Each pencil represents countless individuals creativity . No matter how simple any one of these tasks or features of a pencil might seem to us today, there was a time in human history when no one had thought of its possibility or of practical means of achieving it. This realization suggests an even deeper point. Every material that we today classify as a resource was at one time in our history worthless or downright undesirable. Not until human creativity goes to work does any physical thing become useful and valuable.
Resources don t exist without human creativity.
Consider, for example, petroleum. Better for them that it disappear. Oil certainly was no great source of wealth to American Indians. Crude oil became a resource only when someone first creatively figured out that it can be used to satisfy human wants. And even then our ability to use it became a reality only because many other people creatively devised each of the various tools and processes necessary for extracting and refining crude oil.