What do we mean by human energy? And how does this “energy” relate to cultivating humanity’s collective potential?
Classical definitions of energy focus on physical systems, governed by the laws of thermodynamics, to explain the capacity of a system to do work. Imagine a ball rolling down a hill. Here, gravity does work on the ball, converting potential energy into kinetic energy (minus some work lost to the heat of friction). What could this possibly have to do with human energy? Could we possibly mean the conversion of the potential energy of humanity into useful work for ourselves and the planet? Seems like a metaphor…
And yet, biological and evolutionary systems do something special. And humans are a special case of life’s ability to do work. Life performs chemical and mechanical work – a process known as metabolism – in order to stay alive in the first place. But that is not all. Life evolves. Living systems adapt, utilizing information about themselves and their environment to increase their complexity through genetic evolution. Much scientific and intellectual effort has been poured into trying to figure out the spark, the secret sauce that distinguishes living systems from non-living systems. And while there is more to be discovered, we’ve clearly learned that for life, information guides energy and metabolism to take on meaning and significance. Staying alive, and the biological energy that makes life possible, is of deep informational significance to living systems.
Enter human energy. Yes we do physical, chemical, and biological work. But we take information, meaning, and significance to a whole new level. We don’t merely care about staying alive – we are moved, ethically, morally, and spiritually to do the work that enables us to flourish.
This is the essence of Human Energy. We seek to understand the scientific and social foundations that will enable our flourishing into the future.
Human energy powers our flourishing as a species. Drawing on our imaginative creativity, our compassion, and our capacity for conscious evolution, human energy does indeed represent a unique form of potential energy that can be understood through science and evolutionary theory. However, that is not all. Because human energy is about more than the energy needed for our immediate survival, it reflects our values, our ethical frameworks and systems of meaning-making. In other words, our art, music, literature, culture, religion – what we call the humanities – are the manifestations of human energy.
And perhaps most importantly, we have direct experience of this form of energy in our daily lives. Unlike physical or metabolic energy, which can seem abstract and conceptual, we all have the potential to experience human energy as a sense of being more than just alive, but alive and flourishing.
At HE, we’ve been focused on human energy as an umbrella concept for three emergent social phenomena: the technosocial dilemma, the third story, and the noosphere.
The technosocial dilemma reflects the social challenges we face, collectively as a species, resulting from the exponential pace of technological development. We seek to understand technology through evolutionary, biological, computational, and cultural lenses. The umbrella concept of human energy helps us make sense of technology as an energetically-powered, evolutionary process of increasing innovation. By understanding how this works, we stand a better chance of deploying technology for the greater good and at addressing unforeseen consequences.
The third story is an alternative, guiding narrative for humanity, a metanarrative, or integrative worldview. Whereas the third story seeks to include the best of religion (the first story), and science (the second story), the human energy concept helps explain how these stories are interdependent. The third story helps us see how there is meaning, purpose, and value in an integrated, evolutionary worldview; human energy powered imagination and compassion represent the leading edge of this narrative.
Lastly, the noosphere is the most recently evolved representation of the evolutionary process in human and planetary consciousness. Whereas the geosphere can be understood in terms of physical energy, and the biosphere understood in terms of physical energy as well as the metabolism of living beings, the noosphere must be understood in terms of human energy. The noosphere concept is perhaps the most elusive of these ideas.
So, is this just a metaphor? When we refer to an idea as “mere metaphor,” we intend it dismissively, perhaps acknowledging a poetic beauty, but ultimately eschewing any deeper meaning or significance. However, this attitude neglects the deeper meaning and significance of metaphor itself. Scientists have long used analogy to not only clarify ideas, but help develop and build novel theories and test hypotheses. The cognitive theorist Douglas Hofstatder refers to analogy as the “fuel for cognition” and as Lakoff and Johnson argued, metaphors are what “we live by.”
Metaphors can include both objective, clarifying intent, and a subjective, creative or poetic intent. Human energy is a metaphor in both senses. Human energy, as an umbrella concept, clarifies the energetic hierarchy that scaffolds social systems, on their psychological and biological underpinnings. Human energy also evokes what is possible for human flourishing: our felt sense of aliveness, through creativity and compassion. This latter, evocative sense aspect of human energy, relates to the process of innovation, and bringing something entirely new into being.
Creative innovation is the hallmark of biology. Innovation makes evolution possible. As it turns out, organisms are not only capable of evolution, but of fostering the conditions to increase the likelihood of evolutionary success. This concept, known as evolvability, is powered by latent energy in biological organisms and lineages. Evolvability brings entirely new forms of being into being. Could this be where biology and metaphor, science and the humanities, come together?
By evoking the possibility of something new through metaphor, human energy increases the likelihood of evolutionary success through conscious evolution. Mirroring prior evolutionary advances, this energy has the potential to bring about new forms of life.
To state the most radical hypothesis of human energy: when we feel metaphorically alive, the noosphere is biologically alive.
Human energy is potential energy for the development of the noosphere and humanity as a collective. Human energy is also something we experience: the excitement of a novel idea, the awe of a musical improvisation, and the joy of human connection. Human energy is by necessity, part science, part poetry and synergized by both. And we will need both, to write this new story, for the next chapter of humanity.