The Alternative

Petrol is a fast receding commodity. The staggering demand for petrol keeps rising every day. Progress is a given and so is the development of ways of a quicker consumption of this scarce commodity. Cometh a day when there is no petrol on the face of the earth, how shall we manage? Manage to run the multitude of resource hungry applications, designed to give us comfort, comfort maybe beyond human needs. Needs is a queer trait that humans display, for it changes. Not person to person, but it changes within the same person. Funny, as we are then chasing chimera. For needs can never be met, is obvious. Or can they be? And at what cost?
Human needs and desires are let best with thinkers, philosophers and Management Gurus, to mull; the question for the lesser doyens of the intelligentsia is "What may this alternative be?" All that we innocuous mortals seek is a way to prolong our comfort, well yes man made comfort. Mankind has toiled for centuries to usurp nature and its manifestations, to bring in a state of play where comfort and desires are by now engrained in civil society. That certainly is a benefit that the human race reaps, thanks to the inventions and advancements in technology. Is it not apt to assume that for sure there will be some tech druid in his monastery praying to his God – his tools and chemicals, seeking an answer to “What may this alternative be?”
Can lateral thinking hold the answer?
Here is an imaginary or a not so imaginary solution. Can we not look at something that is guaranteed to last as long as man lives, something that is part of every human. If we step back a stride and review the requirement to specify the deliverable expected of this alternative, we realise that it needs to act as a fuel. An added advantage can be if this fuel comes with endless supply. Think hard, rake your brain, is there something that the child in you starts pointing at, something that you as a mature loathe to even consider as an option? Of course there is, it is the human urine. It comes with a guarantee of surplus production for as long as we discover a better option. I do not know if we actually need to work on a better option, if urine can play the placebo for the fuel hungry metal glen we live in.
Urine is rich in nitrogen, proteins, metabolites and contains an assortment of organic and inorganic salts. Isn’t there a way to use and synthesize these chemicals into yielding something more relevant, something more meaningful? A breakthrough……anyone……please???? Why do I feel that someone somewhere is pursuing this trail, and making headway by the hour! Is that mere phantasm, or the optimist in me kicking out, yearning to be heard, by the universe? After all, we have at some point in time in our lives believed. A common solution to an extremely sophisticated seems unbecoming, but hey isn’t that what we should learn from children. Well call it conjecture if you shall, but give the child in you a chance.
I do not wish to purport that we use urine in its raw form, as that comes with its share of possible epidemics. After all we are contemplating an element that human bodies discard, after efficient use. I wish to further my theory with a structure here. Urine should be the raw material that is accorded the requisite treatment for disinfection rendering it worthy of further processing. What we get as end result may be the answer to our quest for the alternative. Imagine if this theory comes true. Look at the possibilities it brings to the fore. For a moment if we ignore the vices that will wrap themselves around it, once it works, as greed is the bane of human-kind. Aren’t we our strongest enemies? I say this for I fail to conjure an explanation to the irrational amassing of wealth that the “haves” have perpetrated, at the cost of entire nations. If all this development has failed to instil humanity in men, nothing ever will. So we must know, there shall be evil, to deal with, always.
Close your eyes for a moment think of all the poverty in the world, and human forms that wish they were never born. Assume that the maniacs wielding power have a change of heart and lo – these lesser beings are fed, cared for. Even if out of greed, greed for securing more raw materials, they look after this ill fated lot, and mankind gets a second chance. Suddenly the tides would turn in favour of the third world, in a comparative sense though. They’d be in a better position than they are in today after all.
Oh for the love of comfort, give mankind a second chance.