DETERMINISM

It is mistakenly thought that the major issues of discrimination and oppression are merely driven by moral decisions. But I have been learning that they are largely driven by energy supply to drive production of convenience within a given lifestyles--in our times, cars, industrialized farms, roads, medicines, computers. I have come to no reasoned conclusion as to how much culture affects the way energy is used. Is it more like the chicken or more like the egg in determine the lifestyle and patterns of civilizations or cultures? We couldn't all be driven by the quantity of energy supply alone, could we? There might be a lot of food trees around, but if the population got too large, those food trees might not suffice, causing people to migrate elsewhere. But in some cases practices like infanticide or herbal contraceptives...or war...might have kept populations in balance with the available food from plants. Groups would have studied the plants to see how best to use them. Taboos would have been created to maintain various kinds of balance and stability. It surely is a complicated matter to determine whether lucky discoveries influenced ability to survive in  a given place. How much did varied geographies matter? Or unseasonable weather? Was it a certain individual proclivity that led to tracking weather cycles? So this is the question of how much determinism  matter (should be matters), as opposed to accident, happenstance, personal traits. I tend to believe that even if there are large deterministic patterns in human affairs, there are cultural ideas that can influence them--speed them up or slow them down. I would think that decisions made by groups or individuals matter too. What I write below is colored by this belief. And doesn't it matter how groups are placed or happen to fall within energy matrices, whether through determinism, happenstance or intention, how or whether they are oppressed?