04. Human Economy - in Greater Context
CHAPTER IV
Off we go
The system off which we feed - reading it from top to bottom
The overall feeding supersystem
Many
see the connection of economy with thermodynamics, but it
goes far beyond that; it is not only about energy, entropy and
resources - although, of course, energy, entropy and resources are a
necessary part of it.
Planet Earth, on which humans run their economy, is a subsystem of its own Solar
System, which is a subsystem of the Milky Way, which itself is a
subsystem of a cloud of galaxies, which in turn is a subsystem of the
universe, which may be a subsystem of something else too big for us to see; and human economy is a subsystem of a subsystem of primates
of a subsystem of a subsystem of life on Earth.
How would the world change,
if human economy was destroyed?
Not really very much.
As the world was
there before humans evolved from monkeys, it worked perfectly without
them, and it will work perfectly without them; humans do no more than elaborate on a system of
personal favours and loyalties apes had already - or ever since then - developed.
Reverse your thinking.
Concentrate
on the details of the many subsystems mentioned above, and you loose
oversight while going into the weeds; concentrate instead on the one & only supersystem of which human economy - which is in reality no more than a concept - is but a tiny subsystem of a subsystem ... of a
subsystem; beyond that, it is hardly relevant, as it is only on the minds of those humans who are living at any particular moment.
Think not about what economy separates, such as wealth and debt, but what holds it all together.
What would change,
for instance, if gravity was lost?
Mass and gravity
Just think: "no gravity"
What
would happen? Instant death, extinction of all life, everywhere, at
once; every star would explode, extinguish and freeze; all the planets would
burst, and every living being would go drifting off as icy popcorn into eternal
darkness; this horrid mess would swirl and collide until everything had
ground itself to the dust from which it once came; for mass and
momentum is mass and momentum, until, finally, all is no more than a still cloud of
dust and smoke in a cold and lightless void. For of dust though art, and to dust
ye shall return, and the earth is shapeless and empty, and darkness is again over the surface of the deep.
Now think: "gravity"
Masses
contract; balls of hydrogen ignite, and light springs up from the
dark. Lumps of Rocks accumulate from the residue of former stars, grow
larger and heavier, heat up by contraction and melt; travelling
around their solar centers, they finally contract to almost perfect spheres. Direction, space and time come into being.
[ By the way: Do planets drift out of their orbits, while accumulating mass from the debris around them? Was Jupiter once near
where Earth is now, and is this why the space between them is so utterly
empty? Are the paths of the planets really spirals, as is the path of the moon? Never mind - the orbits of the planets are now, where they are now,
because that is where they are now; not by mathematical design - which
cannot be construed - but by the interactions of mass and momentum; their place
cannot be calculated, but has to be discerned. Perhaps, over time, they do follow a harmonious pattern - and perhaps Pluto should
therefore be called a planet again; but that aside. ]
Whoever said it was for no reason?
Throughout time, no planet is
ever in exactly the same place at exact the same time the next time
around. As the galaxy slowly drifts and rotates - slowly in
relation to it's size - not even the place is the same place. Things
change forever over time; some fast, some slow. Not even the time that takes is absolute, and the speed of stellar objects is only relative to one
another.
Reverse your thinking. What is, is; not because it has to be, but because it is; and that is not for you to decide upon.
All the while on Earth, waters are being separated from the sky,
land is being separated from sea, and vegetables and fruit and
living creatures are being brought forth; if you muddy a puddle, it will clear
by itself - with no input of energy. Creation, like evolution, is going on as we breathe; it has
never stopped, and won't.
So reverse your thinking
So what is it that clears the puddle, the stream, the lake? What forms the
mountains, gathers waters into the abyss and separates it from the
sandy beaches? Pins the air onto the surface? Yes, and even brings forth
life?
Gravity.
What do we receive
from it?
Acceleration with no loss of energy - nay, with creation of energy, and simultaneously of negative entropy or physical order (i. e. of articulate, non-random arrangement of matter; given any number of objects, both simple and intricate patterns of these that are equally distant from randomness).
If you mix some conglomerate dirt with enough water in a glass jar, then cease to input energy to stir it, the content, over time, will stratify and the water clear - as in the puddle mentioned above; this will not happen in an (artificial) zero-gravity surrounding, and it can on the other hand be (artificially) enhanced or accelerated in a centrifuge - which demonstrates that the same effect can be produced with or without the input of energy.
Not only does all existence depend on this; all economy does too.
We will return to this later; but first some minor observations:
Human economics vs human economy
As
the world works without humans, it will work without human economics;
and even humans will work without human economics: think of yourself
alone on a desert Island - or anywhere else. Now add a second
person.
Now think of orang utans, who will only meet to mate. Now think
of orang offspring. Are you beginning to see it now? Where all of this thinking originates? And everything else?
So - what do orangs create? And what do humans create?
[ And why are orangs orange? ]
Think in reverse
Animal and plant economy
On we go
Time is of the essence - but exactly the other way round.
Is
the economy of dumb animals any different from that of humans? No. Of course not. Why should it be? Humans are animal beings, slightly
evolved. Not even Robots would be really different.
All animals, large
or small, carnivores or herbivores, all live by the same economy: They eat, digest, accumulate or replace body mass, excrete energy and waste,
and slowly move on. If they return to their place of outset too
soon, the outside system will not have had time to replenish their feed again from the
even further outside, and they will starve, die of thirst, or suffocate.
All animals - including humans - eat and grow until their respective digestive systems have reach their specific limit of performance, after which they have to continue to turn over the same amount of intake to waste, just to maintain their present mass; that turnover does not translate into growth any more, but is still vitally needed just to maintain the status quo - which, by the way, is a consequence of thermodynamics.
And this has ramifications into the field of human economy - it is principally impossible to divide productive from reproductive labor - just as ist is principally impossible to divide human from non-human labor; any such division is necessarily arbitrary.
Cut off from external supplies - or from waste and energy excretion - all living creatures die, and all engines will stop as well. Thinking in reverse - humans and diesel engines can be run on the same vegetable oil; their metabolism is basically the same; within any economy, one can replace the other.
Why is this?
Animals - thereby necessarily including humans - and combustion engines are both thermodynamic entities, following the same laws that govern the physics of thermodynamics; even if their economic efficiency may be different.
Even those animals that do not move externally, such as
parasites, move nutrients internally. And stationary ones, like corals? They just have incorporated algae, as animals have
incorporated mitochondriae. And big strong smart brave human
beings don't want to be compared to corals and lichen, do they … their
turnover and output is so much higher … while those that
have incorporated photosynthesis to short-circuit their energy supply will still need external energy and nutrients to build their body mass.
To explain their economic behavior, humans are sometimes called 'incentive - driven, resource - seeking mammals' or
the like. Yes, but all animals - all living beings - are
such driven; incentive can vary to hunger, pain, obstruction, or anything else. What about positive incentive? What about pheromones?
Reverse your thinking.
Plants and animals
Visible only from above
Seen as a whole, the biomass of
this world - or any world - is condemned to take in, digest, excrete, and
accumulate resources while decreasing energy potential and increasing
entropy, even if this is sometimes complementary.
From an overall point of view, it does not matter if plants split water and air and thus bind carbon: Shut off their external energy supply, and they will stop doing so. Moreover, the solution of chlorophyllic produced carbohydrates - the sap - seeps down just under the bark of a tree to produce new layers of wood, increasing ist mass - until, it, too, has reached its limits.
Which resources plants require - as
opposed to animals - is a matter of necessity, not of judgment. Plants,
like animals - and therefore humans - or fungi, for that matter - cannot provide for their own needs. They are crucially dependent on a providing surrounding, which necessarily is not made up of them.
So, from that viewpoint, it can be argued that plants do
follow the laws of thermodynamics in their own way: shading the ground, they degrade sunlight to bind water and carbon. And life was before photosynthesis.
That is what 'reverse thinking' means: photosynthesis did not bring forth life - life brought forth photosynthesis.
Plant growth is movement in itself, perhaps too slow for us to notice, and their roots displace soil, lift houses and split rocks. They move tons of water upwards against the force of gravity, while tapping into an external energy source within a surrounding sink. Is that not the definition of thermodynamics: Movement via turnover of energy?
Furthermore, plants "breathe" just like animals, taking in their self- produced oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide, day and night; especially in their blossoms and regions of growth, and especially so if they are "wounded" - and this breathing does, indeed, correspond to an increase in temperature, or release of energy; sometimes enough to melt surrounding snow.
Yes, plants can be warmer than their surroundings.
So many questions, so very few answers …
Then there remains the question of entropy … does a rock baking in the
sunlight increase it?
Does the reaction of sunlight with anything and
everything do so, maybe?
We shall see.
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Contents
01. Thinking in Reverse _ Minds.html
02. The Opening of the Sluices _ Minds.html
03. Everyone thinks the Same - and that is Wrong _ Minds.html
04. Human Economy - in Greater Context _ Minds.html
05. Ape Economy _ Minds.html
06. The Mechanics of Creation _ Minds.html
07. The Grand Conclusion _ Minds.html
08. Addendum Papyrae: Epilogue _ Minds.html
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