Godel's Proof and The Human Condition - The Basic Essays

Energy Expenditure in
'Well-Being and The Quality of Life'

Every 'element' or aspect of life-style-and-quality is manifest in one of two dimensionally different domains of energy expenditure -one of energy already expended in the generation of passive material, and the other, active, of energy under expenditure, energy being expended.
[See also a more general, forerunning appendix to The Nature and Course of Human Evolution as The Basis of Economic Policy.]


1 - 'Passive material' is-

a - the energy-expended substance and material of 'optable expression or purpose', the physically manifest food, clothing, dwelling, disport, health, wealth(*1) et cetera', that some 'agency of ownership or possession' -the individual, business, government et cetera has 'earned or developed and holds manifest' -'properly or improperly', legally or illegally

b - 'the body of capabilities and powers of expression, purpose or appreciation that energy-expended experience, work, education, codification et cetera have provided it' -reificational substance: one's registered and potentially functional 'education, knowledge and disposition' -which therefore includes the fact (exclusive of 'activity', next) of expression-earning employment-and-time(*2), and all mental, physical or other institutionalizations or 'indefinable states of being' that attach them, as for example (the fact of) manifest personal friendships and government.

2 - 'Active expenditure' is what that 'agency of ownership or possession' actively does -resource/environment active engagement, mental or physical, legal, illegal et cetera (and directly or indirectly) to assure both the availability of passive material and time for expression, used or not. One works or studies, for example -or merely 'grows up' or even begs, to-

c - bring passive substance/material into existence and maintain it -'wine and home-and-garden', for example, or knowledge by going to school

d - 'execute purpose' or 'assure or opt time for expression' -'in- process' energy-expenditure of optable time for 'drinking that wine and appreciating that home-and-garden' -or for doing absolutely nothing whether or not there is anything to do.

[One works (2c) so that he can drive (2d) the automobile he bought (1a), houses(1a) and maintains (2c) to movies if he wants to (2d), movies that he has learned to appreciate (1b) by taking classes (2d) -a government overseeing the whole (1b).]


An understanding of this partitioning is crucial to continuing human life because -intrinsically, the more man is driven to discover how he affects the resource/environment -which affects his viability in return, the more he is driven (genetic imperative) to 'optimize that affect', thus there is a profound

difference between (a) use determined by 'pecking-order-based value' and (b) 'validity of use' determined by 'heuristics advancing the nature and course of the organism'(*3). It is, simply, the situation of 'an organism of deliberative capability driven to remain viable as its configuration-space inevitably degrades about it', thus the existence of the individual is eventually and inevitably to be determined by the role the individual plays in genome continuity (-see 'Black Box'):
As energy reduces in availability, the resource/environment one 'uses' -or is manipulated to use(*4), becomes successively and ultimately constrained by 'the requirements of an organism deliberating its very existence as an organism' -Base-Domain Human Requirements inevitably overriding 'warm-blooded, cerebrating vertebrate, pecking-order-based expression'.
In general, the more one's energy expenditure of any kind is entailed 'pecking- order-based expression', the more likely it is to be deliberatively diminished under 'sustainable resource use', 'what the system can bear', 'best well-being and viability of the organism-whole' et cetera. 'Energy wasted in excessive lifestyle-and-quality earned by some profoundly successful derivatives
trader betting on the odds of betting', for example -advancing little of 'the nature and course of the organism', is 'energy lost forever to an organism driven to optimize its viability thru knowledge advancing that nature and course'(*5).

The importance of this dimensionalization of energy then, is that in combination with the critically related 'three characteristics' above, it provides criteria for the use of energy in a closed system of limited sources where the form and quantity of energy (for availability) are major factors in human existence, criteria for distinguishing between (a) the pecking-order- based 'value' of some item or endeavor, and (b) the validity of energy going into some such item or endeavor based upon those closed system limitations and 'best well-being and viability in the nature and course of the organism-whole'.
"... the more [man] learns about its uncorrupted configuration space [energy], the more deliberatively it 'husbands the uncorrupted' [energy] for further discovery -the inevitability, therefore, of eventually least population of least resource/environment [energy] corruption... " (-from (The) The 'Black Box' Nature and Course of Human Existence

Back to downloaded Home Page or Download the Home Page or back to Complete list of Essays and Appendices

feedback? -perryb@condition.org
First posted: October 27, 1997; Last modified May 20, 2004


*1 - Wealth is 'energy-expended passive material' in that it is optably spendable for life-style-and-quality expression -government by its nature having, in fact, 'indentured its constituency to make it good'.
*2 - Regarding 'employment and time': except for explicitly being supported and 'doing nothing', there can be no life-style-and-quality without (a) manifest employment and (b) an assurance of time thru which to make expression optable; such assurance is therefore itself an element of this passive first domain of life-style-and-quality.
*3 - All thus-far government and economy reflects some intuitive, idiomatic or 'noumenalistic' ('belief system') aspect of 'what value means to the individual' -which, therefore, has little to do here with the idea of 'validity' which is critical to the organism-whole. The difference between the two and the inevitable supercession of (criterion) 'value' by 'validity' is developed in Unemployment and Economic Policy.
*4 - dirigiste heurism: that form of government which incorporates 'the discovered phenomenology of the configuration space' (science and mathematics) and 'codifies' that phenomenon of discovery in such a way (government) as to provide for its own heuristic restructuring as a function of the implicit (genetic imperative) 'best well-being and viability of the organism-whole'. (-from The Nature and Course of Human Evolution as The Basis of Economic Policy - Part 3)
*5 - The idea of 'non-value-adding activity' -'derivatives manipulator' and stock ownership in general being 'eventually phased out', is developed in Unemployment and Economic Policy. The Circumstantial Complexity of Today's 'Thus-far Pecking-Order-Based, Diasporation Economics', furthermore, identifies much of that 'non-value-adding activity'.