Hmmm, “energy” or “god”? Which of these is the most potent word in the English language nowadays?

The debate could be interminable.
Many people see a universe and beyond in the word “god”. They may even associate “god” with “the divine” or “supernatural power”.
Also many, if not most people see a universe in the word “energy”. Some see multiple, even a multitude of universes in “energy”.
Some people even conflate “energy” with “god”.
A few, often engineers, see a world of steam engines and similar devices in the word “energy”.
A few, usually merchants, believe they are “god” and conflate “energy” with “money”.
Every speaker of the English language gives unique meaning to these words.

The debate could be endless for another reason: ultimately it is hopeless using words to communicate the nature of words because words are incapable of expressing our most primal, unspeakable experiences.
Also words are a narrow, dualistic form of communication that is easily subverted by the ego.
And here is our conundrum: every man (human being) senses with every cell in their body that our correct perception of energy is critical to our survival. Somehow we have to know what we are actually communicating.

The reason this essay starts by asking you to compare the relative potency of “energy” and “god” is not to elicit an answer from you or to make a fool of you or to start a war. Rather it is to remind us how both words evoke or call into being some of our most profound, subtle, mysterious feelings and considerations.

Perhaps now you can sense why this essay makes no promise to provide you with a definitive answer to our perpetual question “What is energy?”. Indeed, expect neither answers in the form of long mathematical equations nor English textbook definitions such as “Energy is the capacity to perform work” nor theological sermons nor the stock phrases of our self-styled “energy experts”.

Instead the essay focuses on the conundrum of our human condition and is based on this fundamental premise: the question “What is energy?” will tend to answer itself as we better understand who we are and what we are saying.

So, for the initiates to this series of essays, we will first briefly discuss two aspects of our psyche:

• the vital, connective role that compassion plays in enabling us to transcend and be liberated from our human condition
• the selfish, divisive role of the ego with all its incredible denials of the principles of physics and its ingenious fatally-flawed notions of energy.

A Few Essentials of Psychology ~ Physics

Note: the wavy line or tilde symbol ~ is used between two words to signify the profound, interdependent connection of the two words.

As with all the other countless forms in the universe, the human psyche exists as a balance of forces.
For instance, we can understand our psyche as a dynamic balance of an exclusive, divisive force (the ego or the “I”) and an inclusive, connective force (compassion). These twin, complementary, seeming contradictory forces arise simultaneously in any moments of the division of our consciousness into self-awareness.

One, the more arrogant know-it-all force, would have us ask “What is Energy?” and insist its answer is correct.
The other, a more humble, inquiring force, would have us ask variations of “Is there anything that is not energy?”, “Can we better know what energy is by exploring what energy is not?” and “How can we correct our language so words least fail us in our quest to know what energy is?”

Each of these twin forces of the psyche arises from the other as surely as the upward forces of the chair you are seated on act to counter the downward forces of gravity on your body. You remain seated only as long as these forces are in some sort of balance. Most of our lives we do not consider such a duality in sitting down – our calculation of the balance is performed subliminally, seamlessly so our minds are freed to concentrate on reading, writing, eating, conversing or other activity.

The inclusive forces of compassion and the exclusive forces of the ego of our psyche complement and counter each other in like way. You and I stay sane only as long as a relative balance of these two forces prevail.

Welcome to Our Mysterious World of Paradox

Here is where the fun starts and whatever is said, no matter how true, will seem cryptic, even absurd, fantastic, incredible, pure nonsense. We are talking “paradox”. As this quote from Etymology Online, indicates, “paradox” has for millennia been consistently associated with incredibility and contrariness:
paradox (n.)
1530s, “a statement contrary to common belief or expectation,” from French paradoxe (14c.) and directly from Latin paradoxum “paradox, statement seemingly absurd yet really true,” from Greek paradoxon “incredible statement or opinion,” noun use of neuter of adjective paradoxos “contrary to expectation, incredible,” from para- “contrary to” (see para- (1)) + doxa “opinion,” from dokein “to appear, seem, think” (from PIE root *dek- “to take, accept”).

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=paradox

So here are a few paradoxical statements:

All existence involves paradox; nothing is what it seems.
Near everything and near nothing is simple; near anything else is complex.
“0 and 1″ and “0 or 1″ are both the same even as they are different.
All is change; change is a constant.
Light is discrete particles; light is continuous waves

Are we speaking koans? Who knows? Smile.
Whatever, this 5 minute cartoon video provides a quick, timeless exposition of ancient koans in the ways words never can:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5Oi4wPVVo
Zen kōans: Unsolvable enigmas designed to break your brain – Puqun Li

Perhaps it is more helpful in terms of this essay to say that these “unsolvable enigmas” remind us in compassion and alert us to the limitations of the ego.

This discussion of the human psyche in terms of forces may seem far more reminiscent of the clinical lectures of your Science teachers rather than the emotive offerings of your Social Studies or Literature teachers.
And you may be asking questions such as, “What are the ego and compassion?” and, for that matter, “What are psychology and physics?”

Detailed responses to these great questions are far beyond the scope of this essay. For now, here’s hoping the following enigmatic statements suffice.

Simply stated, physics is the study of the ways of existence, all of which involves paradox while psychology is the development of the arts (skills) at transcending paradox. Each practice arises from the other and this profound paradoxical interrelationship can be expressed as “psychology~physics”. The study of the way is the way of the study.

Simply stated in terms of our personal state of being, our exclusive forces reflect~generate our being in its various states of arrogance, fear, acquisitiveness and self-deceit while our inclusive forces reflect~generate our being in its various states of humility, courage, kind humour, generosity and honesty. We constantly experience all these states of being to some degree and can never truly know which arises from which.

Some of Our Paradoxes of Energy

All existence involves paradox and the word “energy” is no exception. Here are a few relevant examples of the myriad potential paradoxes:

The paradox of self-consciousness: each of us is totally and vitally intimate with energy yet no man (human being) can truly know what it is.
This paradox of the human condition arises from paradoxes such as:
All is change; change is a constant.
All forms are of energy; no form is energy
Any form informs all even as it is informed by all.

There is now a good chance the ego is interrupting your attention for its own acquisitive, delusional reasons. It may well be insisting you dismiss these paradoxical statements about the word “energy” because you are far too busy, you have “no time” for such meaningless nonsense, such word-play and trickery.

Meanwhile the silent voice of compassion may have you smiling and asking, “What are our best means of inquiry and what we can learn from our immediate responses to the ego’s agitation?”
It may have you ask, “ Why have I no time? Is this really true? Hmmm, who or what says time is so scarce and how might my perception of time effect the way that energy is manifest to me?”

These questions are highly relevant because our industrialized Anglosphere culture constantly informs and dictates our consciousness of time by means of a plethora of clock devices embedded in our media. An oligarchy of psychopathic merchant-bankers design and enforce this time-keeping technology in order to maximize their private profit.
This clock-driven culture works to keep us in a constant, pressured, distracted, anxious state, thus making us more malleable to their greedy dictates and whims. They believe “time is money” and “Big Business” is the order of the day. They condemn a person who is busiless as worthless, a liability, idle and slothful.

A paradox of this time-obsessed society is that its members end up bankrupt and suffering severe time-deprivation.
This culture of Big Business effectively suppresses our sentience of Earth’s changing seasons, the motions of our sun and the greater cosmos in general. We become delusional.
In terms of energy, the ego-driven industrial “clock culture” actively precludes us from experiencing the most beautiful, sustaining manifestations of the universal potential, which is energy. Instead it fills us with sensations of trepidation and fear of our mortal nature, sensations of deprivation and panic about time, and, in general, has us become delusional and destroy that which most sustains us. Our language of time, space and energy generates dystopia.

2500 years ago Lao Tzu advised us, ““Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is to say ‘I don’t want to.’”
More recently Einstein advised us, “Time and space are not conditions of existence, time and space is a model for thinking.”
Ancient sages, now supported by quantum physicists, have long advised us of the limitations of clock-type devices for understanding time, space and energy. Existence can be experienced in far more subtle, sane and wonderful ways.

A Picture Emerges

In this picture, energy is seen to be experienced as the unknowable universal potential, all of which is active.
We each exist as a unique, dynamic balance interplaying with the unimaginable array of forces that form the universal flux – the vast bulk of these forces are beyond our powers of perception.

Energy may take countless forms. Perhaps a mere few trillion of them are manifest to us. And what is manifest occurs according to the state of our being as an individual, as a society, as a species and as a living organism.
Compassion and the ego play a potent role during our moments of self-awareness whether it be at an individual or societal level. Their relative degree of balance determines how we perceive, what is manifest and whether we survive or not.

Such balances are endemic or characteristic of all things in the universal interplay of energy. What sustains the order of this vast interplay may never to known to us human beings. However we do inherit ancient wisdom that provides useful guides as to how we can live in accord with the order or ways of existence.

Ancient Wisdom – Our Great Enduring Guide

Wisdom is information that has stood the test of time, the rigours of change. It is information that has been subject to the most intense, ingenious scrutiny man is capable of and it has never been faulted in any practical way.
For instance, despite our most amazing endeavours and fastidious experiments, no man in recorded history has ever lived in this human form indefinitely and nor has any form of energy proved to be a smidgen as potent as energy is.
This wisdom is perhaps distilled most succinctly in the Conservation of Energy Principle:

Energy (the universal potential, all of which is active) is so bounteous it can usefully be called a constant and it continuously transforms all.

Your “Science” teachers may have used different English to define the Conservation of Energy Principle.
For instance, they may have spoken of the “Law of Conservation of Energy” and stated it thus: “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.”
Chances are they defined a “form of energy” as a type or perspective of energy e.g. electric-magnetic energy, thermal energy, gravitational energy etc. This glosses over the reality that we are all finite forms of energy and we all die.
Chances are they then inculcated you in the belief that there are two major categories of forms of energy, namely potential (“inactive”) energy and kinetic (“active”) energy, thereby denying that all manifestations of energy are inherently active.

Lest your eyes are now glazing over and you are becoming overwhelmed by all these words, the remainder of this essay will largely be in the form of pictures. Writing is just a tiny subset of drawing. Indeed the letters of the English alphabet are drawings that have lost their original meanings. A simple drawing can communicate complex ideas and truths in ways that words never can. And remember this essay is discussing the unspeakable, the paradoxical, the vast, astronomic, mysterious universal potential, not just some vain, exclusive ego-derived notion of energy that is propagated by a small group of humans.

Summary Comment

It is arguable the word “energy” has played a central role in generating the English Combustion Revolution (aka the English Industrial Revolution), which has generated an Anthropocene (Anglopocene?). A significant moment occurred in the translation of the German word “energia” and the French word “energie”.

The conflation of “Energie” and “power” is fatally flawed psychology~physics in that it is extremely exclusive and is indicative of the undue prevalence of the psychopathy of the ego. This phenomenon has become endemic in the our use of English this past two-three centuries .

For instance, in 1800s “resource” and “work” were redefined as any activity that adds wealth to the Crown (the merchant bankers of the City of London) and, as illustrated, fossilized biomass was redefined as “fossil fuel”, which in turn was defined as “energy” in the 1950’s by “the oil company moguls”. Hence the common belief in the “Energy Sector”, “Energy Analysts”, “Energy Investment”, “The Energy Market” and even “Energy Wars”.

And, since the 1970s, have you ever paused for a moment to ask, “How can any sane man (human being) claim they are “the Minister of Energy” or “the Secretary of Energy” or, worse, “the Minister of Energy and Resources”?

For example 1977 James Schlesinger and 2022 Jennifer Granholm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Energy

Very few people pause to question these grandiose claims. Surely such claims are the height of hubris and are born of a man’s complete denial of the Conservation of Energy Principle, which reminds us energy is resource – energy arises again and again on an incomprehensible scale. Energy is the ultimate resource.

Regarding the English conflation of power and energy: observe how the cartoon provides a definition of energy that is in major accord with the ways of the universe. In this context, a more sustainable definition of power is that it is the rate or the measure that energy (the universal potential) is manifest.
This more compassionate notion of power embraces the paradox of reality: each of us is energy with every element of every atom of our being yet no one of us is energy. In other words, energy is manifest to us according to the state of our being because we live the paradox of information: our use of any symbol simultaneously reflects and generates our state of being.
The gift is to transcend this paradox. To conflate the measured (energy) with the measure (power) is a recipe for exclusion, confusion and dystopia.

In brief, information being physical, information is also subject to the principles of physics.
The exclusive force in us (the ego) is ever in denial of these truths and causes us much misery. However each of us enjoys some degree of compassion (the inclusive force in us) and this enables us to better live in harmony with the ways of the universe.
The cartoons are first drafts designed to provide us with more insightful ways of “connecting the dots”, identifying our delusions and better understanding what we are really saying.
My hope is they inspire you to improve on these drafts and thus help prevent much needless suffering.
Enjoy “energy” with care.

Essays in this series:

Medium part 1 Tongue-tied by the English Language
(On untying the bonds of the mother tongue)

Medium part 2 What’s in a Word?

Medium part 3 What is Energy?

Medium part 4 What is Power?

Medium part 5 What is Economy?

Medium part 6 What is Warming- Up?

Medium part 7 What is a Fossil Fuel?

Medium part 8 What is a Resource?

Medium part 9 What’s with The Ego~Compassion