Work in progress 2 Jan 2025
“Energy” and “power” are inextricably interconnected and understanding their complementary relationship is critical to our survival. Any society that fails to conserve the most transcendent meaning possible of these words inevitably becomes unsustainable. It confuses, conflates and uses these vital words in exclusive ways that deny the principles of physics and generate delusional behaviour.
Ultimately the society self-destructs.
Ancient wisdom: To Name a Thing Calls it into Being
We breathe. Our heart beats. We digest food. We see. We listen. We stand. We walk. We talk…
Our every action of our every element involves myriad calculations, evaluations and decisions we are rarely and barely self-aware of. And all these countless assessments and evaluations are subject to our ability to sustain a healthy balance of compassion and the ego.
Our self-awareness is a mixed blessing as the ego can easily have us speak and behave in delusional ways i.e. ways that deny the reality of the great principles of physics. Without a healthy balance of compassion,
we become misinformed and ill-informed amidst the universal transformation and we use energy in unsustaining ways.
Sages since ancient times have advised us we are our language and wise societies have treasured their insights. They understood the exclusive force in our psyche – the ego – constantly endeavours to have us use words in ever more exclusive ways so they serve its arrogant, acquisitive spirit.
They understood clearly in all their different ways that our practice of constantly correcting our language (“rectifying our use of names”) is a prerequisite for both a correct lifestyle and a sane, sustaining Government. For example:
“If language is incorrect, then what is said does not concord with what was meant, what is to be done cannot be effected. If what is to be done cannot be effected, then rites and music will not flourish… Therefore the gentleman (a superior man) uses only such language as is proper for speech, and only speaks of what it would be proper to carry into effect.
Translations of Confucius in the Book 13 of The Analects
The gentleman in what he says leaves nothing to mere chance”
“You may be sure my dear Cebes that inaccurate language is not only itself a mistake;
Plato’s dialogue Phaedo 115e – voice of Socrates
it implants evil in men’s souls.”
This psychology~physics has been instinctively understood since time immemorial. Any sentient form, no matter how large or small, only exists as long as it sustains relative harmony with the continuous universal change. This wisdom about balance and harmony has informed and sustained the DNA of our cells for billions of years through all manner of change before they assumed our human form. Our cells somehow transcended their condition for eons and we dismiss their wisdom at our peril.
How to Enjoy True Hope of Physics
(The experience of sustaining potential)
“Energy” and “power” being inextricably interconnected words, their meaning is profoundly entangled.
Ancient wisdom and modern quantum physics remind us that the universe we are part of is far more sophisticated and complex than the relatively exclusive Newtonian worldview would have us believe. So in order to enjoy true hope of physics in our daily lives, we seek the most transcendent description possible of the relationship between “energy” and “power”.
Such is our psychology~physics, this description will invariably include us i.e. the human factor.
The most transcendent definition of the word “energy” is this:
“Energy is the universal potential, all of which is active”.
Transcendent definition of “energy”
The most transcendent description of energy (the universal potential) is the Conservation of Energy Principle, which states energy is the continuous, universal transformation, which is so bounteous it can usefully be called a constant i.e. human beings can neither create nor destroy it nor conserve it. We can only transform, conserve and destroy forms of energy
Energy being the universal potential, the most transcendent definition of the word “power” is this:
Power is our measure of the rate the universal potential is manifest.
Transcendent definition of “power”
This relationship can be summarized in the equation:
Power = Energy/Time (P =E/T)
This equation is not merely a mathematical equation. It’s the summary, the synopsis of the story of our relationship with the universal potential in our daily lives and it illustrates how that vast potential becomes manifest according to our notion of time.
The Crown English Notion of “Time”
You may be vaguely familiar with the equation P = E/T (Power = Energy divided by Time) from your school days in “Science” or “Physics” class. There is a good reason why you, and most other students, graduate feeling vague about it and that it has little relevance to their daily lives.
The Crown English notions of “Science” and “Physics” tend to be very exclusive. Thus typically the Crown education system teaches basic equations of physics in ways that exclude the context of the continuously changing universe, the reality that all potential is active, the forces of friction existing throughout our planet and other vital factors. All this is presented within the delusional world-view that Earth is a Greenhouse World floating in space.
Typically these same teachers may have taught you that a unit of power is a watt, this being equal to one joule of energy divided by a unit of time such as an hour or a minute or a second. However it probably never occurred to anyone in your class to ask your teacher, “What exactly is time?”
Most of us simply assumed “time” is the clock on the wall determining changes in your school day in these units of time. The school bell was “time”. And perhaps you were too busy anticipating the bell signaling your escape from the classroom to think of and ask your teacher deep questions about “time”?
We are our technology and the advent of the pendulum clock in Europe in the 1650s led to the proliferation of mechanical clocks and the common belief that time flows constantly, at a certain fixed speed. The great polymath and Crown agent, Isaac Newton, firmly established this idea as “obvious” when he wrote:
“wherever we are in the universe, all time flows unchangingly at the same pace, in the same increments, from the infinite past into the infinite future…..space is uniform, and extends on into infinity.”
Newton 1687 in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
These highly influential, ego-derived notions of “absolute time” and “absolute space,” formed the foundation for his “Newtonian Mechanics”. This psychology~physics in turn generated the profoundly radical English Combustion Revolution (aka the English Industrial Revolution) with its massive mechanisation of the extraction and combustion of minerals.
The graph lines are indicative. There are now 8 billion human beings, CO2 =420 ppm, Methane = 400 ppb, Plastic was zero tons in the 1950s and now is 10 billions tons.
We are our language and this radical behavioural change has been reflected in profound changes to our notions of “energy”, “power”, “warming~cooling”, “resources”, “work”, “carbon”, “economy”, “man”, “environment”, “physics”, “science” and other words that frame our world view. These radical changes in meaning have one characteristic in common as can be seen clearly in this sequence of tables of etymology and English behavoural change. They are all extremely exclusive and denial of the Conservation of Energy Principle.
The above screenshot illustrates how merchant-bankers and their corporations have appropriated the word “power” this past century and use it in extremely exclusive ways to conflate it with their electrical systems and products. They even conflate “power” with “energy” and “electricity”.
This past century the Crown merchant-bankers who profiteer from cultivating the addictive use of our electrical potential (their Bulk-generated electrical products in particular) have employed legions of journalists, teachers and electrical engineers in their many media to inculcate in us all extremely limiting notions of “power”.
An Inclusive (Transcendent) Notion of Time
(Cultivating time of compassion)
Existence can be experienced in far more subtle, sane and wonderful ways – see the discussion about the nature of energy. To quote Einstein again:
“Time and space are not conditions of existence, time and space is a model for thinking.”
Albert Einstein
The publication of Einstein’s theory of special relativity (1905) generated a ferment of debate in Europe about the notion of a fixed cosmic order rigidly governed by chronometric time. This ferment would have informed the painter, Salvador Dali and, although he says he did not know the meaning of his own work and claims his famous painting of melting clocks was inspired by watching a block of Camembert cheese melting and/or hallucinations from eating it, the painting has fascinated and intrigued countless people as they grappled with their notions of time.
The Persistence of Memory, 1931
The Museum of Modern Art
So, time being a construct of our psyche, our perception of existence is determined in part by our sensation of time. Hence the degree of balance of the ego and compassion that we experience predicates our use of energy ( the universal potential). The integrity of this psychic balance determines how the universal potential is manifest to us in any moment according to physics.
Measuring our Ever-Changing Existence
If power is our universal measure of how energy is manifest, then the question arises: how do we best ensure our measure is compassionate and inclusive as possible? Without compassion, the ever-present ego in our psyche will have us measure existence in exclusive, self-destructive ways.
The above cartoon illustrates how, lacking the healthy balance of compassion, the ego can easily have men (human beings) measure and calculate an operation in space~time in terms of light-years.
(A light-year is the distance light can travel in one year i.e. 6 trillion miles i.e. 6000,000,000,000 miles.)
Then, within a few moments of walking through a door, the deceitful ego can have the same men experience a time warp such that they become oblivious to the ways of the universe, incapable of calculating and evaluating their destruction of rare and extremely powerful minerals that involved eons of enormous solar and terrestrial forces in their formation.
Epilogue
(Ways to enact the transcendent powers of the word “power”)
The principles of physics hold:
Website thesis
energy is change,
power is our evaluation or measure of the rate of change
and we conflate and confuse “power” with “energy” at our grave peril.
These matters of the human condition are very subtle and are best understood with compassion if we are to be able to enjoy true hope of physics. We live our language~thoughts. We act our language~behaviour. We exist as dynamic, finite balances of these forces.
Note re the use of tilde
Traditionally the tilde was a wave-mark placed over an abridged word to indicate missing letters. For lack of a better symbol on the keyboard, it is used here to indicate two words are inextricably, paradoxically linked i.e. the meaning of one cannot be understood without defining the other.
The following suggestions may be helpful.
Enjoy compassion.
It is the compassionate (inclusive) force in our psyche that opens, connects and enables us to evoke the sustaining power of the universal potential.
Treasure transcendent words
A transcendent language retains words that enable its speakers to transcend the limitations of our word~thought processes and the ingenious self-deceits of the ego. Such words liberate us by enabling us to transcend the limitations of our human condition.
Embrace the paradox of power
All existence involves paradox, including our experience of the word “power”. Paradox form an anathema to the ego. Treasure the most transcendent uses of this precious word, for these uses best enable the universal potential to be manifest in the most sustaining ways.
Every thing has unique power, no thing is power.
Power is our evaluation or measure of the rate of continuous, universal change even as our choice of measure determines how the universal potential is manifest
Enjoy myriad perspectives
We have choice of countless perspectives, each perspective enabling different aspects of the universal transformation to be manifest.
Be of inquiring, careful and humble spirit so you are open to as many perspectives as possible.
Be inclusive as possible knowing that each and every perspective offers a different measure of the continuous universal transformation with all its countless forms of energy.
Each perspective comes with its own unit of measure, whether they be joules per second (watts), calories per hour, ergs/second, British Thermal Units (BTUs) or we may measure power in terms of familiar forms as life-forms (elephant-power, horse-power, man-power, dog-power, ant-power, leaf-power, etc or may measure the power of anything from a gravitational, electromagnetic, thermal, chemical, nuclear, mechanical or other broad type of view.
Ultimately we can use any form to measure the power of any other form as long as we have some knowledge of its capacity to effect change.
Know we are our technology
Our design and use of technology radically alters our perspectives in profound, subtle ways we cannot imagine – we are our devices and any device is the entirety of its infrastructure.
The power of leverage is such that any imbalance in the forces of the ego and compassion is amplified exponentially. Without the compassion use of leverage, the ego inevitably has us adopt delusional notions of time and engineer our self-destruction.
Embrace the paradox of “the Butterfly Effect” – our small actions can generate massive impacts elsewhere even as small actions elsewhere may impact our lives in massive ways.
Listen and learn from your own body
Our body is a powerful source of great wisdom in the form of the ancient cellular wisdom that enabled our cellular life over eons of change.
Our experience of lifting, pulling and pushing an object gives us a shrewd perspective of the power required to change and move it.
Anyone who has tried pushing a car up a hill can attest to that. Our muscles retain humbling memories of the sweat, tears, fears and strained, trembling muscles and tendons as we struggled to control the movement of its ton weight. These memories give meaning to the knowledge that the power of a man is only 75 watts whereas the power of a horse is 750 watts while that of a car may be 300,000 watts.
Give time to reflecting on how you can employ power wisely. In particular be mindful of the equation Power – Energy/Time by employing it with a generous sense of time.
Measure your power against the principles of physics and the wellbeing of all men, including generations to come.
Work in progress 2 Jan 2025