What is "Energy"?

This article acknowledges the physics of our human condition, briefly discusses the etymology of “energy” and its current definition, and offers a more transcendent (sustainable) meaning of the word:
Energy is the universal potential, all of which is active,
which in turn brings profound, sustaining meaning to the equation:
Power = Energy/Time (P =E/T)
– this equation summarizing our relationship with the universal potential and how it is manifest according to our notion of time.

The human condition is such that psychology~physics are inextricably entangled and we live the following paradox: every man (human being) is vitally sentient of energy with every cell of our being yet no man can truly know what energy is. The human thought process is inadequate, no word or phrase can truly describe “energy” and we live this conundrum: our existence involves uncertainty and yet it is contingent on our ability to behave in harmony with the principles of physics.

The cartoon below expresses our ambivalent attitude to energy and unhelpful language of physics.

The Physics of Our Psyche
(“The words of Truth are always paradoxical” –Lao Tzu )

All forms, including our human psyche, exist as finite, dynamic balances of the universal forces. We are information beings amidst the universal transformation. We paradoxically inform all else even as we are informed by all.
Our psyche is a paradoxical formation too. For example, two complementary forces – an exclusive force (the ego or “I”) and an inclusive force (compassion)- arise simultaneously in any moment of self-awareness and our survival depends on our capacity to maintain a healthy balance between them.

We are only able to survive because compassion, which informs us in inclusiveness, generosity, inquiry, trust and honesty, enables us to embrace the wisdom of the principles of physics, the ways of the universe.
We are our language and all information being physical, it is subject to the principles of physics.
With sufficient compassion, we have the capacity to employ these principles of physics as wise guides and use them to evaluate the sustainability of our behaviour and language.

In brief, compassion enables us to transcend the ingenious self-deceits of the ego and the limitations of thoughts (including words). We can inform and sustain this capacity by evaluating how in accord our use of a word is with our most enduring, wise guide: the Conservation of Energy Principle.

Our Modern Anglo Definition of Energy
(A recipe for Self-annihilation?)

While no man (human being) can truly know what energy is (and that means words ultimately fail us), we enjoy a significant capacity to know what energy is not. Our human formation could not have evolved if this were not so. Our ancestors were able to create cultures with languages embracing the ways of the universe that have sustained Mankind for a thousand millennia.

Some human cultures may have adopted fatally-flawed, exclusive notions of “energy” and only trace elements of these peoples remain, if any at all. Their behaviour became dissonant, delusional and unsustainable and their language could no longer enable them to transcend time.

There is much evidence our modern Anglosphere notion of energy is fatally delusional. Our culture is founded in extremely exclusive notions of “”energy”. Consequently our global systems and currencies are designed to generate extreme waste, pollution, misery and warfare. We call this “The Economy”.
In particular, this belief system involves the maintenance of a unparalleled military-industrial-media complex around the planet to enforce the Anglo “energy” hegemony i.e. ensure all global mineral oil~gas trades are traded using the US dollar.

The authoritive website of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) is an exemplar of this psychopathy – see screenshot below. It illustrates clearly how a very exclusive notion of “energy” propagates unsustainable language (non-science) and delusional worldviews on a profound scale.

Below are screenshots of a page of the US EIA website supposedly designed for children. In reality, its most influential audience is the wide range of teachers and parents of children searching for “simple” ways to explain the nature of energy to their students and children. In many cases, their own formal knowledge was informed by similar, naive, colourful publications “for kids” and by the superabundance of “Energy Sector” news broadcasts and advertisements that surround us all nowadays

The Etymology of “Energy”
(How did the modern, exclusive meaning come to prevail?)

In brief, an influential group of Anglosphere merchant bankers defined mineral biomass in the early 1800s as “fossil fuel” i.e. it exists to be burned. As a consequence, you and I now breath air in which the amount of CO2 is now 150% of its value in 1750.
Then in the early 1900s they defined their bulk-generated electrical products both as “electricity” and “power”.
During and in the aftermath of WW11, they then redefined “energy”, as in the equation:

Energy = Fossil Fuels = Power = Electricity = Bulk-generated Electrical Products

In terms of governance, in Britain the 1942 Ministry of Fuel and Power became the 1957 Ministry of Power, which became the 1974 Department of Energy complete with a Minister as “Secretary of State for Energy”. Similarly mergers of their Departments of Mines and Departments of Electricity occurred in other Anglosphere countries and henceforth corporate media called any interruption in the supply of fuel or electrical products an “Energy Crisis” , constituting a threat to “national energy security” and justifying “energy wars”. Typically these wars this past century have been to ensure Anglosphere control over the global distribution and combustion of mineral oil~gas.

A glance at the etymology of the word “energy” over millennia reveals the radical change in worldview that enabled the English Combustion Revolution and the associated global Anglosphere Empire.

Information being physical and subject to the principles of energy, we live the paradox of information – our use of a symbol simultaneously reflects and generates our state of being, whether at the individual level or the societal level. Hence history can offer a transcendent view of the relationship between a society’s behaviour and language.

Throughout the ages that the ancient, transcendent meaning of “energy” prevailed, Earth’s ecosystem remained relatively stable and sustaining, as measured by its atmospheric gases, water quality, variety of species, forestation and relatively low levels of human pollution etc.

The radical loss of transcendence of the word “energy” is reflected in an equally radical change in our Anglosphere worldview, in which our new notions of energy were profoundly informed by the inventions of devices such as the combustion engine (the Steam Age) and the industrial-scale glasshouse (The Greenhouse Earth worldview). This coincides with radical changes in the behaviour of many Anglo peoples such that their actions have disrupted our vital global ecosystems in unprecedented ways.

Aristotle and Potency~Actuality
(The modern dualistic interpretation of his words)

It is said Aristotle created the word energos from “en” (in, at) and “ergos” (that works), arising from “ergon”(work, that which is wrought; business; action). He probably distinguished in very subtle, holistic ways between energy that has potency (“dunamis”) and energy that has actuality (“entelecheia”) .

Scholars have long for argued whether he understood them as opposing or complementary ideas. What is certain that English culture has become increasingly exclusive and dualistic over the centuries. Now we speak of “potential energy” (inactive energy) as opposed to “kinetic energy” (active energy). We even speak of “Renewable energy” versus “Non-renewable energy” and “energy” versus “resource”.

These notions, being in total denial of the Conservation of Energy Principle, are unsustainable. They form potent evidence that the Crown English culture lacks compassion and is largely ego-driven. Why is this significant?

The Crown dialect of English has been the dominant language governing international transactions this past century and its notions of energy inform nearly all national governance systems. Both the associated words “work” and “business” have been drained of compassionate meaning and redefined in extremely exclusive ways, especially since the 1750s.

The oligarchy of merchant-bankers redefined “work” as any activity that provides exclusive, private profit to them. Their global accounting system thereby demeans and excludes most sustaining actions, including the sustaining roles of women, children, elderly and most of Earth’s ecosystems. The word “work” now lacks any transcendent power.

In the same exclusive, ego-driven spirit, they demeaned “business”, which arose from “ bisig” (careful, anxious, busy, occupied, diligent – see busy (adj.) + -ness.”). They redefined “business” as their private domain, contrasting their roles to all those who they deemed to be “busiless” (At leisure; without business; unemployed) and, in their supreme arrogance, they relish in being called “Big Business”, “Business Moguls”, “Business Magnates” and even “The Business World”.

A More Transcendent Definition of “Energy”
( Manifesting the Sustaining Bounty of the Universal Potential)

Compassion, the inclusive force in our psyche, is characterized by sensations of openness, trust, inquiry, courage, humility, sharing and generosity. “Com” has long meant being “with, together” while passion arises from Latin “”pati” “to endure, undergo, experience,” a word of uncertain origin. It expresses the notion “that which must be endured.” etymonline.com

The reality of the Conservation of Energy Principle is that all forms of energy, including our human form, are transient (finite) amidst the continuous, universal transformation. We endure suffering and undergo death as part of living. How we live and how we die depends very much on our capacity to endure and transcend our human condition in general. And this capacity is determined by our state of being i.e. our experience of a healthy balance of the ego and compassion. This balance enables us to evoke the omnipotence in sustaining ways by ensuring our behaviour~language is in accord with the ways of the universe.

“Energy” being omnipresent and all-enabling, it is vital that we associate the word with the most transcendent meaning possible so the all~powerful can be manifest in the most sustaining ways.

It is our compassionate spirit of humility, honesty and connectivity that enables us to embrace the reality that we are all exist as finite, trace beings amidst the vast, entangled universe of possibilities, the universal potential.

In brief, our modern Anglo definition of “potential” is now extremely exclusive and lacking transcendent power. It is a divisive construct of the ego and thus all uses of language pertaining to the word “potential” tend to become meaningless and unsustainable. Our use of words becomes non-scientific. Our behaviour becomes delusional.

A more compassionate use of the word retains its original potency in which all possibilities are understood to be active. All are entangled in myriad ways far beyond the comprehension of any finite, sentient form such as a human being. In other words. all existence is change unimaginable.
At best, we of the human form may only attempt to conserve the most transcendent meaning of words in order that we can remain optimally in harmony with the ways of the universe. The following statement of energy helps optimize how the universal potential may be manifest:

Energy is the universal potential, all of which is active.

Compassionate definition of energy

This more compassionate statement completely alters our use of the English language of “energy” and transforms our worldview. It reminds us in humility of our trace being and sensations of communion with the continuous universal transformation.
Our more compassionate use of such a potent word as “energy” has an extraordinary impact on all our language pertaining to it.

For example, it simultaneously corrects both what we say and what we do so that our lives become more in harmony with reality of the universal flux.

For example, it reveals the wisdom and sustaining power of the great principles and equations of energy in practical and inspiring ways that our English “Science” educators rarely can.

Perhaps the biggest and most common factor in many of these equations of energy that Anglo teachers fail to unpack is the element of time. Many even conflate energy and power, thus destroying much of the practical meaning of the equation P =E/T in our daily lives. If Power =Energy, then they cancel each other out and Time = 1. This may be true in the ultimate but meanwhile we are left with no useful measure of change, no meaningful relationship with the continuous universal transformation.

The above compassionate definition of energy generates a worldview that brings into sharp relief the integral role that the human psyche plays in how the universal potential is manifest.
For instance, if energy is the all-active universal potential, then power is our measure of how that potential is manifest and the big determinant in the equation is our sensation of time. And our sense of time varies with every breath we give, with our every fleeting emotion, with every change in the dynamic balance between the ego and compassion in our psyche.

We now live in an age when an ego-driven, minority of men (human beings) prevail who believe “power = energy” and “time = money” – money they can create. They lack a compassionate sense of time and abuse the immense potential of the atom, the oceans and the atmosphere at all our peril.
It is vital we all give great care to conserving the most transcendent language possible so the vast universal potential is not manifest in our extinction. With compassion, we are better able to enjoy true hope of physics and sustaining harmony with the ways of the universe.