Pluto throughout Capricorn. As already mentioned in the introduction, Pluto digs deeper at the level of energy corresponding with the sign it’s crossing. This being the case, I expect we will witness the widespread introduction of new technologies manipulating the genetic level of life. This will likely be further stimulated and justified by the loss of biodiversity mentioned above and by a perceived need to produce new, genetically improved species of vegetables and breeds of animals for human consumption. However, this is almost certainly going to be a case of the agro-industry attempting to gain an increased control over large portions of humanity by becoming the sole providers of their food supply.

Much of the same will also apply to the medical world. Genetic manipulations could lead to some cure perhaps as spectacular as those brought by the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines. Most likely pioneered in the USA, I think innovative biotechnologies to halt aging will become available (3). It is extremely likely that it will only be affordable by a small minority which will cause much resentment and all the usual Plutonic emotions amongst the less privileged.

However, it must also be said that from an energetic point of view, this approach could well lead to some significant and profound large scale health disasters in the future. Let’s just remind ourselves at this point that the use of antibiotics have largely contributed to strengthening some bugs due to their relatively fast reproductive cycle and to their ability to mutate. Such is the case of Multi-Drug Resistant TB (MDR TB) now known as Extreme Drug Resistant TB (XDR TB), for example. By the same token, vaccination introduces a frequently lethal organism at blood level thus bypassing more superficial levels of immune-defence. The emergence AIDS, undoubtedly an immune disorder, in one of the first generations to have been mass vaccinated is by far the worst pandemic known to mankind. So, we are now in a global man-made situation in which bugs are stronger and human immunity weaker. Given these facts, I feel it would be valid to ask if we are not going to create fairly unsolvable problems by manipulating human immunity and diseases at the deepest energetic level available.

Worldwide Health Crisis.
It is quite difficult to be optimistic on this topic given that the production and delivery of pharmaceuticals are very dependent on oil. Moreover, it is clear that a badly nourished and worried population will be increasingly vulnerable not only to a host of diseases that have grown progressively more resistant to stronger and stronger medical drugs but also to various other dysfunctions (4). Indeed, humankind might live to regret the loss of some species that could have provided a natural cure for some disease.

Demographic Upheaval.
It is worth reminding ourselves here that each calorie currently produced requires ten obtained from fossil fuel. If oil supplies are set to fall, the production of food will follow the same trend. Like every other organisms, human beings are grown out of food. The projected growth in world population is currently set to reach close to 7 billion individuals by 2010. This will doubtlessly cause some serious problems as the increasing demand will be on a collision course with dwindling supplies.

General Popular Unrest and Other Conflicts.
In view of this bleak forecast, it is extremely likely that a mood of general unrest will take over the planet. When resources become scarce, people often fight in desperation over the crumbs. This will probably range from popular riots duly repressed by governments to more serious and worrying conflicts between nations. Again, various astrological factors seem to point to an intense and challenging period beginning in 2009.

Tectonic Movements and Climatic Changes.
It is not my observation that there are any astrological factors capable of accurately forecasting earthquakes and consequently I usually stay well clear of this topic. However, the nature of the astrological factors involved force me to consider the possibility that strong tectonic movements could take place while Pluto is in Capricorn, particularly for a couple of years either sides of 2010.
Climatic changes are now well on their way and well advertised. This requires no further comments.

New Forms of Energy - Possible Alternatives - New lifestyles.
When dealing with the topic of new technologies, it might perhaps be useful first to consider a significant example of current technology and its origin. So, let’s go back to about a century ago and remind ourselves of the decision taken by J.P Morgan to stop funding Nikola Tesla’s research in wireless electricity distribution. In his book (5), Thomas Valone explains:

“Today we are faced with the consequences of the fateful decision in 1905 by J. P. Morgan to abandon Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower project on Long Island, once he learned that it would be designed mainly for wireless transmission of electrical power, rather than telegraphy. He is reported to have complained that he would not be able to collect money from the customer in any feasible way. This mercenary attitude by the world's richest man forced the nation to pay for thousands of miles of transmission line wires, just so an electrical utility meter could be placed on everyone's house.”

Then, Valone further explains:

"The really shameful U.S. scandal, unknown to the general public, is that out of the total electrical power generated using wire transmission (about 31 Quads), a full 2/3 is totally wasted in "conversion losses." No other energy production system of any kind in the world has so much wastefulness. Instead of trying to build 2 power plants per week (at 300MW each) for the next 20 years (only to have a total of additional 6 trillion kWh available by 2020), as some U.S. government officials want to do, we simply need to eliminate the 7 trillion kWh of conversion losses in our present electricity generation modality. Tesla's wireless transmission of power accomplishes this goal better than any distributed generation".

So, there already are some very efficient ways of drastically reducing our wasteful energy management, it seems. Other types of energy production and management could include: