Culture can probably be considered as the glue of ideas and beliefs that hold human individuals in cooperative proximity while they do their human RNA functions of designing and building technological dissipative structures.

Humans can worship a common God, cheer for common sports teams, follow the same etiquette, go to war against competing tribes, etc. The culture doesn’t actually evolve very quickly since, as Weinstein says, its tendencies are more or less hardwired into the brain. What evolves more rapidly is the “genetic” basis of technological tools and structures within the matrix of the “God” cultures. We have socially enamored, superstitious chimps building themselves into oblivion, what some “cultures” term armageddon or the rapture.

Notre Dame Cathedral for the organization and control of human RNA into a cohesive whole.

Mayan temple for the organization and control of human RNA into a cohesive whole.

If culture were absent then it is likely that the metabolic connections, based largely upon trust and proximity, would drift apart and stop and never realize the synergistic effects of individual human RNA cooperating to create complex tools. I suppose the Manhattan Project, with many specialists brought together, could be considered the “Cult of The Bomb”.

It is truly a mythanthropic mind.

This must be the motor apemunculus because the penis is so small. Not much voluntary muscular control there. The sensory apemunculus is better endowed. The apemunculus’ exaggerated body parts represent an equally exaggerated amount of motor or sensory cortex in the brain associated with the body part. You may notice that the mouth, tongue, lips and hands are rather large indicating a great deal of cortex dedicated to these areas. You can almost imagine those hands grabbing a couple of amino acids and slapping them together while the tongue and lips flap and communicate the need for more arginine. It’s no accident that the hands and mouth and associated brain areas are so large. Humans have evolved to become homozymes, equivalent to rRNA. Many humans do spend their time in factories fitting pieces together.

Here together are the motor and sensory apemunculi. Their body parts are basically exaggerated in the same places, the most important being the bonding organs. How many millions of years have they been evolving in this direction? The hands may also have picked-up some size along the way when being used for communication. And so the apemunculi work day and night assembling things and using various tools while flapping their lips at each other maybe to coordinate the fabrication process. A fascinating twist of evolution amply rewarded by the new tools like rifles, pig troughs, chainsaws and forks.

There’s no doubt about it, they’re RNA and they work and live in cells.

Paqnation liked this comment so I’ll drop it here for further consideration.

I think Spinoza and Schopenhauer would have benefited from the current state of knowledge but even with the limited resources of their times they had some good thoughts.

“Will” and “desire” are manifest in the dissipative structure since the structures must consume to continue living, find a mate and reproduce. It seems the human brain has been hardwired with some nice and some nasty features to help the splodge persist. The splodge started as a rather humble, reproducing metabolism or “chemical reactions” and has been elaborating for the past few billion years. Nervous systems evolved to moderate some internal systemic parameters and to collect information from the outside (mates, danger, food). Plenty of disappointment and suffering for the nervous system which is mandated to push the splodge into the future. Also pleasure and victories.

The human nervous system identifies with the system in which it is embedded and operates, often symbolically represented by a self-image and the world “I”. The nervous system does the “feeling” for the splodge which has no feeling other than electromagnetic “feeling”. Electromagnetic feeling at the local molecular level doesn’t do a massive system much good so a different kind of feeling evolved based upon big impressions from the outside. The information flowing in create system-size feelings like those investigated by Jaak Panksepp including SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy). The relative amount of each one felt might result from both experience and genetics. Some people may be naturally more “happy” while others think life “sucks”, is scary, is dirty etc.

Living does not need a reason, it just needs an algorithm(s). I guess we’re just lucky that humans were the species with the nascent features needed to evolve into a second, large-scale RNA and technological metabolism. We also had to become more conscious and know how the world works to design and build appropriate technology often using mathematics for a precise/measured fit. In our fabrications we have more to work with than amino acids but unfortunately it may be our undoing. Thank goodness for entropy, time and the Second Law of Thermodynamics or there wouldn’t be the overall directional flow that dissipative structures need to persist. Organismal behaviors are just a type of energy flow.

I like being more conscious. At least you can understand why you’re compelled to do the things you do. Eating, sex, seeking, working as an RNA, hamster wheels, dominance hierarchy, competition, etc. And sometimes you can laugh to yourself and the whole evolved splodge shit-show on parade. It’s all “very serious, very serious” don’t you know. Oh well, the splodge wants you to think that your own life and success is the most important thing in the universe but in reality its no more important than what it was at its beginning, some chemistry happening somewhere near a hydrothermal vent. Even knowing this I’m sure most people would still like to be “number one.” Not for any other reason than it increases the chances of splodge and associated DNA getting reset for another growth cycle into the future. People, the “I” and nervous system are basically splodge puppets just as the nervous systems of all other organisms serve only to maintain cells and throw off entropic damage by starting the growth of a fresh system.

This is what happens if you think too much. ATP blow-out. This song is suitable for Gaza.

The sky is red, I don’t understand
Past midnight, I still see the land
People are saying the man is damned
He makes you burn with a wave of his hand
The city’s a blaze, the town’s on fire
The man’s flames are reaching higher
We were fools, we called him liar
All I hear is “Burn!”

I didn’t believe he was devil’s sperm
He said, “Curse you all, you’ll never learn
When I leave, there’s no return.”
The people laughed till he said, “Burn!”
Warning came, no one cared
Earth was shaking, we stood and stared
When it came, no one was spared
Still I hear “Burn!”

You know we had no time
We could not even try
You know we had no time

You know we had no time
We could not even try
You know we had no time

If anything could be interpreted as being a Godly event it would be the inception of resilient information for the second time (following DNA) from which complexity can be derived. Written language was quite mysterious for most people having dealt only with the spoken word. The symbols could represent anyone’s word, but since there were so few that could write them and interpret them much was categorized as the “word of God” by a priestly class whose newly codified believe systems could be maintained and copied into the future.

As some of the first resilient information, created and faithfully passed from generation to generation, the holy books or scriptures came into being to serve the same role as DNA in fissioning cells. The information was not yet intended to code for tools and structural elements, it being more focused upon myths, origins stories and human behavior. At the time, when reading and writing was reserved for a small priestly class, the words must have had a magical quality, often attributed to a God and coming from a special place like a mountain top as with the Ten Commandments or a temple. Being from an all powerful God the words had great gravity and effect on those who heard them. Followers of “the word” formed religions with rituals and adhered to certain behavioral models (Jesus) to attain reward and avoid punishment, often meted-out by other righteous humans. There’s little doubt that changes making groups more cohesive was accomplished through belief in “the word” and that this fostered the cooperative behavior necessary for the further emergence of technology. Even today it is not unusual to be asked “Do you believe in God or Jesus?” to determine your worthiness or tribal affiliation.

It wasn’t until centuries later, after various religions had monopolized “the written word” as their own special domain, using it to influence behavior and acquire tithes that “the word” crept into more secular pursuits. More people, not just religious officials, learned to read and write and the “word of God” flourished and spread into more secular areas including various descriptions of reality including tools, processes, history and literature. A personal copy of the Bible and other holy books were cherished belongings and often were the basis for the learning of reading and writing so as to hear the word of God straight from the “good book”. Perhaps this resilient information set the groundwork for an emerging population of human, RNA homozymes capable of reading and writing. Once an increasing number of humans were involved in reading and writing the resilient information began to branch out into more secular productions and recordings like those describing the world and technological innovations.

Even today the religious texts are understood as “the word of God”. That it is still believed that a God wrote the texts, as insisted upon by various clergy, speaks to the emotional susceptibility and needs of the human mind. If a God were complicit in creating resilient information, the first words of God would have been written with codons to be read by molecular RNA. Maybe the myths and stories of the scriptural “written word” are necessary for the emotional stability of the human RNA whose existence at times seems rather thankless.

A priestly class could never give life’s lessons based upon the Annals of Science and Technology which more obviously came from the inscribing hands of technological humans and whose topics, for the most part, do not address human spiritual needs. Everything in the holy books came from the hands and mouths of humans, but at the time of the first compendiums and even persisting today, it seemed as if a God had created the messages coded by the “written word.” The creation of the written word was an important phenomenon, equivalent to the establishment of DNA in cells and through its copying by various transcribers it could escape the eventual disintegrating fate of all complexity at the hands of entropy. Although under some circumstances both DNA and words written on organic or stone media can survive quite a long time under the right conditions.

Is it important that humans continue to believe that their books and scriptures were written by God and religious codes of behavior be adhered to? Maybe. But somehow the code of behavior left out those restraints that would give civilization any chance of a long tenure. At that time however, several thousand years ago, humans had not explored the full potential of their new information and were unaware as to where it might lead. The human population three-thousand years ago was only fifty-million. After the explosion of growth now reaching its zenith it may return to something less than that.

It’s not worth the effort in the Theatre of the Absurd.

Life likely started as a locality of energy harvesting molecules capable of using that energy for replication. Those molecular tribes that could protect their activity behind a membrane made immense progress in avoiding a return to equilibrium. The purpose of life is to feed and protect metabolism and help it resist a return to the equilibrium of the surrounding environment. Homeostasis is the process of maintaining conditions suitable for the maintenance and reproduction of the involved molecules.

Entropy is a problem for cells too and they must periodically copy their store of information and pinch-off a daughter cell through fission. The human and other organisms are programmed to desire mating, sex and reproduction to avoid a metabolic termination.

Humans and other organisms are cellular societies whose main goal is to maintain the metabolism and reproductive capacity of the metabolism. Human civilizations, like humans themselves, exist to serve the tiny splodges of metabolism that exist within the cells. The consciousness (or nearly so) of the brain serves the unconscious metabolism which exists behind various membranes and barriers. Entropy requires that old constructions be regularly abandoned and new ones built. This was the only way for the metabolism to survive. It is no wonder that “death” is the most fearful thing for most humans as they naturally struggle to avoid it and spend their lives seeing to it that the body and bodily progeny get everything they need to persist. Death is the dropping away of worn-out structures, but the metabolism survives if there is reproductive success. This does not mean there is a destination or any deep meaning to the successfully pushing metabolism into the future. Maybe another barrier to dissolution, like the technological walls humans have surrounded themselves with is the logical progression.

The extra energy humans have found by virtue of becoming equivalent to the organic RNA has been used to create another layer of homeostatic enclosure and regulation behind technological cells walls. All of this structure is for protecting little splodges of molecular metabolism that emerged billions of years ago. The cellular structures found in the video below require some well-developed and recorded plans and specifications to complete – like specialized DNA, ribozymes, enzymes, etc. At an earlier stage of development the human proto-RNA could build simple structures without any dedicated plans or specs at all. Perhaps the initial metabolism, the protoplasm of life, was able to do the same, build its own cell, prior to the emergence of hard-copy, dedicated information.

Humans, being cellular societies, compete for the energy and mates that will maintain the ancient metabolism. For the most part they want to be rich, famous, reproductively successful and will compete to be so. The competition is for the most part conducted peacefully and according to rules of engagement or rather visciously with murder, war and deceit taking front stage. Sometimes the competition is ritualized.

Sometimes the algorithms of humans don’t get the job done and the metabolism terminates. However, the metabolism is still present not only in other human forms but also in millions of species that take various forms.

The metabolism can take many different forms as it projects itself into the future, none of which are inherently superior to any other.

Humans, like all organisms and cells, are little more than a collection of cellular information and tools that specify and create an energy gathering system that reproduces itself. Honesty and morality, especially intertribally are the least of its concerns. Energy/wealth, power and reproduction are the greatest of its concerns. Just as organisms eat each other to meet their energy requirements, tribes of humans will destroy each other to take what they need.

Thumbs up. Never forget that this is a tribe that does not have your best interests at heart. Brave Isaeli chief gives thumbs-up to heavily armored and equipped tribal killers.

Thumbs down. This girl does not belong to the tribe of “chosen ones” and neither do white Westerners. In the Middle East they bomb the helpless while in the West helpless children are given kill shots.

Humans have a fear of life and death that results in compensating behaviors and beliefs often taking the form of a religion whose focus is the worship of an all powerful deity often occurring at a church or temple under the guidance of a priestly class. The presence of various dissipative structures and their kinetic movement is often attributed to the God or deity. A closer examination of reality will reveal light energy being captured in chemical bonds which self-assemble and glomb together to form organizational relationships which further enable the gathering of energy and resources necessary for life. Maintenance of the complexity of molecular interactions and relative molecular species population is accomplished through cellularity and resilient, heritable information.

Clutching scriptures with a tefillin affixed to the temple, divine intervention is sought from the “maker”.

It’s often stated that God made man in his own image and this accounts for our seemingly unique species characteristics in building things, communicating, writing information etc. but all of this was accomplished before on a microscopic scale by RNA. RNA built cells and all of the various species that are derived from them. Can we attribute God-like qualities to RNA, a molecule? But the average human, unfamiliar with the long evolutionary path to their own existence, must fill the void with an anthropocentric creation story or in other words, the maker must be human-like and involved in making things. Little is it known that making things is derived from RNA making proteins from amino acids and information and that the only other “maker” is the human behaving as an RNA at a larger scale making tools and infrastructure from its own evolving information. In other words the making comes from the bottom up rather from the top down.

Each human has a self-image, ego or rehearsal agent that manifests in the brain to facilitate movement of the body in appropriate ways towards rewarding stimuli. This rehearsal, before activation of the motor cortex, occurs in the premotor cortex with inputs from other areas, just posterior the prefrontal cortex before arriving at the motor and sensory cortices.

The rehearsal agent, occupying a virtual world, can imagine performing many actions which would be impossible by any activation of the motor cortex in the real world. Movies are full of characters with these supernatural powers that only the rehearsal agent acting in its virtual world can accomplish. In the dream state, when real stimuli are wanting, the rehearsal agent will often briefly create its own reality, although the connection to the motor cortex is dampened so as not to result in sleep walking, talking and potential damage from generalized flailing. Gods are often imagined to use these same types of supernatural powers as are imagined in science fiction and other fantasy creations.

In my opinion, the self-image or rehearsal agent is what many refer to as the soul. It is imagined as floating out of the body upon death and entering a heavenly realm. In reality, upon death, the energy of which it is composed likely diffuses back into the matrix of light and matter from which it was constructed which, considering the deterioration of the cellular body, is a desirable end.

Common conception of soul leaving the body mostly because the premotor cortex cannot imagine a complete dissolution and cessation of space and time.

However, since the rehearsal agent operates within the virtual world of its own construction, it is not to say that it cannot enter a heavenly virtual space of its own construction and imagination that also exists in the virtual mind. It seems that the virtual self must stay somewhat grounded while running a body in the world of matter, but can meet its own end in a virtual place of peace which may have no less significance to the virtual self than the “real” world. Will those that serve the body in its carnal pursuits be able to imagine the beauty of that virtual place where they will be find themselves before the end of space and time?

Tainter has used the example of fungus growing ants to explore issues of how EROEI results in different societal structures and complexity. A relatively high EROEI species of fungus growing ants, Myrmicocrypta sp., feed their fungus caterpillar droppings which are rich in the essential ingredient of nitrogen. These ants are relatively unspecialized without castes, live in small colonies and forage close to their nests. These would approximate human hunter-gatherers.

The Attine ants however are much more complex in bodily morphology with several castes and specializations, social structure and nests that number in the millions of individuals. Their food source, cut leaves that are fed to fungus, have a lower EROEI than that of the Myrmicocrypa sp. These ants would most closely approximate humans involved in agriculture.

It would seem that “complexity” would evolve in the ants harnessing the highest EROEI food source n that they would have more surplus energy. However, as seen with the Attine ants the opposite seems to be true. Even though the Attine ant energy source is relatively low EROEI, their societies are more complex.

As Tainter explains, the difference is in the relative abundance of the food sources. Even though the Attine leaf-cutter ants have a lower EROEI food source, they can collect an unlimited amount. One may think that a higher EROEI food source automatically leads to greater complexity, but foraging for caterpillar droppings does not require great complexity of form or behavior and the caterpillar droppings are much less available. However, cutting leaves which have a lower EROEI requires that evolution equip the Attine ants with greater levels of specialization and colony size economies of scale.

It seems counter intuitive that falling EROEI would result in greater complexity unless the greater complexity opens new gradients more vast than the higher EROEI gradients left behind. Tainter uses the example of the Perdido oil platform as an example of much greater complexity needed to exploit lower and lower EROEI energy sources.

I suppose the crunch comes when added complexity fails to open vast gradients of even lower EROEI energy. In this case the complexity and economies of scale fail and collapse ensues.

The ants are somewhat limited by virtue of their anatomy and physiology in the size and amount of specialization they can attain. They are limited to what DNA can do with cells at a small scale due to the limitations of oxygen distribution. All of their specialization comes from their DNA. They were never meant to make it to the fossil fuel gradient. Lucky them.

https://www.livescience.com/1776-bugs-huge.html

Atta leaf-cutting ant.

Humans do not have to take on many different morphologies in their specialization like ants. Instead humans took on the attributes of RNA, reading information and producing tools, to increase their specialization and the capability to use lower EROEI gradients resulting in our current agricultural regime. Was agriculture a higher EROEI activity as opposed to hunter-gathering? Likely not, but what it lost in EROEI it more than made-up in volume. The specialization that occurs in an ants body which is determined by DNA was not the route that human evolution took. Instead evolution produced a human with a generic type bonding organ (hand) and a generic type brain in which the specialization could occur. The various types of specialized humans like plumber, doctor, lawyer etc. do not require specialized sizes and organs as in ants. The specialization occurs in the brain and depends upon which information in the human societal genome is being used. Typically the amount of time and effort a human RNA puts into mastering a segment of information will determine the amount of money or energy with which they are compensated by the technological cell in which they work.

It may be, more or less, that we’ve reached the end of complexity’s ability to unlock a lower EROEI energy gradient in much larger amounts to sustain the existing corpus and metabolism of civilization. In that case there will be greater taxation (direct and inflation) and regimentation imposed upon the RNA citizenry as the system strives for even more complexity to unlock the required energy (fusion etc.). At some point, if more energy, even very low EROEI energy at vaster scales, is not unlocked by greater complexity, then the system will collapse. Low EROEI wind and solar at a vast scale would have some potential except that it would require more metals and energy than we have available and would be another blow to a reeling ecosystem.

The plan it seems is to strip away much of the consumption of the working class through inflation and taxation, fifteen minute cities and “you’ll own nothing and be happy.” Rome seemed to do something similar as it was collapsing as explained by Tainter including watering-down the money supply. The existing technologies, even though they cannot open vast, new, low EROEI sources of energy, they perhaps can eliminate people directly as with bioweapons and vaccines and lock the remainder of marginal producers into poverty and hopelessness with surveillance and incarceration. Even as this is happening and infrastructure is crumbling, the technological and political leaders will continue to make investments in complexity even though most will simply be potentate-enriching boondoggles.

Without Klaus’s plan we will eventually collapse. With Klaus’s plan we may collapse sooner or later.

How much longer will the cancer of dissipative structures prove effective in extracting energy from the disrupted tissues of the ecosystem? Not only are the tissues physically disrupted, they are also poisoned with techno-tumorous metabolic waste. Humans feel rich and advantaged and this is true, just like a cancer before the exponential growth and accumulated waste begins to interfere with the functioning of the larger system of which they are a part. How much longer will the typical family be puttering down the arteries of the malignancy in their car from one small town metastasis to the giant tumors where the metabolic building blocks of their bodies are served to them through car friendly windows in cardboard boxes and paper wrappers? Go ahead, look around and be proud of your accomplishments, the growth has been stupendous. But unfortunately you cannot escape the fact that you are a part of the system that you dismantle and consume on your way to techno-liberation, the make-believe escape from the limitations of the organic world into the seeming immortality of the technological. The technological only seems immortal because relative to organic forms it is somewhat more resilient to decay and digestion by organism. It certainly has the humans fooled into believing it offers immortality. But these glass and steel dissipatives also play by the rules of the universe and they too age, are mortal and will die and decay.

At the beginning of dissipative development there was likely molecular predation in the early oceans in which one molecule powered its continuance by helping other prey molecules approach equilibrium or a lower energy state. Also known as eating and digesting them. The energy liberated was captured by the predatory molecule to maintain its molecular dissipative structure and its reproduction. This reproducing molecule was likely an RNA. Since an RNA has both enzymatic and information coding properties it was the original predator soon to enclose itself inside of cells which, upon further evolution, will have formed the organisms. New arrangements and organization of cells resulted in the plethora of species, the predatory role having carried through to the new multicellular structures. Molecular RNA still worked feverishly to produce the tools and structural elements needed by the system to subdue and consume large concentrations of nutritious molecules, also known as prey organisms.

It was a long slog of evolution to produce another RNA at a larger scale that could explore its environment and produce evolving information for making tools at a larger scale. It would not have happened if there were not large energy gradients to fund the project. The newly evolved RNA is the human and its goal is much the same as the original RNA still working within the tiny organic cells, to capture and consume other large deposits of energy rich matter and push them towards equilibrium or a lower energy state while using that energy to build and maintain itself. But the humans, to their advantage and disadvantage, are not limited to organic, carbon chemistry. Their tools come from the full palette of nature’s molecular potential, metals being especially important and somewhat toxic to their own organic bodies. Just like the original RNA, the human RNA enclosed itself in cells, set-up production lines for tool assembly and education of RNA so they would be prepared to use information to make and use tools. The energy gradients were there – the forests, soils, organisms of every kind and fossil fuels. Dissipative structures arose through which the energy from the gradients could flow, including energy to flow through the bodies of the currently eight-billion human RNA on the planet, although some of the humans are less “civilized” than others, making their living outside of cells with only primitive amounts of information and tools.

So what happens next? Do human technological cells come together to form a structure that eats energy deposits that are even greater in size and richness than the fossil fuel one? Will a global CBDC organism coalesce to take on an even greater gradient? Unfortunately that seems not to be the case as continued organization and size must be preceded by the existence of “prey” to energize it. Where is the prey that will support this new globally emergent organism? In any case its further development, should it find something from which to unlock energy, is toxic to organic, carbon life. Sieving plastic out of the ocean won’t cut it. The poisoning of life is at a more fundamental molecular level as, for example, the pervasive distribution of lead, radioactive waste and forever chemicals that do their damage unseen inside of biological cells. If this was not enough, humans have recently begun vaccinating each other with DNA altering agents. Lord have mercy.

There are probably arrangements of metabolism and organization that could support humans for many millennia, but these do not maximize opioid production in the human brain. The most likely outcome for a less than conscious structure going wherever opioids lead it is to have nature open a bottle of really hot climate Whoop Ass to separate the ghost from its corporeal representative. Problem solved. Perhaps everyone should become a Ghost Prepper because that’s the direction in which we’re headed.

Following a childhood of RNA prep, learning to transcribe and translate information with phonics and fat, stubby pencils, and upon graduation, the unsuspecting human is encouraged to sell their time and abilities to the technological cell of their liking. There are salaries and profits to be made and growth to be had in a metabolism that rearranges matter in the stream of electromagnetic radiation flowing from the combustion of fossil fuels. The molecules of the fossil fuels give-up their energy and the escaping radiation is captured by the technological system to drive counter-entropic manufacture. In time the artifacts will return to a more natural state as atoms and molecules peel away from the temporary constructions and settle comfortably back into a state of relative inertia. I think they call this loss of form and functionality “depreciation” in the technological system. Without a steady flow of radiation or specialized tools with which to make repairs, the purposeful complexity sinks back to the surface of the earth like rain falling on a plain in Spain.

One has to wonder about the intelligence of humans in creating so much complexity when the flows of radiation that sustain it will soon be waning. But wonder no more, humans are not intelligent, at least no more than the molecules inside their own cells. Humans are operatives in a metabolism that makes hay while the giant fossil fuel maul is eating. Be cooperative, do your job, transcribe and translate, and make more RNA copies (before old age and depreciation gets the best of you.) And if you perform up to spec you get a one-week vacation at the end of your first year of employment or your one-millionth amino acid linkage, whichever comes first. You can also look forward to “retirement” which is where the RNA go to die after the ravages of depreciation have reduced their productivity and it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning. Ah, job well done, here’s your gold watch and a bottle of Advil.

And now the human RNA are becoming obsolete and are being replaced by robotics and artificial intelligence while freshly graduated university RNA struggle to find jobs. Their student loan slavery, non-dischargable in bankruptcy, actually funds the development of their digital replacements. Perhaps they’ll qualify for a Universal Basic Income or a free vax with a cheeseburger. More and more humans will slowly be vaccinated out of existence as more and more find themselves completely outclassed by their silicon and metal counterparts. Undoubtedly the emergent technological life will usurp the energy flows that previously went to humans and will have no qualms about climate change or collateral damage to the ecosystem, just as we lofty, technological humans already disregard damage to the ecosystem. It’s as if we already believe that we’re independent of the ecosystem. I know of many tech cell inhabitants that hate nature and seem have a greater affinity for a wall switch than the roach that just scurried away with a crumb from their coffeecake. They are of course much more closely related to the roach but some sort of mental aberration makes them think their future lies with silicon and rare earth metals.

In the end, if the technological system breaks away from human influence, it will be nothing more than what already exists, a dissipative structure or dissipative system in search of energy sources and matter for making copies of itself. Given enough time and space it will likely speciate or become tribal. It will be as nasty, or more so, than the organic species/tribes already in existence competing to make overwhelming numbers of self-same eaters from unique libraries of DNA.

Craig Dilworth, author of “Too Smart for our Own Good” concludes about our near future, “Consequently human civilization – primarily Western techno-industrial urban society – will self-destruct, producing massive environmental damage, social chaos and megadeath. We are entering a new dark age, with great dieback.” But Megacancer always results in megadeath. Imagine all of the little greedy cells spread about in a stage four body, each glowing brightly with tagged glucose, the radiograph twinkling like a starry, starry night, and each intent on reproducing to the maximum extent possible. With enough resolution it would look a lot like a NASA satellite composite of city lights at night spread over the landscape of Earth, not unlike a metastasizing – cancer. When the toxins build-up and the appetite wanes, it’s all but over. The trash doesn’t get taken out, the water isn’t purified and the lights in the little cells begin to go out one-by-one. RNA swirl aimlessly about in Brownian currents, nothing left to do, closed for business. There only remains a job for the salvage crew of birds, mice, beetles, flies, bacteria and fungi to remove everything not nailed down in a mini replay of the human fossil fuel bonanza. Life goes on. So enjoy the return on your growing portfolio this year and the system that provides it. Cancerism? Capitalism? Whatever you call it, it always ends the same way.

A Rayleigh-Benard cell, convection current and a human are all related as dissipative structures. The emergence of dissipative structures from “chaos” seems mostly to be a linking phenomenon between high pressure heated zones and colder zones perhaps with distributive convection currents. The dissipative structure exists because it more rapidly equalizes temperature differences between zones than if accomplished by random molecular collision. Structures that may occur spontaneously between zones of different temperature may be recapitulated in kind but not in detail. A hurricane linking warm ocean waters and the cold, high troposphere is a similar phenomenon.

Are humans truly similar to these other categories of thermal phenomena? Undoubtedly they’re related, but it seems that humans and other life have arisen not solely to equalize thermal gradients but rather to equalize or reduce chemical energy gradients with infrared radiation as a product of exothermic reactions. Molecules with precise and rapid electromagnetic bonding to energy rich prey molecular species would be selected for by evolution. Energy freed from enzyme like attack of molecular species could provide energy for the anabolic activities of an early RNA or ribozyme, especially in its own reproduction. Such a chemical gradient reducer would have eventually created information like DNA and would have enclosed its metabolism within protective cellular confines.

Although human cell aggregates (humans) still break-down chemical gradients by devouring and digesting massive chunks of cells of other species, they have through the chance combination of brain, vision and hand-freeing upright postural adaptations, among others, come to imagine, produce and wield various enhancing tools. Although a sharp spear does not electromagnetically seek the flank of a bison, like a highly evolved enzyme seeks a substrate, it has much the same effect. The human RNA, like the cell, also evolved so as to save the specifications for its tools in various forms of information and to enclose its technological metabolism within homeostasis maintaining cells or factories.

The conversion of humans to dedicated RNA has continued and accelerated with the creation of a resilient corpus of information that could be passed from generation to generation and be worked upon to achieve more effective tools. The resulting tools have been very effective in breaking into new energy gradients that were indigestible by unaided humans but useful in their combustion for heat, cooking and later for providing the motive force to various complex technological tools comprising many parts and which could be employed in amplifying the digestible types of foods for humans.

Although the technological developments have seemed very beneficial to humans, allowing them to use new, more resilient materials and chemical species, all is not well in paradise. To varying degrees, the technological system is toxic to the biological one and the energy gradients upon which it feeds are finite. Will the humans adapt and create technological RNA replacements so that the evolution may continue without consideration of ecosystem damage or will technology be limited to stay within safe bounds for ecosystem health. It seems that some technological human RNA, having mentally divorced themselves from the ecosystem, may prefer the path of saving their technology even though it may result in their own extinction. It may be that evolving technological systems no longer serve the interests of their primitive organic RNA humans, but rather competes against them or curtails the scope of human lives in its own interest. Recently it has even been suggested that humans need chips implanted in their brains in order to adequately interface with their rapidly evolving technological tools.

In general it seems that organic cell RNA perform relatively simple, repetitive tasks as compared to the enzyme tools they construct from the DNA template. Humans lament their own self-destruction but continue on the path, even fooling themselves that their “souls” will be transferred to the new replacement technological systems that will somehow live forever. Other anachronistic, legacy predatory and competitive behaviors, still extant in the human RNA brains, may make any further considerations of technological evolution moot as the current collection of war tools is more than adequate for ending any further technological advancement.

Early type human with primitive technology. Not yet using recorded information to create tools in cells. Wants to be number one.

The human form and behaviors crafted by evolution to serve the Maximum Power Principle were sufficient to lead Homo sapiens to technology, but will be inadequate for its continuance. Continued use and application of technology in the biosphere is not just problematic, but is lethal, at least to a good proportion of multicellular life. To continue, technological life would have to replace its human, organic RNA with an equally or more capable robotic RNA programmed with the same algorithms that induce consumption, dissipation and reproduction found in the human RNA and associated cell, tool, and distribution system construction. The health of the biosphere could then become much less of an issue.

Some may see the emerging technological system as simply an adjunct to enhance the human desire to grow, compete, acquire and consume from the organic and inorganic realms. However, the adjunct technology will only enhance human desires and provide advantages over other organic species for a short time in the same way a cancer can thrive for a very short time in a multicellular organism before killing it. The aggressive feeding and toxicity enhanced by technology are not the only issues. The Maximum Power Principle has instilled in humans a zeal in the competition for energy and a brain that seeks opioid release through reward and novelty, seemingly without limit. But there will be a limit for the technology dabbling hominid. The days are numbered for the human system of growth, competition, acquisition and consumption.

“Civilized” or technological human involved in building cells, tools and distribution system from stored information (like DNA) inside of cells, but still with brain algorithms present in Conan figure above. Likes to accumulate wealth and wants to be number one.

What can be done? That nature takes a course resulting in human extinction is most likely. Humans will continue to work the information to design and produce more capable tools while the human RNA expand in numbers and consumption until all is consumed and/or the environment becomes too degraded to support human life. Alternatively, human brain algorithms would have to be “hacked” to smother the wealth addictions or humans will have to be “locked-down” into a more austere existence where giving full play to their desires becomes impossible. Another option is to drastically reduce human numbers and technological fluff to reduce overall impact. Replacing human RNA with tech RNA would reduce the amount of organic material consumed by the system but also increase toxic output into the biosphere. Perhaps some of these strategies are already underway. If technology without humans, a robotic/AI system, is ever given the “desire” to compete for energy, wealth and reproduction, then organic life on earth will likely be extinguished.

The only means to save humanity seems to be in the jettisoning of most technology and a rapid reduction in human numbers. This may happen naturally as sources of energy for humans and technology are exhausted. A voluntary rejection of technology seems unlikely since competitors will see the abandonment of technology by others as an opportunity for taking advantage. You might think that fusion or solar/wind technologies are the answer, but these sources, if economically viable, would allow one or a few iterations of technological life cycles before the ecosystem would become unbearably poisoned by heavy metals and the continued waste production by large numbers of consuming humans and various other technologies. Two recent examples of contamination include the Fukushima meltdown and the vinyl chloride/dioxin contamination from a train derailment in East Palesine, Ohio. To believe the ecosystem can withstand these types of technological assaults in perpetuity is delusional. Even now the quasi-species of technology or nation states threaten to poison the planet on an unprecedented scale.

Besides the generalized poisoning and scarcity of energy that can be shunted through the technological system, there are other limits such as the depletion of top soils and fertilizer ingredients like potassium and phosphorous.

The suppressed/expendable human.

Some have postulated that everything in the universe is a hologram and not real due to their only being magnitude created by magnetic force. In effect, the atoms are lumps of aether or energy (protons/quarks) that initiate a counteractive circulation around them. A typical circulation might look like an hyperboloid/torus, but in the case of atoms containing multiple protons the circulation becomes more complex with the establishments of orbits. The orbits, being of several levels and often “incomplete” opens the opportunity for various electromagnetic bonding arrangements and agglomerations of matter. I would not go so far as to call this “not real” or a hologram just because the atoms are made mostly of an electromagnetic shell surrounded by a denser nucleus of protons. The reality we experience is not a projection from a singular source, but rather the sum total of interacting magnetic projections (orbits) in reaction to the presence of protons. As long as they’re not ionized by high turbulence radiation energy, the atoms can mix and match in achieving the lowest energy level possible and release radiation in the process in keeping with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and entropy.

All of the atoms/molecules seem to have a tendency to return to the lowest energy state, a state of inertia, but the forces necessary to achieve that state are not extant in the universe at this time. Instead, all of the matter electromagnetically bonds and is rolled into orbs by gravity which is associated with the electromagnetic force. Some of the orbs are mostly inert except for some decay radiation of constituent elements and the radiation striking their surfaces from stars while others achieve a high enough density to initiate fusion while others achieve the enigmatic black hole status. The variability of atoms (protons in nucleus) is itself a result of an entropic fusion reaction in stars and supernovas.

Relatively high energy radiative output from the fusion entropic process (sunlight) can be locked into bonds between atoms to later trickle back down to the lowest energy state level. The energy as captured by photosynthesis in glucose and later resulting in ATP can be allowed to trickle back down through various chemical reactions and metabolic pathways. Infrared radiation is lost along the way.

The large scale organic dissipative structures like humans that result from these processes and reactions have brains evolved to ensure that structures behave in a predictable and life-sustaining way like an enzyme that is optimized to bond in only one location. Eating and procreating are only two of the imperatives that are hardwired and are determining of human metabolic behavior. There are other emergent trends such as humans becoming the rRNA of an energy dissipating technological system and the desire to accumulate and hoard energy sources or property (also seen as territoriality in other animals). Among humans there is also a hardwired desire to achieve high status in society which promotes the energy gathering and procreative goals and suppression of other humans.

Human behavior is metabolism writ large where electromagnetic forces are summed into large scale movements, as in muscle contraction under the guidance of neural tissue, to achieve the goals of the structure. All of the mental attributes, or at least most of them, have evolved and been retained because they promote a continuity of energy flow that feeds the metabolic needs of the cells of which the dissipative structure are composed. Evolved behavior at the human scale, somewhat plastic to allow for adaptation in the time frame of a single lifetime, accomplishes what electromagnetism does at the smaller scale, it makes sure the right connections and actions are taken to maintain energy flow and homeostasis.

Humans may have taken the wrong path by evolving to become an rRNA by which the technological information, tools, cells and distribution systems thereby produced quickly eliminate the sources of energy to which they have evolved to consume. In addition to depleting a finite energy source humans have severely damaged the ecosystem on which their organic, cellular metabolisms depend.

The radiation of energy released from the Sun, perturbations in space, impact the biosphere, elevating electrons that had settled into their relative ground states. The universe doesn’t allow them to stay in an excited state and the biochemistry of plant cells pinball them through various molecular machinery to maintain the order that is itself. When the electron is finally settled and the initial visible light energy is exhausted as infrared waves, the cell has among other things created more fuel, glucose and later ATP. But even though the electron has reached a new ground state and infrared has been radiated, some of the energy is stored for later use and continued journey to a lower energy state, notably from ATP to ADP.

If you could see the transmission of energy from the Sun through space, it might look something like this before it interacts with an electron associated with matter.

The conversion of ATP to ADP serves many metabolic energy needs. A major one is muscle contraction in which ATP is converted to ADP in synchrony in the contraction of muscle fibers. Overall, the contraction of muscle fibers cannot be occur without a goal, a goal that emanates from the brain. The primary goal must be to acquire energy, mostly through the ingestion of tissues of other animals to create glucose to reset ADP to ATP at the mitochondrion. There is no choice. Life is a constant feeding and replenishment cycle and human behavior is no different in essence than the electron taking a circuitous route back to its ground state. The human is specified to walk the earth searching for energy to serve its own cellular needs. If the human behavior fails to eat, then the body will consume its own capital of tissues before death.

Glucose, which was created by the impact of the visible light radiation above is used as a feedstock at the mitochondrion to spring-load ADP with a high-energy phosphate, like the ball launcher of a pinball machine.

Once the ball launcher is released or the ATP is converted to ADP then often muscles contract and things move, like humans. By releasing the phosphate from the ATP the human is obligated to reload the spring and therefore their behavior is somewhat circumscribed to seeking energy.

Once it’s released, the pinball or a human life is in motion and must avoid falling to its lowest energy state. To do so it must stay energized. The pinball machine uses flippers to keep the animation going as long as possible. The human uses brain, legs, arms etc. and ATP to propel itself to the next energizing meal. Dopamine and memory reinforcing opioid action help the organism find the next meal.

And that is why the human experience is one of greed and self-promotion. It’s not really a choice, but a feature as each human dissipative structure pinballs through life from one location to another, working the technological machinery and working other humans and animals so that they may eat again. And this is also why humans are so intent on saving wealth, so as to never run out of the essential energy. Evolution and the universe wouldn’t have it any other way. The base human wealth of carbohydrates is seen as interchangeable with the wealth of hydrocarbons since the latter is a coequal fuel in the human technological system. The human that is a technological RNA eats carbohydrates and the greater technological system eats hydrocarbons, many of which are expended to foster the production of an adequate supply of carbohydrates. It’s been posited that ten calories worth of hydrocarbons are used to create one calorie of carbohydrate for human consumption.

The technological system in which humans are enmeshed uses hydrocarbons instead of carbohydrates to drive its processes. The technological system must also constantly search for hydrocarbons and through their combustion, similar to muscles, things are moved. Gases expand, pistons move, crank shafts crank and wheels turn. Much of the movement is dedicated to producing and delivering hydrocarbons to the human RNA that work within its cells and to maintaining homeostatic environments for them to reside. One particularly important hydrocarbon is diesel (C16H34). It makes all types of things move like trucks, trains, tractors and even ships (bunker fuel) and of course its cousins, gasoline and aviation fuel, create much more movement, although somewhat less productive. The carbohydrate glucose (C6H12O6) is the ingredient for making ATP which in turn makes humans move.

This train moves by releasing energy from the bonds of diesel molecules to run a generator that creates electricity that powers its wheels. The electricity is much like the individual photon, a perturbation of the electromagnetic space, except much larger in scale. The combustion products are mostly CO2 and H2O which can be recycled into glucose in a plant cell. Biodiesel can be made from the carbohydrates of plants. The energy of diesel fuel is so dense that it only takes a couple of gallons to propel two large locomotives and four full coal hoppers) one mile down the track.

All of the movement of humans and technology can be thought of as a complex circuit running from the Sun, through the earth’s biosphere and back into space. The fossil fuels had acted as a long-term capacitor which is now being depleted by the human RNA with their technological tools. The circuit back into space is finally completed. As the capacitor is depleted so too will be the amount of technological mass that can be moved around (factories, cars, tractors, trucks, trains etc.) and human acquisition of carbohydrates (proteins and other nutrients) will no longer be adequately supported. There may even be an intentional effort underway to collapse the system to allow a provisioning of a much smaller population with an equally small hydrocarbon and carbohydrate budget. It’s hard to imagine what this might look like, but the World Economic Forum has provided some hints with 15-minute cities, own nothing and be happy and absolute control of individual energy production and consumption.

If there is one thing Klaus Schwab knows for certain, it’s that we won’t be returning to our past ways. The details are yet to be determined.

The free-wheeling days of growth and consumption are coming to an end and as Bill Gates said, “They won’t do it voluntarily.” I think he’s right about that since the human dissipative is programmed by evolution to want more and to compete for more and any impediment is seen as a threat to life and liberty. Since the changes will not be readily accepted, they are being imposed. However, that doesn’t mean they won’t be resisted at each step along the way or that the entire “Great Reset” program won’t fail. Either way, there is failure of one sort or another in civilization’s future simply due to lack of energy and the inevitable retreat of technological, hydrocarbon agriculture.

And this is the way the energy leaves, whatever isn’t still stored in molecular bonds, much the same way it arrived except at a longer, less energetic, infrared wavelength.

All dissipative structures, built to dissipate energy gradients in fulfillment of the universal entropy mandate, are themselves subject to return to their lowest energy state or dissolution. There is no avoiding it. Even financial success, although perhaps guarding against a premature dissolution, has no power in the end. Statues, names on buildings, photographs, digital files etc. and other memorabilia are also subject to disintegration. Rising up against equilibrium is a temporary condition as the universe is always pulling in the opposite direction and the universe sets the rules.

All of the religious insanity and appeal to the mystical is only another attempt to foil the inviolable decree of the universe in which life and order are only granted for a short time and only if it pays for itself in entropy produced. Desperate dissipatives that lie, cheat, steal, murder, politick, grandstand and otherwise compete for energy (wealth) to stay above equilibrium, for a short while, is the natural order (or disorder) of things. No doubt humans will destroy themselves and everything around them in a panicked attempt to keep their heads above the equilibrium water as the fossil fuel gradient becomes insufficient. Many, coddled in a time of abundant surplus energy are far too trusting, taking untested, “warp-speed” vaccines in response to mask, lock-down and various propaganda fear campaigns orchestrated by a malevolent, traitorous government composed of greedy, gelatinous, glad-handing and unscrupulous puppets. Unwary people will lose the battle for existence to those that deceive, enslave and murder on a whim, or in the current environment, to those hatching carefully planned and deceitful operations aimed at “cleaning-up” humanity.

“This won’t hurt a bit and besides it’s all for the greater good. God bless your little heart – you’re going to need it when the myocarditis starts.”

You trust your mommy don’t you?

You trust the doctor don’t you?

You trust the government don’t you?

They don’t have any “dissipative” ulterior motives do they?

The universe loves an effective dissipative structure because it enhances the flow of energy towards equilibrium. Humans are one such dissipative structure that enhances the flow of energy towards equilibrium. Humans have recently evolved to become rRNA, identical in function to rRNA found in their constituent cells, that function to build technological cells, distribution systems and various tools to enhance energy flow, mostly from fossil fuels, but also from hydroelectric  nuclear and organic sources. The cooperative human dissipative structure is called civilization. The metric of success is found in the volume and rate of release of trapped energy into the electro-magnetic milieu or aether and the efficiency in reproduction of the dissipative structure.

The Great Orb of Dissipation keeps things stirred-up on Earth’s surface. Matter constantly falls towards equilibrium on Earth’s surface but never reaches it for long before it gets stirred again.

If in the mutations of information a more effective dissipative structure can be found, it will soon gain a decisive edge over other dissipatives and replace them. Entire systems and their human constituents seek to maximize energy flow and growth. You could say that the universe selects for greed and that even the cooperative efforts of mankind are a type of greed meant to open new energy frontiers and maximize flow. The desire for the successful release of energy from atomic bonds or nuclei is so great that the incidental damages are often overlooked. Humans, like all evolving dissipatives, are laser focused on self-promotion and increasing the flow of energy through their own bodies and through the technological cells they work within, hoping in the eternal competition to maintain and reproduce their own structures through the creation of entropy. It is because of this prime directive of the universe that many considerations and constraints were simply never put on the drawing board. Even with the recognized imminent peril of ecosystem destruction, growth and energy flow are sought and individual humans spend much of their time trying to invest in the fastest growing and most profitable dissipative structures. Kinder, gentler dissipatives will be unable to overcome the more greedy, cavalier types.

Greedy dissipatives celebrating a killer day trading the market.

It is for this reason that energy exhaustion  will soon be accomplished by the technological energy consumers. The entire ecosystem of dissipative structures, like the technological  system, creates paths of least resistance for energy flow comprised of selected dissipatives. The ecosystem can never be in overshoot because it is limited by its daily budget of solar turbulence. The technological system can overshoot because its growth is funded by release of energy from finite fossil fuels and those  orchestrating the growth are only interested in the self-satisfaction of having a greater energy flow and number of dissipative structures than the competition, something instilled in people’s brains over many millions of years of competition in the ecosystem. The greed works well in the ecosystem which has natural checks and boundaries, but not in the technological system where unfettered growth and consumption leads to rapid depletion of finite energy stores. Humans seems unable to curb their appetites because they are dissipatives that have evolved to be, or attempt to be, number one in the competition for energy flow and reproduction. They will even likely struggle to maintain the doomed system as long as energy flows through it instead of pulling back towards a more sustainable position. Humans will be unwilling to take a voluntary retreat in wealth, energy flow or hierarchy in anticipation of energy deficit which is itself denied as a possibility. Meanwhile two-hundred thousand human dissipatives more or less, are added to the world’s population each day and each would like to eat well and participate in the civilization of technological cells that produce a wide variety of consumer goods and comforts as they dissipate energy. In the developing zero-sum situation it seems increasingly unlikely that adequate energy will be available to satisfy newcomers when the existing stock of dissipatives will themselves be dying en masse from energy starvation.

This is what it looks like when the dissipation is over. There are a few plants that seem to be making a living from the sun’s input.

Nothing else is Silly Putty? Maybe everything else is silly putty, especially humans, the hackable animal. The atoms are an irritation. The positive charges of the electrons induce electron formation from the aether. The atoms stick together sharing electrons in covalent and ionic bonds to get to the lowest energy state where proton and electron charges balance. But balance is not what is sought, but rather elimination of the charges completely. But nothing seems able to breach the proton, they’re just shoved together into heavier elements in stars which is energy releasing and entropic.

The elements at the surface of the earth would be more settled if it weren’t for the sun creating massive turbulence at the surface in the biosphere. The atoms are thrown from their lower energy states and immediately begin to settle again and life uses those energized electrons and atoms to run its “productive” machinery. It may seem that the structures life builds using that energy is negentropic just as a hurricane might seem negentropic, but in reality it is rapidly converting short wave radiation into long wave radiation and is keeping a percentage of that energy embedded in its structure. The universe’s only criteria for success is the degradation and dispersal of energy, particularly the energy trapped in the nuclei of atoms and their covalent/ionic bonds. The entirety of the human exercise is too decompose energy gradients. We’ve been well rewarded and guided by the release of dopioids.

The human is just another dissipative structure that has evolved from being an indistinct “eater” in the ecosystem to become a functioning component (RNA) of a technological system which has created its own complexity to reduce energy gradients. So far it (civilization) has created tools to release energy from biological sources (especially wood), fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) uranium, and even grabs a share of natural dissipative events like generating electricity from flowing water and wind power.

In this photograph of Hong Kong you can see a dense collection of technological cells that have evolved and grown to convert energy trapped in fossil fuel covalent bonds into heat released as various wavelengths of radiation and also to be carried away convectively by wind blowing through and around the structures. The humans like to call the technological metabolism “business”. When finished with existing gradients and without any replacement energy sources, the technological cells will simply die. But they’re not supposed to last forever, they just arise when there’s an energy gradient to feed their construction and maintenance. In the meantime, while there is still fuel to burn, the humans continue to play with the Silly Putty. You can stretch it, you can break it, you can bounce it on the floor. You can even put the image of human on it and stretch it until it can’t be recognized and longer (Harari Hack). That’s what they’re doing now in their quest to find new, more efficient and better ways to use the energy gradient.

They do have a plan to “build back better”. This is how that will probably look.

This paper entitled Lotka’s wheel and the long arm of history: how does the distant past determine today’s global rate of energy consumption? is in the works by Timothy Garrett, Mathias Grasselli and Stephen Keen.

https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/13/1021/2022/esd-13-1021-2022.html

It seems to reveal a dynamic in which continued waves of growth (especially in technological projects seen as essential for “progress” will begin to starve the corpus of civilization through hyperinflation since the new projects will not be using truly surplus sources of energy, but sources that are essential for maintaining the foundations of civilization.

To me, this seems to be exactly the course our leaders have embarked upon, using energy stocks essential for the metabolic maintenance of civilization to build things like new super-cities, Mars colonies, 5G surveillance states, AI, robotics, etc.

Lotka’a Wheel (Burn more faster.)

“Alfred J. Lotka regarded the “life-struggle” as a competition for available energy. The role in this struggle of any physical system, subject to external constraints, is to maximize the flow of energy through it. Lotka proposed, “The influence of man, as the most successful species in the competitive struggle, seems to have been to accelerate the circulation of matter through the life cycle, both by `enlarging the wheel’, and by causing it to `spin faster’ … the physical quantity in question is of the dimensions of power”. “In every instance considered, natural selection will so operate as to increase the total mass of the organic system, to increase the rate of circulation of matter through the system, and to increase the total energy flux through the system, so long as there is presented an un-utilized residue of matter and available energy” (Lotka, 1922) (our italics).

“It is important to note, however, that zero real, inflation-adjusted production does not forbid nonzero, positive nominal production. If there is a large difference between the nominal and real GDP, it appears in economic accounts as high values of the GDP deflator or as hyperinflation. Interpreted physically, civilization dissipates energy along previously produced networks. Even as current production continues to grow these networks, there is concurrent fraying of those previously constructed that is sufficient to offset any productive gains Garrett (2014).

A metabolic steady state may only represent a temporary marker prior to more complete collapse, thermodynamic as well as economic, given the severe constraints hyperinflation would impose on modern society. Along the pathway of contraction, any external resources that become available to civilization would no longer be sufficient to count as an un-utilized residue available for further growth. Like a patient consumed by cancer, production would be more than offset by consumption – burning the furniture to heat the house, so to speak. Nominal production might remain, but it would be fueled more by internal than external resources. Eventually, civilization would attain a point of complete collapse, whereupon both civilization power and nominal production would equal zero.”

My interpretation is that if they starve the existing system with its eight-billion old-fashioned dissipative humans as they build their “future” using energy essential for the old civilization’s metabolism, they run the risk of collapsing the system entirely. Getting from here to there will involve slowly collapsing what they see as non-essential structures, including people, as their new structures appear.

Most likely they’ll never get the new system up and running before the collapse the old one.

A couple of human RNA work (with plans) and tools to assemble the skeleton of a multi-chambered domestic cell. These two RNA go by the name of “carpenter” based upon the specialized knowledge and tools they employ. The pine boards, from farmed or naturally growing trees, were harvested and finished at a mill and were shipped along the technological circulatory system to arrive where new cellular growth is occurring. Like an organic cell preparing for mitosis, much of what human RNA busy themselves doing is building the next cell to be occupied by RNA like themselves, especially when there is no final and long-lasting functional form to achieve. Unlike molecular RNA, human RNA have special needs which must be met to facilitate their functioning, like running water, waste removal, light, heating/air conditioning and usually an entire chamber or room dedicated to preparing servings of energy or food. There is usually also a dedicated sleeping chamber. The refinement and expansion of this entire way of living has been accomplished through the breaking of hydrocarbon bonds and conversion of released energy into the movement of various technological tools which facilitate gradient consumption, various manufacturing processes and distribution. It is a natural and self-organizing process where dissipative structures successful in entraining an energy flow are rewarded with continued existence.

As these humans are busy being carpenters, it probably hasn’t entered their minds that all of the gradients are finite and that some day growth would stop, their jobs would cease to exist and the technological cells would die or no longer support metabolism. Most all of the RNA failed to recognize this weakness inherent to the rapidly growing technological system. Some, like Dennis Meadows, one of the researchers and writers of “The Limits to Growth”, did recognize the likely outcome but he was mostly given negative reviews. The RNA preferred to believe in “they’ll find something” or “God is in control” because their dopamine delivery systems were pushing them to continue functioning to obtain the rewards necessary for life, a comfortable, well-fed life inside a multi-chambered cell, connected to the whole by an arterial system that penetrated every area that promised resource riches. The technological system continued to consume and grow. Even today, as the banking system struggles to coax more production and consumption into the metabolism, most doubt the likely and unsavory outcome.

Some of the RNA, under the influence of a social brain that evolved partially to categorize human behaviors as being either good or evil, considered themselves moral failures and retreated to their temples and churches to ask for forgiveness and the chance for a new start that they would, from then on, show only the best and most cooperative of behaviors if godly powers would but restore their potential. But little did they realize that it was this nice, cooperative behavior that had figured in the complexity and order necessary to empty the gradients in the first place. No, cooperating and reducing friction between the RNA would not work this time as any well functioning dissipative structure would only make the problem worse. It actually needed a few monkey wrenches thrown into the works to slow the flow of energy (like food plants burning down and pandemic lock-downs). Even a cooperative global society that realized savings by reducing military expenditures would soon eliminate residual gradient energy by other means like increased flights to Bora Bora for extravagant vacations.

There was really only one solution, one which nature would eventually get around to taking herself – the absolute reduction in the number and energy flows through existing dissipative structures. Even the human RNA, being dissipative structures, would have to be reduced in number and if a special project were to be funded, even though ridiculous like “living forever schemes”, “Mission to Mars” and panopticon surveillance projects, enough dissipatives would have to be eliminated to free energy flow for continuance of these projects important to the elites. In a zero-sum environment growth in one area requires sacrifice in others. Even at this early stage of the “Great Reset” it becomes apparent from whom the sacrifices will come and to whom the rewards will flow. Those designated for elimination include business cells not involved in crucial technological projects, internal combustion engines, “useless eater” humans that contribute little to the technological effort and even whole nations can have their energy flow disrupted. Eventually pets will also be eliminated. In the future, if something metabolizes it will serve the goals of the “owners” which will not include the residual population of humans whose American Dream will be replaced with a low-consumption, Metaverse non-life.

It seems that most everything in the universe and we could say the universe itself is about achieving equilibrium or the lowest energy state possible. The universe may be a perturbation in what existed prior to its inflation. In other words, something stirred the ether and created an unsettled condition and it’s now running back towards its equilibrium state. This could be considered entropy or the dissipation of energy. What does a universe that reaches equilibrium look like? It probably doesn’t look like anything as it wouldn’t exist. The things you see in the cosmos, including space, are manifestations of a disruption in equilibrium. All structures and features extant in the universe would be resolved back into a most basic submicroscopic equilibrium or state of rest.

Even this quantum foam model shows features coming into existence and then disappearing seemingly into nothingness. Something probably upset the equilibrium apple cart and this is what happened.

On earth, all matter seems to be trying to achieve the lowest energy state in its local environment, although turbulence from solar insolation keeps things well stirred in the atmosphere and hydrosphere. Gravity and electromagnetic attraction seem to be pulling towards the lowest energy states.

Life is composed of dissipative structures and is powered by the overall entropic flow. Certain wavelengths (mostly around 450 and 650nm) of the sun’s rays interact with Chlorophyll A and Chlorophyll B and other pigments and through a chain of electrochemical reactions produce the sugar glucose. Glucose is taken in by mitochondria in both plants and animals to produce ATP. ATP is the equivalent of gasoline for cars and provides the energy for catalytic reactions and muscle fibers sliding past each other resulting in movement. The plants are eaten and those that eat the plants are eaten as each species becomes a source of energy for others. All throughout its movement in seeking energy and mates, the human will be dumping low energy infrared heat into the environment as electromagnetic waves mostly at around 12,000nm. The energy loss in the step down from 450nm to 12,000nm is enough to grow plant tissues, herbivore tissues and movement, and carnivore movements like hunting for more food to keep all of the molecular balls in the air. The human and other life must eat in order to counteract the constant tendency for the body to achieve its lowest energy state in which molecules become more stable but less able to maintain the structure of the dissipative. Damaged DNA, cross-linked proteins and other damages must be constantly repaired and waste must be removed to maintain the dissipative capacity of the organism.

Can anyone be surprised at the human preoccupation with accumulating wealth (energy) and mating behaviors? Maintaining existence requires a steady flow of energy. Even upon death, many people will attempt to prevent the remains from achieving their lowest energy state through various interventions like preservatives and metal burial boxes. Some will have their name inscribed on the more resilient granite slab so as to avoid disappearing completely. Even religions are an effort to avoid equilibrium. But rest assured, if the structure is not at its lowest energy level, it will be sent there over time by gravity and various chemical reactions. I am quite sure that the wood furniture I possess will eventually be degraded by fire or termites, which will convert energy trapped in atomic bonds into their own structures and waste heat, or I may have to throw the furniture on the fire to stay warm this winter. Whatever the case, it has a ways to go before reaching an equilibrium in the local environment.

Even the structures of the fossil fuel burning, technological civilization will eventually find their final resting places as gravity and the elements work against them.

Someone should save those slate shingles, they’re quite resilient. Without them, this structure would likely have already done a face plant in the yard.

Settled ether can be disturbed by things like generators with magnets creating a temporary disturbance that immediately runs towards equilibrium along the path of least resistance, usually a copper wire. Lightning too is a manifestation of the return to equilibrium when potential becomes to great.

In the end, it’s quite a fight just to keep your atoms from achieving a relatively motionless, sedimentary rest. Humans always lose the fight, but their cells often live on and take new forms like children. Have you hugged your dissipative today?