Energy and the Human Journey: Where We Have Been; Where We Can Go

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

A relatively recent development is the idea of a “Breakaway Civilization,” and I am getting bombarded with it. I received something just last night on it. Is the idea of a Breakaway Civilization valid? It is helpful?

Right now, it is a New Age/conspiracist flavor of the day, and I am not sure that that is a good thing, as that awareness is usually at the childish/gossip/titillation level of the game. I’ll say this: the so-called Breakaway Civilization is another name for Godzilla and pals. They definitely have plenty of exotic technology, including FE and antigravity, which means that they are spacefaring. They approached a member of my circle on helping them terraform Mars, in case their antics make Earth uninhabitable. So, the group and its technologies are real. But calling them “breakaway” fosters seeing them as an outgroup, which is not healthy, IMO. They are simply humans who have taken power and control games to extreme levels.

But the galactic neighborhood is not going to let them sail around the stars, not those spiritual degenerates. For all of their technological superiority, dishonestly acquired, they are spiritual children, with their ranks full of power-hungry dark pathers. Theirs is not any kind of “civilization” that a normal person would want to be part of.

They can “breakaway,” for all that I care. We don’t need their technology. We can roll our own, if we can muster the integrity and sentience, which is the key, not the toys.

I saw the Breakaway Civilization presentation some years ago, and it was a rather naïve, academic approach, of some “new” hypothesis, and I am not sure how beneficial it is. The “Breakaway Civilization” idea is a marketing gimmick, IMO. I doubt that it will play among the pipe-smoking, sherry-drinking Ivy League crowd, so it seems to be giving a veneer of academic respectability to the New Age/conspiracists, but they never get anything done.

So, the Breakaway Civilization idea is taking its place among the New Age/conspiracist crowd, becoming some watered-down and titillating flavor of the day. Will it help mount an effort that can make a dent? I don’t see how. Will it help raise the general awareness? Maybe, but the downsides may outweigh the upsides.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I just wished Dennis a happy 70^th birthday. How time flies. I vividly recall his 40th birthday. It was the only time that I ever talked to Mr. Financier. I saw him a month later, stricken, as his stolen company was used to help steal Dennis’s.

Nearly three years later, Dennis was in solitary confinement, writing about how he would not live to see this side of the bars, as the officials would bring him “death by inmate,” and they nearly did. I would not have taken short odds on Dennis living to 70 in those days. It is miraculous that he is alive today. Indiana Jones was not able to save the world by himself, but he took a good run at it.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

As I have written plenty, impatience is my Achilles heel, and I get to work on it every day. I once read that M. King Hubbert, the founder of Peak Oil theory, which is controvertible, IMO, spent much of his career patiently explaining Peak Oil theory over and over, as people had difficulty understanding it.

I think that I am going to be doomed to explaining energy’s Epochal significance, and free energy’s Epochal potential, over and over, so that the people I seek can begin to understand. The West, especially the USA, is a brainwashed, scientifically illiterate culture, and those who are scientifically literate usually have been brainwashed into the religion that has grown up around mainstream science, which is the religion of our Epoch.

So, I write this way and that, about energy, consciousness, conspiracies, the structural aspects of our systems, scientific literacy, and so on, trying to help my readers who do the work begin developing comprehensive perspectives. Only then can the big picture begin to be discerned.

I am about to go relatively quiet this month, working on my essay update for the year. While I was writing on the JFK hit in recent weeks, I read Arrival of the Fittest, am almost done with Flying Dinosaurs, and am reading Earth’s Deep History, which will all be reflected in the essay update. I would say that Ward and Kirschvink’s latest, as well as Nick Lane’s, will be the stars of the essay update. We will see if I can get it done in June. If not, then the update will appear in September or later.

Best,

Wade

Edited June 1, 2016 by Wade Frazier

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Before I get back to the Moon landings, I want to briefly revisit that essay update preview post from yesterday. Nick Lane is an entertaining writer, the kind that you could see yourself having a beer with. In his book’s last page, he wrote:

“If life is nothing more than an electron looking for a place to rest, death is nothing but that electron come to rest.”

In that diagram of protons moving back and forth across the mitochondrion’s inner membrane, as that flow powers the “turbine” that makes ATP, a flow of charged particles powers that turbine. The definition of electricity is a flow of charged particles, not necessarily electrons. Lane makes the point that the electric charge is vitally important, as mere diffusion would not be enough to generate the necessary power. Lane calculates the power in that moving current of protons, and for its scale, it is as powerful as a lightning bolt. My body has about 200 quintillion (or 200 million trillion) ATP Synthase motors in it, turning at hundreds of rotations per second, with the equivalent of a lightning bolt powering each one. As Lane said, life is not a candle, but more like a rocket, and when viewed this way, the fact that a complex cell burns energy 100,000 times as the Sun produces it, pound-for-pound, begins to make more sense.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

With that series of posts finished for now, a little more on my intention, which I was just discussing this morning. God bless Dennis and all of those FE businessmen, scientists, and inventors, but they don’t have a prayer in today’s environment. Only people like Dennis ever got to the level where Godzilla had to get very active, and Dennis had to survive the lower levels of the game before Godzilla took much notice. Although Dennis was eventually banned from the energy industry in the USA, he is still raising hell, at 70 years old. His journey has simply been incredible to witness.

If Dennis could not make a dent, I don’t know anybody else who remotely can with the businessman’s/inventor’s/populist’s approach, and I decided to do something different. Brian, like Dennis, was a man of the people, and carrying their spears was among my life’s greatest joys and honors, but it was ultimately all futile, other than being a great learning experience, if harrowing. Dennis should be dead dozens of times over, Brian’s life was shortened by his adventures, Mr. Professor’s life was ruined and shortened by his involvement, too, and I will always be picking up the pieces of my shattered life.

I don’t want any more blood on my hands or witness any more aspirants disappearing into Godzilla’s maw. It took many years to arrive at my current approach, and I am devoting the rest of my life’s “spare” time to trying it out. I am in no rush, although I am fully aware of the emergency state that humanity and Earth is in. I am going to do all that I can so that my effort does not lapse into today’s arrested development of the FE field, in which tinkerers, scientists, and promoters/businessmen (and Messiahs ) dominate. I think that if Bucky Fuller was alive today, he would be taking an approach similar to mine, and we will see how it goes. It may only help a little, it may be the critical missing piece, but it won’t hurt, which is more important to me than making a dent.

Forums come and go, and this one, for instance, is dead, other than my participation, along with a NASA pal’s. But I intend for my forum to outlive me, I have been very picky on who could join, and I expected it to start slowly, and it has. I am building the beacon to attract those whom I seek, and although it might seem like there is no action happening, a great deal is, behind the scenes.

Back to work on this year’s big essay revision.

Best,

Wade

Edited June 11, 2016 by Wade Frazier

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I have been thinking about my effort some today. There will certainly be room for free energy theorists and inventors, but they are not going to be the main attraction, not by a long shot. The FE field has been in a state of arrested development for so long that such people instantly become the focus of all manner of attention that is usually counterproductive. I have not been in a room with a working FE device, and don’t need to be. If people need to do that before they are willing to study my work and sing, then they are not in my target audience.

I thought of an analogy only a few minutes ago, which is why I am writing this post. After my mystical awakening, I became quite the mystical student, and have had many experiences that showed me in no uncertain terms that there is far more than meets the eye to our existence. On my list of things to do was see a UFO. It was not that high on my list, but if I could easily see one, then it would be worth my time. I knew many people who had seen UFOs and even went out hunting for them, and they often had spectacular experiences. So, when a Boeing pal suggested going to Gilliland’s Ranch to see one, I was game. I did not go to dare one to appear, or genuflect to them, or have my worldview radically change, but I went with the intent to see one, and I was not disappointed. Within seconds of the event, I asked myself if it was worth it, spending a long weekend traveling to see a UFO. I decided that it was, and I took people there three times afterward, with the latest being last year (and yes, I saw something, very similar to my first event back in 2005).

One of my Boeing pals, however, was never the same, and walked around in a daze for the next week. If a person has witnessed an FE gizmo working before they encounter my work, great. If they haven’t, so what? I seek people who have already made enough of a shift in their consciousness that witnessing a working FE device will not be a very big deal to them. Their reaction to seeing it will be like mine to seeing a UFO, along the lines of, “I really didn’t doubt it, but there is something to seeing it with one’s own eyes. My worldview did not change with seeing one, but it did help make it more robust.”

When my friend got his exotic technology show, his eyes were bugging out of his head, but that was partly because he was blindsided by it. He did not seek the show, but the show sought him. But for those that I seek, if they got a show like that, it would only be confirmatory of their perspective, not revelatory and life-changing. Those who are not going to get out of their armchairs unless they are invited to an FE demonstration are not in my target audience. Also, there is a yawning gap between a working FE prototype and something that can power a home. What my friend saw could power a home, but we are not going to get any right now. Sitting around, waiting for it to be delivered into our laps, is not very productive.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

One item on my list of things to write about is “insider revelations.” How do you sort out the chaff from the wheat for that? It does not get any more honorable than what Ralph McGehee did. That is the kind of insider testimony that you can hang your hat on. The Disclosure Project was people testifying under oath. Again, very impressive. Rodney Stich, again, highly impressive. Gary Wean risked his life to write his book, which was truly heroic. Brian’s book on his days as an astronaut was also notable for its candor, if not exactly a whistleblower book. Most that I respected the most were not really insiders, in the sense of people involved in black ops/projects or immoral acts, to later reveal them publicly. Most were “accidental” insiders, such as most of the Disclosure Project witnesses. Mark was one of many in the FE field who discovered the hard way about organized suppression. Some, like Mark, began on the “inside,” so to speak, but naively stepped into trouble. Most of my fellow FE travelers were not really “insiders,” at least regarding their FE activities, but the inside came to them, and they often barely survived the experience. Many didn’t.

What is far more problematic, and I take it all with a grain of salt, are insider revelations by black ops/projects people, either alleged or real, especially if they are anonymous. That is where the mountain of chaff is for insider revelations. There are ways to try to sort it out, but it is usually not worth the time and effort to. Those accounts above are going to be far more reliable than covert ops people coming forward, or those who say that they know covert ops people. A great deal of such “information” is disinformation.

My CIA contract agent relative never knew that I knew about his secret life, and I only found out because a covert op blew up, he had to have a bodyguard for some time and brought his wife into it, who later told me. That kind of stuff is very credible (or, at least, as credible as those who publicly discuss it), but what is far less credible is people coming forward, claiming to be deep insiders who now have to come forward, either because their conscience got to them or their superiors encouraged them to. Some of that may be legit, but I consider most such testimony highly suspect. Many of those “insiders” are not insiders at all, but attention seekers who don’t have to provide any evidence for their claims, but spin tall tales. Others really are insiders, but they are also spinning disinformation as part of their “assignment,” or they were being used, fed “insider” information and experiences that were designed to dupe them, so they would later be insiders unknowingly spinning disinformation. That realm can be a hall of mirrors, and Internet surfers are not going to successfully navigate it.

Conspiracists usually either uncritically lap that stuff up or make it the center of their awareness, which can easily become fearful and paranoid. I have seen the full range of reactions, including ending up in mental institutions. It is almost all highly counterproductive. I found that the conspiracist orientation was usually simplistic, scientifically illiterate, and a vestige of the Third Epoch, in which people based their worldviews on fairy tales.

Perhaps more deluded is denying that covert ops and black projects even exist, or putting them all in the same basket, such as thinking that the CIA is only involved with the kinds of activities that Ralph was, and ignoring the contract agent and privatized aspect of it, which is where the dark stuff begins (Perkins’s “jackals” hail from there). The dark stuff is very real, and it seems to draw a kind of paranoid and tabloid fascination from the masses.

There are global forces at work, which own the media, the banks, the politicians, etc. Jack Kennedy was the last American president who thought that he could make a dent, he was rudely disabused of that notion, and if his death was related to the ET cover-up, it would not surprise me at all. Looking for change to come through the retail political system is a delusional mindset, but very common amongst the masses, especially the political class. Does anybody really think that it will matter if Hillary or Trump becomes president, or even Bernie? We already had the obscene spectacle of Bush the Second, which was the greatest imperial embarrassment since Caligula’s horse. Can it really get much worse? Maybe so, but don’t expect sitting presidents to be anything other than puppets. Soon before he died, Brian told me that electoral politics was a dead-end, and he would have known.

Time to begin my busy week.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I raise this subject plenty of times in my work, but it keeps rearing its head with FE newbies. Hitting the bullseye of understanding the FE situation is not easy. Almost nobody ever attains it, getting derailed along the way. The structuralists (who are Level 3s) deny the very existence of organized suppression and generally have a fantasy that mainstream science is somehow democratic and above the fray, and that not only does Godzilla not exist, but their “laws of physics” objections deny that his Golden Hoard is even possible.

Conspiracists generally see Godzilla as the source of all human problems, when he is merely a symptom. FE newbies want to proselytize to their social circles, help whip up some mass movement, and the like. If they do it for long, they get sobered up and are often ostracized. Then, they get disgusted. The challenge is to relinquish judgment of the situation, and I mean all of it.

Godzilla is just doing what he does best, and his eager minions will reap what they sow, as we all do. Focusing on him and his antics is not the answer. The masses addicted to their scarcity-based in-group ideologies are just trying to survive in a world of fear and scarcity, and that they are no use whatsoever for an FE effort, and in fact a great hindrance if they do get involved, is normal. They have never initiated Epochal change, and it won’t be any different this time. They will be the biggest beneficiaries of the Fifth Epoch (and all of Earth’s creatures), but they aren’t going to help us get there. That is like thinking that a kindergartener can play in the NFL. The FE pursuit is the hardest on Earth, and love is the answer, as always. Those who make FE happen will have gotten over their egos. They won’t see themselves as Messiahs, but just doing what they were put on Earth to do, as part of their path. Love drives out judgment, does not fixate on “bad guys,” and is required to see the forest from the trees. This was one of the greatest lessons of my journey.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

It looks like I won’t get that essay update done in June (I still plan for plenty of progress in June), but I plan for it to happen this year. I have the stack of books to use for it next to my desk, along with some scientific magazines. I am going to try to focus my posts until then on the topics that I will update, but a little detour here, but which might be something that I will expand on in the coming update, related to recent posts. My essay is full of energy concepts, and several are here. In the end, it is about energy surplus and how fast it can be used, whether it is an organism or civilization. In producing work, how fast the energy is used relates to the power issue.

How much energy is available to be exploited, and how efficiently it can be harvested and transported, is critical for determining how much energy surplus can be generated. How efficiently that energy can be turned into work, and how fast, relates to the power concept. Technology is key, whether it is the electron transport chain in the mitochondria membrane, a mainmast’s strength, or how sturdily engineered an automobile or rocket engine is. The more power generated, the more and faster work can be produced, and horsepower has been the unit of measure since horses were the primary source of work.

Today, Boeing is building the most powerful rocket ever, for a Mars mission. Brian is the first person ever asked to ride one of those. For white science and technology, that is as powerful as it gets. Of course, for Godzilla, that is a primitive way to get around in space.

Power in the political sense is related, but instead of directing energy, it is directing energy-empowered people. In a world of scarcity, it is all about who has the power, which is really about who directs the energy.


I’ll get into some of the pros and cons of energy sources and practices in coming posts.

Best,

Wade

Edited June 16, 2016 by Wade Frazier

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

On energy sources, the number one energy source for our planet is the Sun, with a bullet. While there are scientists who argue against the Big Bang, and I am far from certain that the theory is correct (when the ETs finally come out in the open, we can ask them ), I won’t challenge it. Who would even take me seriously?

I’ll buy that our solar system formed from an accretion disk less than five billion years ago, and that fusion powers the Sun and will for several more billion years before it becomes a red giant then a white dwarf. The Sun provides all the energy that warms the planets, moons, and the like. Mercury and Venus are too hot, Mars too cold, and Earth is just right and kept its water. The remnants of former stars comprise Earth, including the radioactive elements that warm Earth’s interior. So, either the current star or former stars provide all the energy that powers Earth’s dynamics, including its ecosystems, which are almost solely based on captured sunlight.

Cosmic rays and other stellar interlopers provide negligible levels of energy. While some major scientific figures challenged the materialistic religion of our Epoch, and others challenged the idea that “space” is empty, those few of us who pursued what is sometimes called “free energy” discovered in the course of our adventures that technologies extracting energy from that “emptiness” have existed for generations. While I have also generated something like the energy myself, with my consciousness, the masses do not have practical access to that energy, nor do the life forms that we share the planet with seem to have access to that energy. We are all dependent on the Sun. Here is to the Sun.

Best,

Wade

Edited June 16, 2016 by Wade Frazier

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

As I write about the role of energy, there is always the tension between data and theories, and when I get to FE, it would be healthy to recall the tension between the data from new technologies and the prevailing theories. The technology and data has long led the theories. There is robust data that is still generations ahead of the theorists, who ignore the data and technology as if they do not exist, and that is for very public technologies, not the stuff sequestered in Godzilla’s Golden Hoard. A great delusion is that the mainstream endlessly seeks the novel and cutting edge. It doesn’t, which is why it is the “mainstream.”

That captured sunlight powers all ecosystems, and with exception of geothermal and nuclear power (which is energy from former stars), captured sunlight powers all civilizations. Even hydroelectric power comes from captured sunlight as it taps the Sun-powered hydrological cycle. All of the hydrocarbon fossil fuels are based on captured ancient sunlight, whether it is oil, gas, or coal.

But before humanity appeared, the only available energy of significance was that captured within the lifetimes of the organisms that captured the sunlight, and the processes of digesting those organisms after they died. Humanity radically changed the game, but life engaged in numerous innovations that allowed humanity to appear on the scene, going back to the earliest life on Earth and how it farmed chemical energy and used it to split hydrogen atoms and strip electrons from other atoms and use those electrons and protons to power life’s processes. Enzymes were critical innovations, speeding up chemical reactions by millions and even billions of times. The structures of life at the molecular level are incredible in their complexity and function, and people can be forgiven for thinking that it was no accident. Einstein didn’t think that it was.

The glorious “accident” of symbiosis of an archaean and bacterium led to complex life, but complex and simple cells co-existed for more than a billion years before complex cells learned to team up and create complex life. At the mitochondrial level, the energy flows are the equivalent of lightning bolts, and complex cells burn up energy, pound-for-pound, 100,000 times as fast as the Sun produces it. So, great energy miracles predated the appearance of humans on the scene by billions of years.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Early in the journey of life on Earth, some organisms decided that other organisms could be their source of energy, and grazing and predation were born. Then those grazed and preyed upon developed defensive strategies, and life’s arms war was on. It long predated the Cambrian Explosion; the Cambrian Explosion was only when it became visible to the naked eye. In the ocean, the food chain’s base is completely devoured, as in the ocean, it is truly eat or be eaten. On land, less than 20% of plant matter is eaten, although, as usual, humans radically changed the game, finding a way to consume everything.

Each organism has its energy niche, and if that niche disappears or the organism is displaced, it will die. Species go extinct when they no longer have their niche, and more than 99.9% of all species have gone extinct.

After the Cambrian Explosion, it was not long before plants began to colonize land, if not before the Cambrian Explosion, and about 40 million years later, along came animals, to eat those plants, and along came predators behind them, and the cycle began anew.

Those that played the energy game the best survived, while those that didn’t went extinct. Mass extinctions cleared biomes, and what usually happened after mass extinctions was that previously marginal creatures rose to dominance, in what scientists later called Golden Ages of those creatures.

The first land plants and land animals needed water to reproduce, so they had to be in wet environments. Later, seed plants and amniotes appeared (with animals always coming later, as they could only eat the plants at first), which did not need water to reproduce, and they rose to terrestrial dominance, along with arthropods.

Mammals and dinosaurs arose from reptilian stock about the same time, with the path to their rise paved by the greatest mass extinction ever. Dinosaurs were highly superior at playing the energy game and mammals were driven to the fringes, being nocturnal burrowers during the reign of dinosaurs, with the largest mammal when that bolide hit being about raccoon size. Dinosaurs have undergone revision in my lifetime from being slow, lumbering, stupid beasts to being fast, nimble, and smart. Some smart dinosaurs had hands, and if not for that bolide event, Earth might host space-faring dinosaurs today instead of space-faring humans. It is now thought that many bird behaviors were dinosaur behaviors, such as brooding their eggs, how they care for their young, and forming breeding colonies.

When the field was swept clean by that bolide event, mammals were merely the latest marginal group to benefit from a mass extinction, and they quickly rose to dominance. It took them about 25 million years to reach the maximum size that the ecosystems could support, and they stayed that large for 40 million years, until humans came along. For plants and animals, size was a great survival strategy, until something came along and plundered the energy stores of their bodies. And that is where humans come into the picture, the greatest energy users in Earth’s history. The human journey is quite a tale, it is coming and, as always, it is primarily an energy tale.

Best,

Wade

Edited June 18, 2016 by Wade Frazier

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

The most important innovation in biology in the past 150 million years was the development of flowering plants. One hypothesis today is that the browsing pressure of dinosaurs led to it, but whatever the cause, flowering plants radically changed the game from the previous 300 million years of existence and instead of defending against animals, they laid out a banquet for them, as a way to lower their reproductive costs (measured in energy, as always), using animals as a kind of reproductive enzyme.

When flowering plants appeared, it initiated radical changes in animals, as they coevolved to take advantage of the new energy source. Ornithischians had their Golden Age when flowering plants appeared, becoming the dominant dinosaurian browsers. Hive insects, such as ants and bees, appeared with the rise of flowering plants. Mammals were nocturnal burrowers, living on the margins, but when the Mesozoic canopy began producing an ecosystem fed by pollen, nectar, and fruit, some mammals crept from their burrows and began living in the canopy, one of them became the first primate, and the path to humanity began. It really began with the beginning of life on Earth, or the Big Bang or other Creation event, if we want to go back far enough, but when primates appeared, it was the beginning of a line whose branch led to all of our cousins, and us.

The first primate fossil found so far is after the dinosaurs’ demise, but molecular evidence suggests that primates are about 80 million years old. The simian line split from other primates maybe 60 million years ago, and around 30 million years ago, in the cooling Earth, apes appeared, which began the descent from the trees. Fruit was still their staple, as it still is for most great apes today, but ground-living provided new energy sources.

Mammals had relatively large brains from the beginning, and primates had relatively large mammalian brains from the beginning, and both are thought to be due to processing more environmental stimuli. That great Darwinian principle seems to apply to primate brains, in that a biological feature was drafted into new service as the need/opportunity arose, and “intelligence” conferred advantages to primates. Just as those monkeys that left the canopy for the ground and became apes may well have been marginal monkeys pushed to the margins, the apes that left the rainforest may well have been loser apes. Undefeatable gorillas got the heart of the rainforest, the smaller chimps got the fringes, where they have to knuckle-walk several miles a day to eat, and some loser chimps left the rainforest altogether, living in the woodland fringes of the rainforest. Those losers eventually learned to walk upright, as they had to travel so far to eat.

Those freed hands led to advanced toolmaking, new food sources were exploited, and that line’s brain began to grow. Not only did advanced tools help procure new energy supplies, but one of the most interesting recent controversies is just when the human line began to control fire. It was the greatest innovation of the early human line, and even today, in our “sophisticated” societies, they are all still based on the control of fire. The debate will outlive me, but it seems quite likely that cooked foods propelled the dramatic growth of the human line’s brain, which culminated in humanity.

Behavioral modernity appeared in humans about 60,000 years ago (Michael stated that that was when humans became ensouled), give or take, and it looks like some marginal humans left Africa, probably driven to the edge, as usual, and they conquered Earth. Their mastery of language and unprecedented toolkit proved an irresistible force, and they quickly drove all competing humans and the easy meat that fueled humanity’s expansion to extinction.

For survival on Earth, the energy game trumps all, as it always has, and humans simply became Earth’s most prodigious practitioner of the energy game. As the easy meat of the Golden Age of the Hunter-Gatherer ran out, humans beyond sub-Saharan Africa became territorial again, and violent intergroup conflict became the signature behavior of Stone Age hunter-gatherers, with about a quarter of them dying violently. It is by far the most violent phase of the human journey.

Thousands of years after the easy meat was gone, in a few places on Earth conducive to it, women began to domesticate plants as an adjunct to their gathering duties. It was in regions where it was warm, with seasonal rains, in which some plants stored their energy to survive the seasons. Those stores are what those humans exploited to become sedentary, which led to civilization.

In those pre-civilized horticultural societies, women attained unprecedented status, and for the first time in at least ten million years in the human line, their societies became matrilocal, which broke up the violent male gangs, and those were humanity’s most peaceful preindustrial societies. This is not the only example of it in the human line. When some isolated chimps had their food supply double when gorillas left the area, the females and non-dominant males ended the practice of violent male dominance, and those societies are more peaceful than any human society has ever been.

In those early days of the Domestication Revolution, a familiar pattern emerged, as migrating horticultural peoples drove hunter-gatherers to the margins, and hunter-gatherer men to extinction. Civilization is a human invention, and it appeared wherever the circumstances were conducive to it, and all of the first civilizations began peacefully, similar to the Golden Age of the Hunter-Gatherer. It was only when the energy ran out that it got violent.

In another familiar pattern, human energy practices were never sustainable, and all early civilizations collapsed as they ran out of energy. The human journey has been defined by reaching the technological prowess and social organization to exploit a new energy source and plunder it to exhaustion, which led to a collapse, and when a new energy source was discovered and exploited, another brief Golden Age ensued, which was always followed by a collapse as the energy ran out. We are on the brink of The Big One, which might take out most complex life and even humanity, before it is all over.

What seems to be the most inexhaustible energy source of all – the background energy of the space-time continuum – was tapped by humanity before I was born. Elites appeared with civilization, as usurpers, and they will disappear in the Fifth Epoch, and they know it, which is why they have so avidly kept that technology to themselves and have wiped out any independent efforts to develop it. Their antics are capitalism on steroids.

In coming posts, I will get into some of the details of humanity’s sources and uses of energy.

Best,

Wade

Edited June 18, 2016 by Wade Frazier

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I made posts on where the energy comes from. What does life do with that energy? All life basically makes two decisions: use that energy for building, or burn it to power its biology. In economics parlance, it is the decision of investment or consumption. All life on Earth gets its power from ATP, and my upcoming essay update gets into the details of ATP generation. That proton-powered ATP “turbine” is very similar to the proton-powered flagella that bacteria use to move around. That is using that energy to generate power. Moving that flagellum is the simplest example of using that energy to produce power, and the basics do not change for the movement of any animal, as the protein actin is what they all use to move, which is a contraction of fibers using the power of ATP.

The other primary use of that energy is to weld atoms together to build molecules and body parts, and arguably the greatest feat is reproduction. Reproduction is a great energetic feat, and for most animals, the female takes on that task. A woman’s “sweet spot” for reproduction is about 25 years of age, when she has the energy surplus to fund that mighty accomplishment, and her eggs are also at peak genetic viability.

When a forest is young and growing, most of its energy is used to grow, to build trunk and leaf infrastructure and race for the sky. Once a forest has matured, then most of its energy is used to maintain its processes, moving nutrients around and burning them, etc. Again, civilizations make the same decisions. The first problem to be solved is how to get the energy, and then comes the decision of what to do with it. Early civilizations use their energy to build themselves, and after that problem is solved, most of the energy is burned to power the civilization. About 90% of the wood imported into ancient cities was burned, Rome most famously, which had a fleet of ships scouring the Mediterranean for firewood for Rome’s baths.

Only when the basics are met can organisms or civilizations explore new horizons. Necessity has been called the mother of invention, and that seems largely true. Key innovations in the history of life on Earth seemed to be responses to crises, such as the low oxygen around the Permian extinction spurring air-sac breathing in archosaurs. It is the most efficient breathing apparatus among vertebrates, and is partly why birds can fly.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

The USA’s highway system is a good example of what to do with that energy. Only about a third of the energy used in the USA’s highway system powers the cars. The rest is devoted to making the cars and making and maintaining the roads. Roughly half of the USA’s energy consumption produces work, and the other half produces heat. High-quality materials are also energy intensive. Building out the infrastructure of civilization, maintaining it, and running it requires huge energy inputs, obviously much more so in industrial civilizations than agrarian ones. And almost none of the energy in industrial civilizations goes into human mouths. In the USA, dietary calories amount to little more than 1% of American energy use, and machines produce more than 99.9% of all work performed.

Machines are vastly more effective at performing work than humans, which is why industrialization ended slavery. You can’t ride a slave-borne palanquin to the Moon. Industrialization was responsible for the demographic transition. Who wants to live in world in which your chances of living to adulthood are about 50%? Who wants to live in a world where your chances of dying violently are about 25%? Who wants to live in a world where your chances of becoming as slave are high, or where you could look forward to a life of backbreaking peasant drudgery until you were too old to do it anymore and ready to die (at about 40 years of age, if you were lucky)?

Everybody from the earlier Epochs would have wanted the fruits of industrialization, and it was the energy surplus from fossil fuels that made it all possible. As I was telling a pal on a hike yesterday (pics here), when asked, people generally would like to live in a rural environment with urban amenities. With FE, that becomes feasible for all humans, not just the fortunate few.

Time to begin my busy day, and we’ll see if I can muster another post today.

Best,

Wade

Edited June 20, 2016 by Wade Frazier