Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1122

Penciling by Heath on notepad paper

No date

Society, taken as a structure, or mass, is constituted of energy taken out of its environment during growth and upon dissolution returned thereto. In addition, it draws further energy from its environment, transforms it and then returns it again, thus transforming its environment. This is the energy with which it functions and carries on. This is the energy a portion of which is engaged in those consensual and contractual activities and operations by which the social organization comes into being, is maintained and carried on. Upon the energy put out in these freely operating and productive relationships the life of society and civilization depends. This transformation of primitive, brute energy into more complex, more harmonious and inte­grative organizational forms is the basic metabolism of the societal life-form.