The Art of Survival
a philosophy of economics
by
Peter Edward Pierson


After many years of pondering the nature of mankind, his interactions and relationships, his beliefs and superstitions, and his many cultures and societies, I was struck by a simple epiphany; the basic nature of man and mankind alike evolved around the struggle for survival. Big surprise you say! Doesn't all life? Is that not the very nature of life? One either actively pursues life or allows their existence to end.

Unfortunately for many people around the world the actual struggle for survival is still a daily reality. Starvation, disease, and oppression persists throughout the world despite all the scientific and technological advances mankind has achieved.

In contrast, others live in a world of technological wonder fueled by advances in information technology and access to abundant energy sources. The accumulation of wealth by these individuals and their nations represents access to the goods and services essential to their continued survival. But the concept of wealth has taken on a life of its own in which the accumulation of wealth for its own sake has forsaken its relationship to the survival of the human race. The competition in this world to achieve and maintain this contrived wealth has resulted in divisiveness and conflict. Sharing of knowledge and products which could improve the quality of life for all is restricted to advance the agendas of the few with little regard to the environmental consequences or the future of the human race.

For mankind to progress to the next level where everyone's potential can be realized, it will be necessary to find some common ground that will allow everyone to pursue their goals while protecting our vital resources, as we know them, from disappearing. That said, my contribution to the discussion begins by looking at the existence of a single individual where no other individuals exist!

In The Beginning...

Suppose you were all alone, existing only by finding or creating by yourself all that you needed for your own survival. In such a situation, your considerations and actions would represent the most basic system of economics possible to study. We are defining economics as a branch of a knowledge dealing with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services which is of course basic to our very survival. Without at least food and water to consume, our survival would end in a relatively short period of time.

Demand is the term used in economics to refer to the needs and wants of an individual at any given moment in time. The availability of the goods or services, at any given moment in time to satisfy demand is referred to as supply. The relationship between demand and supply and the factors that affect them both is the core of the study of economics.

So here you are, all alone, deciding what to do next. Of course lots of different factors weigh in on the decisions people make from day to day. Even when you are all alone you are still constantly reevaluating your situation. But at some point, if you are planning to stay alive, you will have to begin to address the basic requirements for the human body to continue to function; water and food! Sooner or later you will become both thirsty and hungry, which will create demand for products to satisfy those particular needs. The question is where will the goods necessary to satisfy that demand come from?

Demand occurs, but supply must be produced. Production is the process of transforming the raw materials available to us into goods and services for consumption. Consumption is the use of the manufactured goods and services to satisfy demand. Distribution is the link between production and consumption where the goods and services produced are made available to the consumer.

 Definitions are all good and well, but do nothing to satisfy your thirst or hunger. So you're all alone and begin to get thirsty and soon realize that without a source of fresh water, you're not going to survive for more than a few days at best. The adult human body is composed of up to 60% water. That water is constantly being processed through and eliminated from the body. This requires us to continually be replacing the water we have lost. Once we have lost around 15% of the water we are made of, our continued survival is unlikely. Since there is no one else to help you or provide you with water, you're just going to have to do it yourself. If you're lucky, depending on where you are, there is a source of easily accessible fresh water somewhere around. Maybe you can locate a creek or river or pond or lake or even a nice puddle of fresh water if you look around enough.

But just finding a source of fresh water doesn't necessarily mean you have a finished product ready for consumption. A naturally occurring source of water is a natural resource and the water derived from there is our raw material, but it may not be what is called potable or suitable for drinking. The potential for contaminates to be present in naturally occurring sources of water is actually pretty high these days.Water is one of the most effective solvents we know and tends to dissolve and absorb all kinds of things in nature. Moving sources of water such as a stream or river may be somewhat less murky with fewer contaminates as a percentage than say a muddy puddle or stagnant pond, but may still contain contaminates or parasites capable of making you quite ill.

So do you drink the water or attempt to purify it in some manner? How thirsty are you? Just a little or dying of thirst? How great is your need at that moment in time for that particular product?

Although I digress momentarily, the concept of time is going to be a reoccurring theme. Time is a bit of an illusive concept, yet our existence here is both subject to and a measure of it. Time, for our purposes, is a measure of change.

Which brings us back to your thirst and need for water to satisfy that thirst. If the need is great enough in the moment that you cannot see yourself surviving any longer without addressing it, you will do whatever is necessary to satisfy it or resign yourself to allowing your existence here to end! If you are so thirsty that you cannot see going on without a drink of water and you come across any source of water, you will most likely drink whatever is there irregardless of what you may think of its condition. That drink may end up making you wish you had not survived, at least for a while. But if you do survive, at least it served its purpose.

Let's say you have a little more time to satisfy your need and would prefer a less contaminated product. So how do we transform our raw material into a finished product ready for consumption? If you don't have an answer to that question, we already have a problem!

Production originates from us. Humans are the predominant species on our planet with the desire and abilities to transform the raw materials from our natural resources into almost any product which can be conceived of. And conceiving of the desired product is the first step. Nothing happens unless there is a demand for a given product. Once a demand exists, someone has to figure out how to extract the raw materials from the existing natural resources available to us and manufacture them into the desired product.

Which brings us back to you. You are the only inhabitant in our hypothetical little world. If you lack the knowledge necessary to manufacture the desired product, you will either have to obtain that knowledge, or come up with an alternative solution to satisfy your demand, or simply dismiss the possibility of manufacturing that product at that time and move on to attempting to satisfy some alternative demand.

So what does all this mean in terms of you getting a nice drink of clean, potable water? If you cannot come up with any other alternative it means you will continue to drink straight from the original source as before and hope that your body becomes adapted to the contaminates in it. Or perhaps you could locate or produce a different source of water. With a little more time to explore your options and your environment, possibly you could come across another natural source of water that seemingly meant your needs better without any further processing. Or maybe you would consider creating a rain water collection system of some sort. Constructing such a system would once again require some additional knowledge and materials. What are you going to use to catch and store the rain water with? Where will these materials come from and how will you construct such a device? How much time do you have to devote to this project and how important is it to you? Even then the possibility for contamination exists.

Perhaps you should consider a method by which you could purify water from any source. What about boiling it; that's probably the simplest method and simple is good for our purposes. So maybe you were aware that boiling water for a sufficient period of time is a common method for purifying water. Many people are aware of this and that little piece of knowledge may be essential for producing your purified water. Without that knowledge you might have to abandon the idea of processing the water, unless you acquire that knowledge through some method such as experimentation or trial and error.

Knowledge is gained in many ways. Simple observation of our environment and its inhabitants can lead to a wealth of knowledge. We also have the ability to extrapolate conjectural knowledge from our past experiences and our currently available knowledge. Sometimes knowledge comes to us by what can only be described as intuition. Whatever the source, with enough time and desire, we are capable of discovering information relating to an infinite number of subjects through multiple different means.

But even a simple approach that will result in our desired final product will require more work and knowledge than you might have considered. Don't forget we're starting with nothing! What are we going to use to hold the water while we boil it? How are we going to heat the water up to boiling? Over a fire? How do we start a fire? And what with? Wow, I thought this would be easy!

Production is the backbone of our civilization. What we produce and how we produce it defines who we are. Human intelligence is the driving force behind production. We're defining intelligence here as capacity of mind, especially to understand principles, truths, facts or meanings, acquire knowledge, and apply it to practice; the ability to learn and comprehend. Our intellectual development has set us apart from every other species on this planet. This is why we are able to adapt to a wide variety of different environments and situations. This is why we are continually striving to learn more about ourselves, our planet, and the universe we exist in. This is why we can figure out how to get a drink of clean water!

Our intellectual evolution included three milestones that contributed to our ability to create almost any product we can conceive of: creating tools, using and controlling fire, and creating art.

We're not the only species that uses tools, but we use tools to create even better, more complex, and specific use tools. A tool is a device that can be used to produce or achieve something, but is not consumed in the process. We use tools of one form or another to produce practically everything. And the ability to conceive of and use tools to create tools for different purposes greatly enhances our capabilities to produce a wide variety of products. Try building a house, making clothes, or growing a garden without any tools and see what you come up with. It won't be what you are used to.

Using and controlling fire was another important step forward in our capability for production. Fire represented one of the first forms of energy, other than our own physical energy, that we learned to access. Energy is often defined as the capacity to do work; the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems. Without energy, production cannot occur. Without energy, nothing can be transformed into anything else. When we cook food over a fire, the energy released by the fire in the form of heat transforms the raw plant or animal material into the finished product. In our quest for potable water, fire is the energy source we thought to use to boil the water and transform it into purified water safe for consumption. Energy is always required for production, irregardless of what is being produced!

But energy is subject to the law of conservation in that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Energy comes to us in many forms and exists in everything. The challenge is in accessing the energy available to us with the resources available to us.

When we start a fire, we are releasing the energy contained in the material we are burning through combustion. Fire is an exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, usually light, and various reaction products. Fires start when a flammable and/or a combustible material, in combination with a sufficient quantity of an oxidizer such as oxygen gas or another oxygen-rich compound is exposed to a source of heat or ambient temperature above the flash point for the fuel/oxidizer mix, and is able to sustain a rate of rapid oxidation that produces a chain reaction. So what the heck does that mean to us? It tells us that fire releases energy mainly in the form of heat through a chemical reaction involving the material we are using as fuel (probably wood in our case) and the oxygen in the air by the process known as combustion. During this process, the wood is reduced to mainly ash. It also tells us that some form of energy must be applied to initiate the chemical reaction that results in the fire. This initial energy source can occur naturally as in a lightning strike, or can be the result of us using our energy to say rub two sticks together until friction causes them to get hot enough to initiate the chemical reaction and start the fire.

Everything is a potential source of energy if you know how to access it. In our case we transform the food we eat into the energy we require for our ability to move and produce changes on other physical systems. Then our intellect enables us to determine which sources of energy we have the ability to access and our own energy allows us to initiate the process necessary to transform the source into a form of energy capable of being controlled and utilized for our purposes.

And finally we come to art! From the earliest petroglyphs and cave paintings to modern works in all medias, art occupies a special significance for us. The emergence of art marked a shift in human evolution. Suddenly man was demonstrating the ability to conceptualize or think abstractly as opposed to thinking concretely. But what exactly is art?

The term "art" is thrown around quite a bit within all kinds of different pursuits. In very general terms, art is the conscious use of skill and creative imagination in activities intended to make something special. The term "creative imagination" is the heart of the intellectual process we are mainly concerned with. Creative can be defined as characterized by originality of thought. Imagination can be defined as the ability of forming new images and sensations when they are not perceived through sight, hearing, or other senses; the ability to deal resourcefully with unexpected or unusual problems or circumstances. So creative imagination would be an imagination characterized by originality of thought.

 So what does any of this have to do with a discussion of production in economic terms? Everything! In fact, our definition of art describes the very process used in the production of goods and services. Using skill and creative imagination to make something special is the process of taking the raw materials available to us and transforming them into an end product capable of satisfying a particular demand. But that's not all! The skills necessary to create art, particularly the ability to think abstractly or conceptualize, are the same skills necessary for language and frankly every form of communication we use. Is art not a form of communication in and of itself? These are the same skills that were necessary for the rise of scientific research. From The Evolution of Physics: from early concepts to relativity and quanta by Einstein & Infeld : "To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." In fact, the skills that man uses to draw a picture are the same skills he uses to create virtually everything he makes. Practically everything we do and everything we say and everything we create is a form of art. This is the quality that separates man from every other animal on the planet. Gives all new meaning to the phrase "life is art" huh!

Which brings us back to the subject at hand, production. We defined production earlier as the process of transforming the raw materials available to us into goods and services for consumption. Initially, our raw materials mainly came from natural resources. When we think of natural resources and raw materials we tend to think of all the different materials available for us to harvest from our environment from naturally occurring elements, minerals and ores, to plant material for wood, fiber, and food, to other animals for meat, skins, horns and bones.

But the most important natural resource is often overlooked; man. Man's intellect and creativity is the source of the ideas and concepts which initiate the process of production. Man's physical abilities provide the initial source of energy required to take the process of production from the intellectual state to the material state. Without man there would be no production or any reason for production. Production only exists because man developed the intellectual and physical abilities necessary for it to exist. My dog might argue that production only exists so she can have a squeaky toy, but that's an entirely different matter. Or is it?

To this point we have now come up with five contributing factors for production. The first of course is man. Demand originates from man for which production exists to satisfy. We provide the intellectual resources necessary for production to take place. These intellectual resources conceive of the process which will result in producing the goods dictated by demand. Additionally we provide the physical labor required for production to exist. Unless we actually physically initiate the process of production, nothing will happen.

Secondly, we require raw materials from which to produce our goods. Initially the raw materials all came from the natural resources that exist in out environment. But as production has evolved, raw materials have come to be any materials either naturally occurring or from previously manufactured products necessary to result in the finished product desired.

Even then not all the raw materials go into the finished product necessarily. Tools and equipment for producing the desired goods must themselves be produced or acquired from some source. As such, tools and equipment are our third factor of production.

The entire process is dependent upon sufficient sources of energy, our fourth factor, for the desired results to occur. And not just the energy needed to transform the raw materials into the finished product. Energy is required to even conceive of the process, acquire the raw materials, produce the tools and equipment that will be used, and finally produce the finished product. Many different forms of energy are used in many different ways, but all are essential to the process of production ever taking place. Energy is the foundation of production. The evolution of production over the years has been relative to the sources and availability of energy.

And finally we come to our fifth factor, time. Everything takes time. Time can be a limiting factor to production, but only in the sense that there is a sequence of events which must take place in order to produce anything. The question is are we willing to put in the time necessary to produce the desired results or do we even have enough time to wait for the finished product. In the case where we needed water for survival, waiting to produce a container to boil the water in to produce a purified product may initially take more time than we can physically survive without some form of water. But in as much as time can be a limiting factor to production, it also demonstrates the importance of different products to us. The more time we are willing to put into producing a product, the greater the importance that product represents to us. In that sense time is a measure of value. And just as time is a measure of change, value also is subject to change.

A sixth factor of production would be a place for manufacturing. As the only inhabitant in our theoretical world, this is not an issue of concern particularly as you can set up manufacturing wherever you choose. But in the real world this is certainly a factor for consideration.

As the sole inhabitant of our hypothetical little world the economy you live with is the one you create. Whatever you need or desire, its up to you to either find or produce. There are no stores to go shopping in and no internet to order off of. If you cannot come up with it, it just ain't gonna happen.

Every decision you make as to your needs determines your economy. And as these decisions change, so does your economy. As time goes by and you hopefully develop a system in which all your basic survival needs are meant in a somewhat efficient manner for your lifestyle, you may have enough time to pursue other interests. Although these pursuits would be secondary to those necessary for survival, these are the pursuits that often make life worth living!

In our next section, we will begin to observe the ramifications of introducing a second individual into our hypothetical little world. Until then.....


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