There is a basic dichotomy between energy and form. Energy radiates out, while form coalesces in.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, as mass gravitates in.
We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts through and further coalesces the forms/information precipitating out. Signal from the noise.
Society is the raw social energies bubbling up, as civil and cultural forms coalesce in. Youth and age. Liberal and conservative.
Motor and steering.
Humanity sits on top of a billion year process of building out forms, finding the weak spots and either patching them over, or cracking them open.
The question then becomes as to whether we keep patching the old, or accept that it’s past its sell by date and start looking for, first the lessons to be learned, then the opportunities opening up.
For one thing, we are linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, reciprocal, feedback driven reality and we are reaching the edge of the global petri dish, so the primary lesson seems to be how to adapt our goal oriented focus, as somewhat predatory fauna, to the far more complex interaction and feedback driving this dynamic reality.
Three brief observations;
As these mobile organisms, with a narrative based culture, we experience reality as a sequence of perceptions and naturally assume time to be the point of the present, moving past to future.
The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform and drive it. Aka, causality and conservation of energy.
So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, sound, etc. Think frequencies and amplitudes. Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but no one refers to them as the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.
Long story short, if we are going to better understand the thermodynamic feedback loops powering every aspect of our reality, we first have to process this fact about time. It’s an effect. The process goes past to future, while the patterns being generated go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and feelings go future to past.
The head and the heart. The anarchy of desire, driving us on, versus the tyranny of judgement, doing the steering.
Which leads to point two; A spiritual absolute would be that essence of sentience, bubbling up through life, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and storyline on it.
Conflating the ideal with the absolute re-enforces our goal orientation, whether it is heaven, or the bottom line. Long story.
Which leads to point three;
Markets need money to circulate, in order to function, but we treat it as the signal to extract from the noise of society and the economy. Requiring ever more to be added and ever more inventive ways to store what has been extracted. Leading to that enormous financial bubble currently destroying society, the economy and the environment.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, but a medium is inherently dynamic, while a store is necessarily static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, while the hall closet is a store. The average five year old understands the difference, but economists lack that level of insight.
As a medium, money largely functions as a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt. Requiring sufficient debt to be generated, to back the desired assets. So debt is not a bug, but a feature.
For one thing, this creates a centripetal effect, as positive feedback draws the asset to the center of the community, while negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges. The more money pushed into the system, the more violent this process becomes. Since finance functions as the value circulation mechanism of the entire community, the effect is analogous to the heart telling the hands and feet they don’t need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get. The Ancients used debt jubilees to reset this process, but colonialism and the industrial revolution have delayed this step for the modern economy. So far.
Another consequence is that the government has become debtor of last resort. While many people often complain about government overspending, no one seems to see that the capital markets simply could not function, without the government siphoning up trillions in otherwise surplus capital. The secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.
Which would explain why we have endless, strategically inept wars and no one is held to account, if their real function is to spend the money, in order to borrow more. Yet we will eventually find that blowing up other countries is not a profitable investment.
Though when everyone finally realizes this and tries dumping their treasuries, there will be those picking them up for pennies on the dollar, then pulling strings to exchange them for remaining public assets. Which is called “disaster capitalism” and “predatory lending,” when it is done to third world countries and poor people. Then we will learn what true oligarchy is.
Otherwise we could start learning to invest directly into what we need for the future, like strong communities and healthy environments, as community assets and not having everyone trying to save for them individually, in this atomized society, controlled by institutional authority and mediated by a parasitic financial system.
Basically a cyclical, feedback generated society, rather than one where everyone grabs their chunk and bolts for their hole.
Time to grow up.
