"Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman."  G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy

"Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw." G.K.C. Heretics

G.K. Chesterton, near the end of the greatest chapter in any book ever written*, briefly sums up something he calls the "poetry of limits, nay, even the wild romance of prudence," which is partially an argument that people only truly appreciate things when they are scarce and the best way to appreciate something is to treat it that way.  He points out how one of the most exciting parts of the book Robinson Crusoe is simply the "list of things saved from the wreck."  Why is this so exciting?  Because to each item is added remarkable value by the realization that we might have had to make do without it.

In history we usually view with baffled disdain the prejudices and actions of previous eras and peoples.  I've read quite a few medieval chronicles and have been surprised to see how otherwise intelligent and spiritual people seem to consistently see Christendom as the one positive thing in the world and those outside of Christendom as thoroughly corrupted enemies of all that is good.  Isn't it great that our society is so progressive and that we're so much smarter than all the idiots who have gone before us?

Or are we?  I think one of our most egregious collective errors in the post-industrial age is a lack of appreciation.  I think this might be highlighted by a consideration of our attitude toward our dear friend petroleum.  Cheap access to oil is something we consider to be a natural human right.  This may be true, because at this point if oil were suddenly cut off or controlled by a few brilliant and malevolent individuals, the resulting panic would probably plunge our smug, progressive society into a kind of nightmarish anarchy worse than Sierra Leone, Darfur, or North Korea. 

It seems that once we make something a human right we fail to appreciate it and only notice its absence, but I'd like to argue that we adopt a different attitude about oil.  Maybe if we all knew a little more about the history of oil we would be a bit more appreciative.

543 million years ago something happened called the Cambrian Explosion in which 50-80% of all animal phyla ever to exist were created.  Of the more than 70 phyla known to have existed then only a little more than 30 remain today.  (As an aside, I would just like to point out the obvious, which is that hosts of animals "exploding" onto the earth makes more sense when one believes that God creates things at specific times for specific purposes than when one goes along with our modern evolutionary assumption.)  After the Cambrian Explosion there were shallow seas covering large portions of earth and the body types of the animals dominating these post-Cambrian shallow seas were ideal for eventually being transformed into black gold.  The way this happened was that their dead bodies were buried by sedimentation and tectonic activity and then heat, pressure, and time turned them into tar, and eventually into oil.  Microbial activity then begins turning this oil into methane. (natural gas)

Sedimentation and tectonic processes then have to lay down porous rocks to hold the oil and non-porous sealer rocks around it to keep it in.  Otherwise the oil would leak out and be too thinly distributed throughout the earths crust to be easily extracted.  Furthermore, the timing of the post-Cambrian entombment of critters was such that we are living at the optimum time to make use of it.  In the entire 4.5 billion year history of the earth we are living at the moment in which most of these fossils are in their most useful form (oil) instead of still being tar or having already decayed into methane.  Furthermore, the underground reservoirs which have been formed by tectonic process have mostly not yet been ruptured by those same tectonic processes which created them.  It almost seems like God planned to give us this gift.

But do we treat it as a gift?  I think not.  Rather than appreciating oil like Anton Ego appreciated his Ratatouille, we treat it as would an obese glutton who seizes food to satisfy the basest of urges.  We are consuming it in a crescendoing paroxysm like an oblivious binger, unconcerned with the consequences of his lusts.  Should we not rather appreciate this miracle by gathering the leftover pieces of bread, rather than presumptuously expecting another miracle?  Should we not consider the fact that this miracle, like the feeding of the 5000 may only happen once?

From now on when you or I take a trip in a car, a bus, a plane, or cruise liner let's thank God for his gift.  "Blessed art Thou O Lord our God who bringeth forth oil from the earth."  Unlike a prayer before meals this is prayer for a resource that is not renewable.  This is a different kind of miracle than chicken alfredo, because fossilized mollusks are no longer capable of reproduction.  When we fire up our internal combustion engines we are taking advantage of a resource whose origins date back a half a billion years and we are using 10 gallons of gas which will never, ever be available to anyone ever again.  That ought to be something to thank God for, but also a fact which might change the way we live.

So I suggest we all gather around the pump the next time we fill up and lay hands on it.  We can say a prayer thanking God for post-Cambrian critters just like we often thank him for the barnyard critters we eat for lunch.  The gas station attendant might see you as the mad prophet of a new sect, but perhaps this world needs another John the Baptist.  And besides, this will not be a new sect.  We are those who appreciate the giver by appreciating the gifts and our tribe has been here for millenia.  History, I am sure, will be kinder to you for your madness than it will be to your era for its madness.

References

"Patroleum: God's Well-timed Gift to Mankind" by Hugh Ross

http://www.reasons.org/resources/connections/200409_connections_q3/index.shtmlpetroleum_gods_well_timed_gift_to_mankind

"Cambrian Flash" by Fuz Rana

http://www.reasons.org/resources/connections/2000v2n1/index.shtmlearths_crafted_crust

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

* Think.  You know what the asterisk is for.