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The Holy Trinity

May 28, 2024

The Holy Trinity

Getting a grip on energy, materials and civilisation

I like trying to get to the internal organs of the matter. Not just the heart, but also the brain, the kidneys, the stomach, the lungs, the skeleton. My conversation with Tim Garrett last week did just that, centring the matter of the universe alongside energy and human civilisation. This holy trinity speaks to the bigger picture, the holistic system, the body, mind and soul of reality and of the crisis. Perhaps we should refer to it as the wholy trinity.

Language is one of the ways I get to the heart, finding clues in our linguistics which reveal fundamental truths about the world. Speaking to physicists is another, and it amazes me that those in the know about the laws of the universe are not questioned more often about how to build functioning societies, or maybe what’s wrong with our own. Our economies cannot outsmart the laws of physics, no matter the linguistic tricks we pull (hello Net Zero carbon accounting). To me, physics gets to the skin of the matter, the ultimate boundaries we come up against in this particular universe. Perhaps it also gets to the stomach, for the laws of thermodynamics say a lot about our economic appetite.

Simply: The more energy available to a thing, the more it grows. And, for that thing to maintain itself, it needs an energy surplus because it is constantly expending energy in its search for and consumption of energy. Things grow into their energy surplus, and the more energy available, the more the thing will grow, and the bigger the appetite will become: things grow in order to find more resources in order to maintain themselves.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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