Natural Resources

Only one can give the rest any value at all.

Not so far behind the scenes, countries tend to measure themselves by the amount and availability of their own natural resources. Oil, gas, gold, diamonds, fruit, vegetables, everything and anything people want. What they can dig out of the ground or grow in it. Clean air and good weather even becomes a commodity to attract carriers of wealth. Yet everything about the term seems to belittle the truth about natural resources. What is the center of all that makes it a resource, or gives any of it any value at all? People. They create, they nurture, they grow, and none of it means anything without them. What use would gold be without people to make it seem important? Gold does nothing on its own. Nor does oil?

People create, design and build. They earn and trade. People are the greatest natural resource, and the only one that determines whether or not it matters that all of the others even exist. People are renewable and reusable. Once a job is done, they can move on to another, and they do not create any more waste being used, than being left alone.

People produce. Diamonds lay there, look good and may even be used (by a person) as a tool. People produce as great as their education. It is very difficult for an uneducated person to bring great ideas to life. It is impossible for any other natural resource to have an idea at all.

Have you ever seen a news story about some war torn area and watched the camera quickly pan across an area littered with corpses? Next time watch and wonder what our future has lost because of any one of the dead there. Which one of them could have held the one ingredient that would have cured cancer? Maybe the boy laying face down in the mud, already understood perpetual energy. We never know what is possible from whose future, yet we control it by simple giving or taking away an education, a life. Even slaves can only do what they are told.

What good is oil by itself? It doesn’t even burn well as found, but refine it and people can create incredible things with it and from it. Education, thoughts and ideas are the same way, yet better. Oil can not produce until fully refined for each job. People can produce at any given time during their ‘refinement’, and still grow more productive as they continue to learn. And again unlike any other natural resource, pressure is not needed for people to become their best. In fact, no more is needed than opportunity.

Someone who had no need for a wedding ring cut the first diamond. Someone that had never even heard of cars, began refining oil. Gold was just pretty and easy to work with, while silver simply had a nice shine. None of it meant anything without people. People who were free enough to think and create ideas. People who thought enough to stay one step ahead of the dirt that they held in there hands. People with enough freedom to imagine and build a better life, because they knew they would be a part of it. Their life enhanced their neighborhood. Their neighborhood enhanced their town. Their town, their country, and so it goes. With opportunity people can even add to what is already there and produce new or better. But what is any idea worth without it?

No matter who you are, people around you are thinking. They are having ideas. How are these ideas working for you? Someone sitting behind a desk may have an idea for a better boat. Someone digging a whole may have an idea on how to make energy more efficiently. You never know what who is thinking without the freedom to share it, and the opportunity to make any thought real.