Newton’s Three Laws and Me
The 1st Law states: “Objects at rest remain at rest, and objects in motion remain in motion in a straight line at constant velocity. A force must be applied to change the state of motion of an object.” I can only reminisce on the times I’ve done Sufi spinning only to have a very hard time slowing myself down to a stop once I’ve spun for awhile. I become a high-velocity tranced out time traveller in my imagination, and it would take the force akin to a MAC truck to slow me down, ie, “change the state of motion of an object.”
The 2nd Law states: “The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely proportional to its mass.” Now I reminisce on my daily bike rides and the force my legs exert on the pedals, which is directly proportional to the acceleration of my bike. I had a heavier bike before- and due to acceleration being inversely proportional to its mass- the heavier bike was harder to get started on a hill than my lighter bike.
The 3rd Law states: “If two objects interact, say in a collision, the force exerted by object 1 on object 2 is matched by a force exerted by object 2 on object 1 of the same size, but in the opposite direction.” If two pool balls hit each other, clearly one goes in one direction and the other goes in the opposite direction.
Our Energy Efficient Culture
Our culture is obviously not energy efficient, or else we would have more sustainable permaculture communities that use energy more wisely. If we were more energy efficient, we would use solar panels; the sun is the most constant source of free energy that is not a wasteful form of energy. As it is, our culture depends on things like combustion and the burning of fossil fuels, all of which take a lot of energy. Because energy can neither be created nor destroyed- the energy of the fuel getting burned changes forms into smoke and pollution, which then go into our atmosphere to wreak even more energetic havoc on all sorts of levels. In the process of burning fossil fuels and changing it to a less concentrated form, there is energy that is lost in the process. The energy that is lost in the process turns into heat. It is no surprise then, that well into the Industrial Age, we have seen the rise of Global Warming.
Descartes has a lot to answer for!
Cartesian dualism has blinded us in so many ways: psychologically, scientifically, spiritually, environmentally, and existentially. It would be a very sad world if indeed “We though therefore we Are,” meaning- the brain was the source of consciousness emanating reality without some Greater Mind or Guiding Spirit not separate from us- helping to co-create reality w/o our conscious knowledge. A world ruled by a Cartesian mechanistic system of looking at reality cut us off from our inner knowing and feelings of interconnectedness with each other. In a world in which we live under the illusion of separation, we hold ourselves less accountable for the negative effects we have on other people. We are not just a product of our physiological underpinnings, but complex multi-dimensional creatures influenced by a Universe that is alive and teeming with consciousness in every part. We are not just the sum of our parts, but a holistic whole with certain non-deterministic, non-mechanistic tendencies towards chaos that clearly show us an unpredictable model of human behavior that does not conceed to a clear-cut cause-and-effect cookie cutter formula. Perhaps the most catastrophic effect of Cartesian dualism is the West’s obsession with controlling nature and the notion that we are separate from nature, which has led to mass ecological disaster. One of the most extreme examples of this from recent history was the British Petroleum oil spill and the government’s attempt to hide the oil by dumping massive amounts of corexit, which is a toxic chemical that I believe had devastating affects on the ocean’s ecology. In the year that followed the oil spill, there were reports from all over the world about mass populations of fish, birds, and octopus dying all over the planet. Clearly- we are not separate from nature, neither is anything is nature separated from any other part of nature. Harm to one part of the ecosystem will spread out like a Doppler Effect of fractaled chaos spun sorely towards entropy, and worse, nihilism and death.
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