Energy Democracy - The New Story of Freedom for Power and People
- Kralingen
- Aug 11
- 7 min read
All great civilizations have one thing in common: they innovate energy. This brings functional, emotional, social, and financial progress, all of which in the end brings more freedom. Today we're looking at the narratives that link energy innovation and democracy, specifically into two types of energy that fit the zeitgeist; sustainable power usage and life force energy. Or in more popular terms, power energy and people energy, with a little creative energy sprinkled in as well.
(This blog is inspired by my Dutch language article on the future of The Netherlands on Frankwatching)
All Successful Civilizations Innovate Their Energy
All successful civilizations have one thing in common: they innovate energy. To do this successfully in our time requires an inspiring story that marries the functional with the emotional; renewing both consumption energy and life force energy. Not in the least because of the negative energy of many of our leaders out there.
As a world, we struggle with a lack of decisiveness on major issues that affect us all – including healthcare, aging populations, red tape, oligarchic tendencies and environmentally damaging practices – alongside an inability to find common ground these days, or even communicate effectively. That's not to say there aren't exceptions, but by and large we are not moving fast enough and decisively enough to tackle the world's problems.
The Current Story of Leadership
The deeper reason why we're failing is that the story of our leaders remains stuck in 'left versus right' populist rhetoric, which in itself is failing in more ways than one. Great leaders know how to elevate themselves above such - often shifting - differences by telling a story that unites the vast majority. And right now the solution to break with this left-right thinking pattern is quite obvious, almost on the nose, historically speaking: energy innovation.
And in this zeitgeist, especially when we focus on two things: consumption energy and life force energy.
Consumption Energy Innovation
We begin by looking at consumption energy, simply because all civilizations that renewed their energy consumption, became winners. Think of the harnessing of fire, the horse or the ox for plowing and the invention of the wheel. Papyrus and ink in Egypt made information transfer much easier and lighter than with those old heavy stone tablets. The Persians were first to devise powerful windmills, leading to their great breakthrough. The Greek invented the oar, which made traversing the sea much faster than just with sails during wind-still moments. It made them so incredibly rich that they had time to spare for philosophy, art and science.
The real era of Roman dominance came largely due to the construction of roads and aqueducts. The Chinese built much hotter blast furnaces and forges making their tools much better and even packed explosive energy in gunpowder, which the Turks cleverly translated into cannons when they laid siege to Constantinople. The impact of the steam engine by the English is well known and documented. The Americans too first won out with electricity (AC current) and then with their harnessing of atomic energy. And even that brief Grüne Wende in Germany during recent times paid off well for a short period of time.
Textbook Dutch Energy Innovation
Another text book example is the Netherlands and its Golden Age. It was the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620) who made a slew of inventions to sluices and spillways that helped prevent and control flooding and directly led to the so-called polders: former sea-masses turned to land. He also made adjustments to ship design, allowing the Dutch ships to move a lot faster, with all its obvious benefits.
Yet, it was his invention of the 2/3-sided gear teeth that led to a new age. This innovation tripled the power of wind and watermill wheels, which allowed - among other things - to much stronger and faster sawing, with an overflow of wood as a result, which was ultimately put into ship building. Before they knew it, the Dutch had many more ships available, allowing for a lot more trade and riches.
Back in those days, a lot of ships didn't make the perilous journeys home from across the world. To guarantee revenue and profit from these ships, a shared model was created in the form of stocks in the VOC company, that distributed the wealth equally among ship owners, whether their ships had come home or not. And although there will always be the deeply shameful Dutch slavery chapter, this shared revenue model ultimately led not only to the modern day stock markets, but also set The Netherlands on their long journey towards their famous blend of freedom, attracting an overflow of artists, scholars, funds and inventors to its lands in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Fast Forward to Energy Today
Today, The Netherlands, like so many other countries, have stagnated on the efficiency and effectiveness of its energy consumption. Everywhere around the world we are seeing energy related challenges that grind us to a halt: huge energy demands for dubious technology, new housing not being able to plug into the energy net, and the energy nets themselves getting overloaded and blacking out. This stops the necessary sustainable innovation of materials and building methods as well.
Coupled with immense droughts, nitrogen-rich soils, mortgage interest troubles and an abundance of red tape, we are unable to transition our energy and sustainable needs fast enough. This stalls our freedom of movement to innovate, or even just to move to a new house, while we all now that fossil fuels - regardless of your stance on global warming - will simply run out.Not to mention the undemocratic regimes that still mostly run that particular trade.
The Energy of Leadership
These, in a nutshell, are all the challenges we face in energy consumption. Yet, there is an energy problem underneath that drives our stagnation: the energy of our leadership, or lack thereof. Because even with all the trouble we've just mentioned, the solution is so in-your-face it kinda hurts: energy consumption innovation leads to a huge competitive advantage (read on the Seamless & Down to Earth Sustainable trend here). An advantage that leaders seem incapable of harnessing, or even acknowledging.
In short, leaders today point in all directions except toward energy innovation.
To break this cycle, we'll need a 'Father Drees'-like vision. The prime minister of The Netherlands in the mid twentieth century Willem Drees understood that the next big thing in energy consumption would be the distribution of natural gas to all homes in The Netherlands. He laid the legal groundwork for its implementation, which was then famously rolled out in just 5 years time across the entire country.
His vision had united the vast majority of political parties - of which there were many in a deeply devided Holland - and had little to nothing to do with left-right thinking. This self-sufficient energy innovation improved our lives, our cooking too and ranks among the best political decisions of the 20th century in the small country.
Life Force Energy & Mental Weakness
Yet, instead of implemented a global new energy push in what is now a connected world, our entire current leadership keeps wasting our time with bickering and squabbling over the left-overs of outdated neo-liberal systems, while the solution of energy innovation is staring them in the face. It's wasted energy as the saying goes, that we then take out on migrants, the vulnerable and each other. This in turn leads to new and often extra harsh rules and regulations that are impossible to implement, harm our progress and merely give the illusion of control.
This not only undermines democracy worldwide. It radiates mental weakness.
Its called 'scarcity thinking': a mindset stuck in the idea that all is already lost. In this mindset it's everybody for themselves, resulting in a fight over peanuts. It's an absolutely paralyzing mindset: the fear of losing (a political job, voters, money...) leads to the pointing of fingers instead of coming up with fresh new ideas. In short, it's a bad story we tell ourselves.
Imagine if you're in a team and before the match even starts, everybody already thinks they're going to lose, so they all start to play for their own careers and interests... with that mindset, no team can ever win. Another way of describing it is the lack of self-confidence and self-awareness. Our leaders apparently lack sufficient self-confidence to set an ambitious point on the horizon and roll up their sleeves together with the people to reach that goal.
That impasse leads to unnecessary stress, while depression and aggression are already everywhere. And that brings us to the second point of this zeitgeist: mental and physical energy.
Positive Energy & Abundance
The self-aware mindset we should be having is that of abundance: the conviction that we have wonderful societies and exceptional people who together have more than enough creative energy and talent to win in the shared battles in front of us.
A healthy society that values this life-force energy and the abundant energy from nature is more resilient, regulates their emotions better and grants each individual more freedom. This life-force energy, coming from a place of abundance thinking, is best cultivated with extra focus on (preventive) healthcare, sports and education. This thinking is very much in line with a lot of innovation into our mental and physical health that is already prevalent.
Strengthen the heart, mind and soul, and you can innovate your way out of anything.
The Combination of Power and People Innovation
In short, the energy innovation of our time is the two-fold innovation of consumption energy combined with vital life-force energy as the main focus point of our investments.
This unconditional energy renewal, once embraced, can lead to significant leaps in five to ten years on a global scale, just as it happened after Father Drees came to town or we joined forces to strengthen the ozone layer. Such a vision also forces us to solve many other issues more quickly because we have a larger shared goal, and they simply become less relevant in the grand scheme of things.
I call this new story Energy Democracy, full of new consumption and life energy, that brings social and financial progress and strengthens democracy. If this generation of leaders doesn't have the energy for this, then I suggest they quickly make space for others with better vibes. Leaders who put us back on our original, centuries-long course toward freedom through energy innovation.
Love, as always
Rogier
(And check out my book on Storytelling to strengthen your stories too!)
