Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Matthew 7.7 – 7.11
The world's best selling book is full of proverbs. Good and bad. Ok I'll admit I haven't read much of it, so I'm assuming there are good and bad parts – with the role of Religion and Religious factions now a-days who knows what is good. This passage from Matthew kinda tugs at one's heart strings, but doesn't untie, or unite.
You see, I classify myself as a tree-hugger. Sure, why not? Go hug one once in awhile. Piss on one, it don't care – it's a tree. Fertilizer'll help it stretch and grow shelter for the seekers and finders. These seekers and finders can become providers to supply askers for shelter. Trees are great. They grow, they seed, they grow, and so on. By stretching their branches and sheltering the ground, they also extend their roots and belly out their trunks. The trunks can then be turned into such stunning and fabulous get-away cottages, or even better, practical shelter for us. Trees, regrow, and re-shelter when needed. So with the environment we've got shelter, or a location for health and warmth. One of my favourite kickers is that it also biodegrades. So after a lifetime of spewing oxygen, trees also recycle.
So the environment can provide shelter needed for health and warmth. Can it also provide energy for comfort and warmth? Sure why the hell not – well, I guess that is until hell freezes over and warmth ceases to exist. But hell freezing over? Never, right Matthew? Evil's always going to have a home. But, what if the environment provides heat and comfort, why do we need Hell anymore. Evil can just kiss my hairy yellow ass (thank you Homer Simpson). But yes, energy from the earth. Falling from the skies above the sun will heat us and always provide comfort. I'm talking solar cells, geothermal pumps, tidal waves, Get 'em while their hot! Everything that makes the earth alive and well will also keep us alive and well.
A healthy body – what is this… I've been healthy, to a certain extent and a few scares with my mental health – but I eat. I'm warm, I brush my teeth, I sleep. And boy do I like to eat. In moderation though. I eat what I need. Don't get me wrong, I do indulge – BBQ has done some good. Sure it involves generating smoke emissions, but damn is it tasty! So yeah, I'm healthy. What keeps me healthy? Like I said a bit of food, a bit of sleep, and time away from work. When I was sick, I was taken care of by the Healthcare System. Sure I have seen some good and bad examples of the HCS, but there are some good. Healthcare is the true essence to a free world, no one suffering. Patients getting the care they need to be fed and clothed and sheltered and healthy would be ultimate in reducing sufferance. So for healthcare to work, we must be first be healthy.
Hospitals… check. The sick and needy… check. Staff… …. Staff… … staff?? Why isn't our healthcare propped up more? Why do doctors pay huge amounts of money to become doctors? Why aren't doctors simply trained and tested. And remove the doctor label dude. Doctors, nurses, chiropractors, heck even dentists can be included. Train 'em. Teach 'em. The world will need 'em. Don't pay big amounts of money to get trained, simply be trained and heal and be healthy.
Shelter… well, if the woods can't shelter us, let's dig ourselves up. Mine the calcium hydroxide to mix cement and form concrete. Dig the aggregate, mix, and build. Of course, let's preferentially choose the woods. The woods look nicer than rock and sand anyways.
Clothing – this is where I fall off the map. What the hell is up with the clothing industry today? I speak from my North American roots when I say wtf? Ok, I've worn labels – but does the label have to be made up of plastic and oil? Clothes should be stitching and fabric – ok and a label on the inside reminding of washing instructions, and perhaps initials in case boxers shorts are mixed up. But who doesn't know how to wash clothes? We can leave those instructions for ourselves, or on Wiki… holy cow – wikihow – really (I just googled Washing Clothes for the first time). With pictures and steps and tips. Holy cow. And ads? Wow. Anyways, I fell off the map – I knew it! Clothing does reflect the individual, but when the individual tears off labels, then maybe it'll work. We can keep the major brands, but let's embroider 'em, stitch em to say whatever you want – just no oil or plastic please.
Food. This is my strong suit. I love food, all with the exception of pineapple. Food and eating are two of my favourite things – or is that one thing? Mmm… bacon… so freakin good. Nothin like eatin a pulled pork sandwich while employing the 'Ten' and 'Two' hand position. So let's eat – I'm hungry. Hungry and eating – now that's definitely two of my favourite things. So let's grow and herd – humanely of course. No prods or guns – just land and earth. When it's grown, let's cook! Emeril for vice-chairman of food! Let's party – let's eat – let's indulge. But do talk to your doctor. Know what's good, what's bad, and what's ugly. Overindulgence is ugly. Talk to your doctor about that too.
So we got em all tied together – the environment and healthcare, the environment can supply us with food, clothing, shelter. We need to buck up the doctors and we got ourselves a pretty good deal. Two parties working together. H and E. We need a third party to tie our knot… how about energy, the secondary E.
Energy equals comfort. Knowing we'll always be warm harnessing energy. Well , sometimes the sun don't shine, the wind don't blow sweet whistling noises and the rain don't fall, and puddles don't gather rain. We'll need to use resources that aren't eternal. But these limited resources cannot be misused. We must balance priorities to make this happen. Prioritize renewable energies, true energies that won't interrupt healthcare or the environment, but allow some limited resource use to reduce any frictions that may disrupt health from the environment. The perfect energy and the third party to tie a knot, the secondary E.
In my previous analogy to the laws of thermodynamics, I used a three-party system – let me try a four-party system and throw good ol' Safety watchdog in the mix. Safety will be the group, or the S Group in my previous Thermodynamic Law analysis. We need something to keep our knots tied and laces tight.
The Zeroth Law
The zeroth law is always tricky, how can you define nothingness, zero? I like the word Harmony. Such a graceful pronounciation, and such a paradox in its reduction. Harmony reduced is literally and figuratively Harm. If I named a daughter Harmony, the nickname when in trouble would be Harm. Harmony is my equilibrium. Equalness. Which is why I used Harmony to describe the S, I, P party analogy with the zeroth law. So harmony between the Safety, Health, Environment and Energy – the S, H, E, E party. How can we accomplish this? Prioritizing. Hey, I've lied in my day, hurt, stole. I always felt remorse. But I have not yet mastered prioritization. I've worked the oil and gas industry. I've observed them, caught them, tied them into little bows only to have them continue to shit on my little piece of heaven – harmony. Oil and gas is a priority that will disrupt the zeroth law. We must reduce it's entropy and energy of greed to nothingness. We must untie the knot we've dug into the base of our backs and breathe the fresh clean air. How do you master priority? With another vice – control. But control must be balanced – harmonized. An overseeing group must prioritize those that matter most to us, comfort and Safety. Safety must watch over health, environment and energy. We must protect what gives us comfort, ourselves and our planet. If control pushes energy, health or environment to a path which will break the zeroth law of harmony, then we've got to utilize our first and second laws to re-centre the priority list.
The First Law
The first law adds energy to systems, and any created energy is lost to the surroundings. We need to harmonize this to battle for control of the zeroth law. If we use natural gas to heat our homes, we must ensure it's carbon dioxide emissions are harmonized and not used to expel into the atmosphere – we must continue to recycle. Otherwise, harmony is unbalanced, and the zeroth law is broken. The technology is there – let's employ the masses to use and cherish this technology.
The Second Law
We are witnessing today a rampant increase to the second law in Safety, Health, Environment and Energy. The second law currently controls the SHEE party. We have disregard for keeping our comforts close, we let masses go hungry, we are expanding our atmosphere with pollutants and disrupting earth's harmony and we are using energy as the driver. Energy has become too prevalent. Perhaps not too prevalent, but we found a product which is lazy – we dig, we pump, we burn. But burning isn't as trivial as you think, to burn, we also add more heat to upgrade, to refine to consume. And have lost our ways in reduce, reuse, recycle. Energy today comes from a source that is greedy and is fed by entropy. In the second law application to this topic, I also like to define unkempt energy as the second law in practice. The second law states that expansion will continually occur to a maximum. That is what we are doing to our atmosphere. Expanding and increasing entropy by releasing carbon dioxide emissions by breaking the zeroth and first law. We are not harmonized and our earth is showing us and will show us what the third law can do.
The Third Law
I get sad when I think of the things that I do. I can call myself a sceptical pessimist. But I observe. What I currently observe is a nation unwilling to support reducing our poisoning of the atmosphere. I witness drought, flooding, starvation, hurricanes, avalanches and sorrow. I also believe in gravity and forces. I don't quite know the science, but the earth is made up of six defined atmospheric layers. The troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, the ionosphere and the exosphere.
The troposphere is between 7 to 17 km in the sky. Accepts all our emissions waste, re-condenses them and spits it back down at us. We interact with the troposphere directly. Heating warms air currents creates winds and carries water to far reaches of our planet. As temperatures cool, water vapours condense and recycle to the beauty of the water cycle. So what happens when we heat too much? Less condensation. Less recycling. And we put pressure on the Stratosphere. We break the laws.
The stratosphere is a latin word for stretching out. The stratosphere stretches out to 50 km into the heavens. The stratosphere contains ozone which wraps our planet in a security, or safety blanket, always hugging us. What happens when we push too hard and put pressure on the hug? The hug loosens. The stratosphere stretches and we lose security.
The mesosphere and thermosphere and second and third security blankets. Meteors often burn up in these layers due to the tighly packed bunch of particles in the meso and thermo spheres. Recall that this is roughly 600 km to the heavens and radial forces are very subtle. We push out on those radial forces slightly and expose ourselves to chaos.
The final layers are our ionosphere and exosphere. Our giant magnet. Magnetic forces always fascinated me – the innate, the intrinsic. From the minds,
"The term intrinsic denotes a property of some thing or action which is essential and specific to that thing or action, and which is wholly independent of any other object, action or consequence. A characteristic which is not essential or inherent is extrinsic."
Is our giant magnet intrinsic or innate, belonging to the essential nature of something? Are we finding out? Will the magnetic shield hold our push outward – or are we tied to the consequence of our action. Will our magnetic shield hold back the incoming solar radiation and continue to create the aurora? Another nice name – aurora – the roman goddess of dawn and the greek word for wind. The only way to answer this is to observe. I tried seeking answers to this in documentaries, and found "Holes in Heaven?" – a study into the development of electricity to be generated in the ionosphere… seems innate.
What I fear and what ties my heart is this worry. We do not yet know the consequences of our actions. What if we lose our atmosphere? What is there is no security blanket protecting us and keeping us safe? That is truly what ties my heart.
Entropy reaches maximums. We must pull back. We must rear in our vices like greed and pull back. Re-centre and find out what are our priorities.
Priorities should drive us back to safety and control – of our environment, health and energy.
How do we re-prioritize? Technology – systemic change.
Teaching, training and experiencing – systemic change.
We can do this with education reform. Education will be our security blanket. Knowing and understanding will drive us. Early childhood development can predetermine one's aptitude. Hey, some kids liked shop class and building cars, some kids liked taking pictures. I liked math and equations. Why do kids need to be forced into things they don't want to do? Control. Let's teach our kids this. We can protect our heaven – right Matthew?
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7.12
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