Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2228

Citadel, Market and Altar, Chapters 5-7, with some slight revisions of punctuation.

Some original material.

CHAPTER 5

The Energy that Re-creates Environment

Energy from the sun organizes the materials of the earth into plants, animals and men. A population is an organization of that cosmic energy into the generations of a complex life-form having the pulsing power of rhythmic succession, and through which cosmic energy continues to flow and to return in altered form.

 The return of this population energy to its environment modifies that environment. It transforms it either negatively or positively. If the population is but little or not at all organized into a society, it is unproductive; more than that, it deteriorates its environment, re­ducing it to a lower level of organization, an inferior degree of or­ganic complexity. The crude population thus shortens its own life. Its destructive effect upon its environment condemns it to a lower state of being and subsistence that shortens its span or wave. Under such circumstances, it can maintain its total energy or life-years and escape degradation to a lower level of life, or even complete ex­tinction into a lower or inorganic state, only by an acceleration of its reproductivity in compensation of its shortened life span.

 But when a population has become organized in community relationships, and more fully developed as a general society, then all is reversed. Much of the energy that it takes from its environment is so modified and returned to the environment as to raise and trans­form it to a higher level of complexity, more suitable to maintain and extend the lives of its members. Such a productive population suffers no shortening of its wave or span. It can maintain its total life-years per generation without increasing its energy of replace­ment and reproduction. Indeed, by its productivity and creative effect upon its environment, it can so increase its span or wave — the length of days of its generations — that it may suspend its reproductive function in like proportion as it extends its days, without any loss in its total life-years. And not only does its higher organization of itself give it power to transform and re-create its environing world, and thus to lengthen its own lives, but this more highly organized world becomes one in which also new tides of cosmic energy can most freely flow into the organic, the human and the societal life-forms.

 All the earth’s plant and animal life, all the organic content of its waters and soils, the vast hydrocarbon compounds in its geologic depths, all have come into being through the action of sunlight upon inorganic materials. This process accounts for all the organic matter the world has known since, as a fiery vapor, it was of life wholly void. Oxidation, it is true, does go on, but not with equal pace. Nature constantly creates life. The world literally becomes more alive with every day of sunshine on it.

 The creative technique of a population, as a society transforming its world, directs and accelerates this “natural” organization of life. Through its qualitative transformation of itself, it has the power, not only to extend its own lives, but also to make fit the earth for increasing numbers of extended lives. Social and natural processes thus unite to make the earth more and more alive and thus able to sustain more life. And the social transformation is not qualitative alone, at the expense of quantity; it is quantitative as well.

 But for the purpose of any qualitative comparison between two populations, or of the same population with itself in its successive generations or waves, as to the extent of its functioning and its state of well-being, it is necessary to keep in view like quantities of energy as between the respective populations. This means that for anything beyond merely quantitative comparison, the product of N and D, numbers and duration, must be constant. This leaves N and D variable, and since, for the purposes of truly qualitative comparison, their product as a quantity must be kept constant, they are, for equal quantities of energy, dependent variables. If equal quantities of popu­lation energy as life-years are to be compared, any change in the duration or length of the lives must be considered in connection with a contrary change in their numbers.

 By considering the successive generations of men as a propagation of energy waves having a constant average as to their mass and velocity functions but having an average frequency of discontinuity

that differs as between different populations or at different times, de­pending on changes in the average duration of the lives, it becomes possible to employ mathematical investigation in this field. Taking a population as a wave stream, through various changes of wave frequency, or of wave length as the life span, it is possible, by this transformation, to examine what changes other than quantitative ones can take place in the energy flow. These changes are, necessarily, in the interior structure and organization of the energy itself, and are not dependent on there being any change in its quantity or rate of flow. We may regard then, any change in the operations of a society that leads to a change in the wave-length or duration of its lives, as a qualitative transformation — as a higher or lower organic form and functioning of the population energy itself.

 Thus the population having a long life-wave, and hence a low frequency of replacement, is a positively qualitative energy flow, in the sense that it is dominant and creative upon its environment, raising itself to higher levels of organization, appropriating and assimilating the re-organized energies of its environment to its own maintenance and growth. In so doing, it re-creates, indirectly, its members them­selves and lifts them into a higher and higher order of existence as individuals and as members of an organic society.

 When the change in the social organization is in the direction of collision or conflict, contractual relationships are weakened and fewer contracts made, exchange of services and production of wealth decline and individuals deteriorate and live shorter lives. When the change is in the direction of freedom, of contractual, as opposed to coercive, engagements, then exchanges multiply, production in­creases, environment is improved and the individuals live richer and thereby longer lives. These changes in the social organization are qualitative, positively or negatively so; and they lead to correspond­ing alterations in the energy stream by shortening or lengthening its waves. For the more the life span is shortened, the more will its energy be repressed and re-formed into frequency of reproduction.[1] The more the lives are extended and enlarged, the more creative and productive upon the environment they become, the less re­productive they will be or have need to be.

 The potentialities of full-span human lives are greater than those of lives cut short soon after or even before they mature. At the level of human life this qualitative difference between a long-lived and a short-lived population is most extreme, for all the years of infancy are years of dependency on life that has gone before. During his period of growth, the individual incorporates energy into his structure; his social and creative potentiality is accumulating; it is not effective until he matures. Only then can he become a positive agent, a functioning part in the universal process of the cosmic stream.

 From the foregoing it is clear that the quality and potentiality of a population, its power to advance and transform itself through the social process in rebuilding its environing world, depends not alone upon the mere number or quantity of its life-years, but rather upon the quantity of its life-years that extends beyond the period of in­fancy and immaturity of its members; for there can be no productivity or creative power in any system of energy that has no life or power beyond that required for its own maintenance and replace­ment or reproduction.

 This supine condition, however, is characteristic of nearly the entire plant and animal world — the whole realm of life inferior to socially organized mankind. Of the myriad forms of life below the societal life-form, not excepting the biological and consanguineous associations of insects, animals and men, none has any associative technique for the general rebuilding or creation of environment to serve progressively its nature’s needs. Primitive men and some of the higher animals do construct temporary habitations to instinctive patterns, but they do not create or multiply their own subsistence. On the contrary, they consume and destroy whatever subsistence their environment affords. If this is abundant, and for a time easily obtained, even then the increase of their vital energy is not creatively but only reproductively employed. Thus, while numbers increase, subsistence declines until few are able to live beyond maturity and only the “fittest” can survive the dearth of subsistence and the predatory practices unfailingly engendered where dearth prevails. With no social technique transcending merely biological and con­sanguineous relationships, the life-form remains, indeed, only a product, a mere creature of its environment. It has no power to ameliorate its external world, but must modify and adapt itself to environment or the race not survive.

 In all lower life-forms the highest destiny is to achieve maturity, reproduce, struggle and die. Man, as society, is the only form of life that can maintain its life and preserve the integrity of its nature against all buffetings. In the social-ized life-form, mankind alone achieves liberation from and creative dominion over the environing world. This command over nature gives the social-ized population power to extend its days and to extend its total life-years per genera­tion, even though its births decline. This power increases in the degree that the society differentiates the activities of its individuals and its institutions and thus amplifies the free interior relationships and processes of consent and exchange upon which its productivity and all advance depends. We shall examine the nature of this interior developmental social change.

CHAPTER 6

Freedom the Technique of Eternality

In the atomic world as in the astronomical, the most perfect organization and greatest continuity of action is observed in those systems in which the units that constitute them move most freely in relation one to another. Where there is collision between the members, unbalanced stress and strain, there is disintegration of these units and a corresponding disorganization of the system that they form.

 In atomic structures, where the constituent elements collide, they decompose and as radiant energy fly away. The atomic organization disintegrates, and the structure is radioactive, self-limited as to its duration. Where the elements do not collide the structure is stable and not self-limited, to be dissolved only by assault from without, by invasion of exterior energy or force. Astronomical systems in which the members or parts collide are similarly insecure; but so far as the members move without collision the duration of the system is long, terminable only by very slow retardation or by violence of extraneous power.

 In the human and societal realm the like prevails. Here are the same two relationships, that of free action and movement of the units with respect to one another, without collision and consequent disintegration, and that of collision and compulsion which disin­tegrates the units, inhibits the social functioning and weakens social bonds. The one relationship is harmonious, balanced and free; the other is coercive and destructive. And this is true, whether the violence be criminal and condemned or be sanctioned under govern­mental procedures and legal forms. The creativeness of free relation­ships is not affected by selfish aims or lack of conscious altruism in the minds of those who practice them. Nor is the disintegrative effect of coercive relations stayed by any feeling of loyalty or duty with which they may be accepted or of benevolence with which they may be imposed.

The societal organization derives its stability, its enduring powers, from the operational freedom, the full and uninterrupted inter-functioning, of its units and parts. Upon this freedom and consequent productivity with increasing length of days — a lessening frequency of replacement — the societal evolution depends. The lengthening life span and declining reproductive rate that arises out of high con­tractual freedom and productivity is wholly advantageous. The en­ergy of a high biological turnover and replacement is carried over into the maturer years for societal functioning as creative work upon the environment. Biological reproductivity is thus transformed into social productivity.

 Reversely, the higher birth rate of those whose contractual and creative power is repressed or has lapsed into mere biological power, is also advantageous, though indirectly so, under adverse conditions that shorten lives. For it provides a wider numerical field in which favorable variations or mutations may occur among the increasing numbers born. By converting its shortening lives into more nu­merous ones, the population lays foundation for its possible salva­tion by the emergence of new members so gifted as to reestablish the free productive and creative relationships for lack of which their predecessors suffered shortened lives. And the value of a high frequency of births to compensate the shortening of lives, under the coercions of a low or declining state of social organization, can be further seen by considering the consequence if a reverse procedure should take place; for, if the shortened lives were re­placed only by less frequent births, the race would move towards extinction at an accelerating rate.

 The integration of men into a societal life-form is the only organization of energy that has developed structures and functions be­yond those necessary to its mere maintenance and reproduction. It is through these unique and additional powers that the social or­ganization is enabled to make positive and qualitative transformations of its environing world. This creative facility springs from the abun­dance of life socially conferred upon the individual with his increas­ing length of days. Man thus has a privilege and a power that no other life-form has. He may suspend his energies of reproduction, in proportion as his days increase, with a qualitative gain and no quanti­tative loss. Under the conditions of his life thus achieved, social-ized man rises into his higher organic and creative, and therefore spiritual, estate.

 In family or tribal relationships, as contrasted with societal organization, man achieves no such transcendent powers. He differs from lower animals by a higher degree of versatility and adaptation to environment that makes every part of the earth his habitat. But, more strikingly, he differs from them in his possession of a creative social potentiality towards an organic societal integration having world-wide scope and range.

 All those life-forms that continue must live till they mature and reproduce. They can have no briefer term than this. But during the period of their maturity their reproductive rate is related to their length of days. The greater its hazards and more brief its term, the more prolific an organism becomes. A plant, cut back, multiplies its shoots, and when its days of growth are shortened, rushes into bloom and seed. The animal forms whose lives are most imperiled most rapidly reproduce. Men are most prolific where subsistence and security least exceed the minimum on which they can mature and breed, and where their mature lives thus are brief. Throughout the range of persisting life, fecundity compensates insecurity and brevity of term. It rises with the shortening and falls with the lengthening of the reproductive days.

 But men have a societal nature. Beyond the biological, familial and other relationships such as animals have, men tend to form them­selves into a wider and a higher organism, in which they have world-creative powers and, thereby, ever-lengthening days. On these, her highest creatures, Nature smiles, and as they gain creative power, she frees them from that quantitative prudence to which her lesser forms of life are bound.

 The law of balanced conservation that rules structure and energy in the physical realm extends also to the organic and the social world. Both structures and energies are variously transformed independently of any over-all quantitative change. When a structure of specific size has many units, as they grow larger their number declines; as they grow smaller their number expands. When energy is stated as a specific number of ergs, or of pounds-feet, then, as the force grows larger, the distance grows less. So it is with a specific quantity of energy as life-years. As the lives become extended in respect to time, they grow smaller in respect of numbers; as they are contracted in respect of time, their numbers expand.

 Any specific quantity or amount of energy that Nature assigns to and continues to manifest as a population is subject to being variously transformed. It may resolve itself into fewer units or individuals, having a more extended energy content and powers, or it may diffuse itself among many individuals of less enduring powers. Such transformations are not dependent on any total quantitative change. When the transformation is integrative, as the duration of the units is extended and their powers increased, their numbers decline. Under a disintegrative trend, as the individual lives are contracted, their numbers expand. If the stream of life is still to be maintained, then the more frequently its units pass out the faster must they be replaced and renewed.

 When energy is integrated into living structures, more enduring and more complex, that is growth; when energy flows through and maintains living structures, that is functioning; when structure ceases to function and disintegrates into energy of simpler form or into less complex structures, that is death and decay. The reality — the energy — does not come into being, nor does it pass; only its forms change. Like all other phenomena, growth and decay, life and death, are but transfers and transformations of and within the Universal Energy. Structure and duration, organization and process, come alike under one law.

CHAPTER 7

Creative Transformation of Population Energy

A population, organized as a societal life-form or organism, is resolvable into a succession of energy manifestations in its generations of men. Each generation is composite of its individual lives. The overlapping succession of these lives, and their interfunctioning therein, is what gives life and continuity to the social organization as a form of life.

 Taking life-years as energy waves, the succession of individual lives is a discontinuous series of energy waves. The population, as a society, is a multiple system of these discontinuous wave series. Its continuity results from the overlapping of these discontinuities. Taking any generation as a complex of energy waves or as a com­posite energy wave, the numerical population N represents the mass and motion of the wave, and the average life span D of that genera­tion is the period of its duration — inverse of frequency — the dura­tional length of the wave.

 If, therefore, for the purpose of qualitative comparison, a population is to represent, over a number of generations, a constant amount of energy or action per generation, there must be no change in the number of individuals under consideration without a contrary change in their duration. When the given fixed quantity of energy runs to brevity and frequency of its units, their numbers must increase; when it extends the duration of its units their numbers must decline.

 Anthropology gives little evidence of any great variableness in the average rate of vital activity of men — unless over very long periods of time. Thus, the energy rate, the mass-motion or force-velocity component of the average life, may be taken as constant at unity or 1. Therefore, in a whole population as a generation of men, the rate of action for that form of life may be represented simply as N_, the number of men as statistically observed. This establishes N as the rate of activity for the generation as a whole. This rate must be multiplied by the number of years per generation (average length of lives), D, to give the total energy output, W. Hence D x N = W. So a given fixed quantity, W, of population as life-years may be manifested in various ratios of duration to numbers without any over-all quantitative change. Any generation of men thus has the essential characteristics of an energy wave. The average energy rate of its members being constant, its total rate is a matter only of its numbers, and as in quantum physics, the total energy-in-action of the wave is its energy or action rate times the period of time or dura­tion of the wave. Although neither the average mass of the indi­viduals nor their average rate of motion appears to change from generation to generation, the mass of population does change directly with any numerical change that it undergoes. So a given quantity of energy as action or work manifested in a population is always the constant product of two variables: of average numbers, N, representing the product of mass and velocity, times the average duration, D, representing the average length of its lives, the period (inverse of frequency) of the wave.

 The preceding paragraph has taken population energy chiefly in its interior quantitative or compositional aspects without reference to such changes as affecting its qualitative or creative capacity and without any over-all quantitative change. Keeping in mind what was said in Chapter 5 concerning the life-years of infancy absorbing energy, only the adult life-years being capable of social functioning upon the environment with creative results, an illustration of ex­clusively qualitative change will now be made.

 Taking the end of infancy and beginning of maturity for the average individual as at the age of twenty years, we will examine the quantity of population energy represented by a generation or wave of twenty-five millions of life-years. We will first consider this energy as manifested in a generation of one million lives, N, having an average duration, D, of twenty-five years. Then we will compare it with the same quantity of life energy in a population of one-half million lives, N, having an average duration, D, of fifty-years.

 In both cases the total energy is, in quantity, exactly the same — twenty-five millions of life-years. But the million population with a life span of twenty-five years must consume twenty millions of its life-years in the integrating of its structure, leaving only five millions possible for creative functioning upon the environment. This is only one-fourth of its total energy.

 Not so with the half-million population living an average of fifty years. This society requires only ten millions of its life-years for its own integration, leaving fifteen millions available for its social functioning in the rebuilding of its world. This is three-fifths of its total energy. The second population, therefore, notwithstanding its great numerical inferiority, has a three times greater potentiality to advance its civilization.

 Thus, a society that so transforms the conditions under which it lives as to extend the period of its average adult lives can increase its quality and creative capacity threefold without increasing the num­ber of its life-years or of its lives. In fact, it can, as in this example, increase its powers threefold in the lengthened energies of only one-half its original number of lives.

 The comparison just made is between two populations quanti­tatively equal in life-years, but which, qualitatively and creatively, are as unequal as three is to one. This is a qualitative difference between the two populations, each taken in its entirety, or as a whole. But for the average individual in each case, the disparity is twice as great, for in the numerically larger population he has only five adult years of opportunities and powers, whereas in the second or im­proved society he has thirty adult years for enjoyment of his life and employment of his powers. The same transformation that raises three-fold the potentialities of the society as a whole raises six-fold the opportunities and possibilities of its individual lives.

 The numerical relationships in the foregoing example are given general formulation in Figure 1. Here the total work or energy flow, W, per generation is derived from ND, the number of persons and the duration of their lives. The maximum energy available for creative outflow upon the environment is found by deducting from the total life-years the number of life-years of energy that are re­quired for the mass-integration or growth of the structure of each generation, to compensate for the mass-disintegration of the genera­tion passing on. This remaining energy is shown as that potentially available for the positive functioning of the social organism. Thus, for any population its coefficient E, of social potentiality, or possible societal efficiency, is found by dividing its total life-years into those that remain after deducting the life-years required for its biological maturation.

SUGGESTED FORMULA FOR

QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENT OF POPULATION

AS LIFE-ENERGY

AVERAGE RATE OF WORK — Output per individual, taken as unity,                            1

times

AVERAGE DURATION OF WORK – Average Life-Span of Individuals

Ascertained over a Sufficient Period, years,                                                 D

times

AVERAGE NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS Living During the Time

Embraced Within the Average Life-Span,

              equals                                                                                                                      N

TOTAL WORK OR ENERGY FLOW Manifested in those Numbers                             =

During that Time, Expressed as Life-Years.                                                                  W

SUGGESTED FORMULA FOR

QUALITATIVE MEASUREMENT OF POPULATION

AS LIFE-ENERGY AVAILABLE FOR SOCIAL GROWTH

AND FUNCTIONING

HUMAN ENERGY in Total Life-Years, DN = W,                             W

             minus                                                                         

LIFE-YEARS OF INFANCY, Required for Mere                              —

     Physio-Biological Replacement of Predecessors, 20N,                                            20N

             equals

ADULT LIFE-YEARS – Available for Social Growth and                                                        =

     Development—Creative                                                                             N(D — 20)

OPTIMUM QUALITATIVE CONDITIONS

For a given quantity of energy manifested in the life-years of a population per genera­tion, DN = W, the condition of highest quality, active and creative capacity, is when D, average duration, is maximum and N, number of individuals, is therefore at minimum.

      COEFFICIENT OF SOCIAL POTENTIALITY — POSSIBLE

    SOCIOLOGICAL EFFICIENCY

  E  =  N(D — 20)   =  D — 20

       W            D

Figure 1.

In the case of the million population of twenty-five years average span, twenty millions of life-years must be deducted, leaving only five millions to be divided by the total of twenty-five millions. This gives a coefficient of only 0.2. For the half-million with the fifty-year span, we must deduct only ten millions, leaving fifteen millions available. This divided by the same total of twenty-five millions yields a coefficient of 0.6 for the same number of life-years more highly organized and enduringly transformed.

 In the above example all life-years, infant and adult, are taken as being of equal magnitude. If it be objected that the available energy of exclusively adult life-years should not be weighed against a total that includes the infant life-years as being of equal magnitude with the adult, this may be adjusted by averaging the infant life-years. Taking the infant life-year as of uniformly increasing magnitude up to twenty years, its average value would then be not twenty, but ten life-years. On this basis, the gross life-years of the generation having the million population would be diminished by ten years, re­ducing it from twenty-five to fifteen millions of life-years. The adult life-years remaining at five millions as before, the highest possible efficiency becomes 5/15 or .33 instead of .20. But for the longer-lived generation of only a half-million population, the total life-years would be diminished by only five millions, reducing it from twenty-five to twenty millions and raising the limit of efficiency from .6 to .75. In particular applications, still further adjustment of the basic formula might be desired. The period of infancy, for ex­ample, might need in a given instance to be taken as less than or more than twenty years, and as beginning with conception instead of at birth, without greatly affecting the general result.

In figure 2, the percentage of total life energy available for

                  /Copy and insert Figure 2/

creative functioning as affected by the average longevity is graphically shown. The full-line curve is calculated upon a base that in­cludes all life-years as of equal energy magnitude. The dotted curve shows how these percentages change when calculated on a base in which the infant life-years are treated as having only one-half the energy magnitude of the average adult.

The examples as given are only illustrative of a fundamental organic law affecting the portion of creative power that is possible, according to their longevity, for the generations of men. For there is always a basic ratio between the total life-years of a generation, however measured, and the number of those life-years possibly available for creative functioning upon the environment. As this ratio increases, so increases the possible creative capacity with every increase of the average life span.

 In the comparison of a million population with a half-million having twice the span, it is not meant to be implied that extension of the life period necessarily or in any wise diminishes the number of lives. On the contrary, the improvement in conditions of living that lengthens the lives at the same time increases the capacity of the environment to sustain and to serve them in greater numbers. The long-span lives have been taken in diminished number only for the purpose of comparing equal quantities of life-years with respect to their qualitative difference alone. If the population of fifty-year span had been kept at one million instead of being reduced to a half million, the total life-years under consideration would have been raised to fifty millions, but the ratio of adult to total life-years would have remained unchanged and the qualitative superiority of the long-span lives thus still the same.

 Although for the purpose of qualitative comparisons we must take equal amounts of energy as equal numbers of life-years, it is not likely that any succession of generations in a population is ever stationary, either as to the numbers of the population or as to the number of life-years manifested in the successive generations. The indications are that a degeneration of the societal technique such as repeatedly occurs under the political regulations, oppressions and revolutions, conquests and alliances, that build world-empires, not only shortens the average length of life but, when so long continued or severe that the conditions of living fall below those essential to existence or to reproduction, there is at last an actual decrease in numbers instead of an increase, coincident with the shortening of the span. This condition, however, could never have been world­wide or for a very long time; it would have been the condition of a dying race; and mankind has at least survived. The probabilities are that the average life span throughout the world has never fallen below the number of years necessary for reproductive maturity, for any such shortening of the span would tend to very rapid extinction of the race.

 Not under all conditions, therefore, is it possible for numbers to increase in response to a shortening of the average life span. The rule can apply only to a population whose average span is longer than the number of years required to arrive at reproductive maturity. Where good social organization induces a lengthening of the average life span, this diminished mortality causes an accumulation of lives, un­less there is an equal decline in the number of births during this change. The population that raises its average life-years has no need to suffer numerical decline. For the improvement of environment that diminishes mortality attracts, doubtless, at the same time a greater flow of cosmic energy to take the organic and the human and the social form. Thus the qualitative improvement is not un­favorable to quantitative increase as well.

 Granting that a considerable portion of a population does not reach the reproductive age, then any general lengthening of life must carry this part of the population from a state of sterility right into the most reproductive years at the same time that the maturer lives are being extended into their more productive but less repro­ductive years. The same general lengthening of lives that carries one part of the population beyond its period of greatest fertility also brings into that period another part that previously had not reached the reproductive age at all. It is the tendency of youth, upon its first physical maturation, to consume and to reproduce; of maturity and age, to produce and conserve. Reproductivity does not depend upon the higher psychologic development that comes with years; creative