Bob, this is something I've been trying to get to grips with also, in the stakeholder analysis of the global energy problem, it looks like we are practicing a system of energy slavery.
Profit is at the root of this problem, it's actually a dishonest energy lie the way profit works to cover up its tracks, whilst destroying the planet, and the historical roots of profit appear maybe to be tied up in the history of the ancient Israelites, during their dealings with the ancient Egyptians, around the time of the claimed burning bush, the passover, and the story of seven years of grain acquisition followed by seven years of famine.
To me it looks like the energy slavery started about then. It wasn't something done before that, by the Egyptians or whoever, it looks like they might have been profit free, powered maybe by the sun using ancient technology before maybe the Israelites came along and upset their non profit system powered by positive energy.
You probably remember the solution I propose (And which it looks like nature is pushing), is domestic and community based solar hydrogen, but a necessary change that will come from this is solar indexed stimulus for all, removing our need to keep contributing to the unsustainable profit driven system destroying the planet.
What Indi has latched onto is the cancellation by fear effect, on truth.
We would have, a long time ago, all have agreed it's OK for richer folk to feed off of poorer folk using the mechanism of profit to extract their wealth over time, creating hierarchies of this to put the most brutally oppressive in the seats of political power, at the expense of those ultimately at the bottom of the hierarchies, now in foreign countries, at actually theat of death.
To me it looks like there might even be some kind of genetic programing that makes us white folk more inclined to be profit driven than maybe folk of African origins, for example.
I know this is an incredibly sensitive subject, but somehow we have to get our heads around the subject of our own historical responsibility for being where we are right now, the part our ancestors played in things.
A burning bush, giving orders to inflict famine, to get control of people, and to commit genocide to teach people lessons, does not sound much like the orders of a creative deity, surely, it sounds more like the opposite, the orders of a very destructive deity, that we should question now, knowing what we know about things like Ai (Deity level intelligence), and why or how it might end up being the truth that the meek would one day inherit the Earth.
Systemically, it looks like this is the case but getting to it might require we categorically renounce profit as an energy crime.
In a way, this would require the rich renounce their wealth, but it looks like the rich will be made poor by nature, like everyone will be, if they don't put their wealth towards doing the right thing now, making everyone rich, instead of waiting until everyone is made poor by incredibly expensive global catastrophe.