In A Nutshell
Dharma Dynamics brings forward a unique theory of morality and human behavior. While acknowledging the importance and contributions of cognitive science, Dharma Dynamics takes a different tack. Here the infusion of thermodynamics with systems of personality development provides a psychology rather than a physiology of human consciousness.
The overall theme is that of a mechanical system applied to the energy dynamics within the psyche. This brings the focus upon the usefulness of work by the system and the personal value of the resultant product, behavior. Thus, psychic force and energy take on explicit definition and application.
Entropy is introduced as an opposing, complementary force to dharma. Together they affect an idiosyncratic decision-making process that assesses value to resultant behavior. Additionally, the theory then extends these principles of individual personality development to assert that the same fundamental thermal dynamic holds true for groups and even cognitively created abstract entities such as contractual agreements.
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Energy and the Life Process
As a small retail options trader, I avail myself of more financial news in retirement than I ever thought would remotely interest me just a few years ago. Last year (2021) I came across a provocative article about the value of money.
The author developed the thesis about debt and money in relation to its value. As expected, the comparisons pitted fiat money against precious metals and crypto currencies. But what really got my attention was the statement that “Any monetary system is governed by the laws of thermodynamics and can be analyzed as a thermal machine.”1
Think about that for a moment. That’s an astounding statement! Noizat’s thesis postulates that an abstract entity, a monetary system, a thing created and formulated in human consciousness, transforms into an assessment of value of all things in our world-reality. And further, that process can be thermally analyzed the same way as any functioning machine.
From there it was a dive into the energy field of a vast digital universe, a binary world of 1s and 0s that can create items to store and release energy. The Mendelbrot Set and crypto coins are examples of such computer generated entities that act this way. Rest assured that although they are creations by a computer they are very real things and, like your dreams, you can’t touch them.
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It all got me thinking again about human consciousness and manifest behavior as a thermal system. It was something I hypothesized decades ago that concluded with a value-based nature of behavior. That dated summation seemed most analogous to how Noizat postulates determining value in money.
I’ve always thought of the physical universe as replete with energy and continually active; a dynamic, contiguous rhythm we humans have yet to fully comprehend here on Earth. And yoked to that thought are the words of Sri Aurobindo: “Everything in this or any universe can be rendered into terms of consciousness. There is nothing that cannot be known.”3 Together they inspired a quest to determine the energy dynamics within human consciousness that assess personal value to resultant behavior.
Physicists speak of energy in the phenomenal universe as both known and dark. They understand that energy dynamics, its coalescence, storage and transformations occur continuously within planets, moons, nebulae, stars and galaxies. Through the years, NASA photos from Hubble, and more recently from the Webb telescope, have shown the beauty and intense transactional nature of astrophysical events like galaxy formation, quasars, supernovas, black holes and gamma-ray bursts. In a relative sense and much closer to home, it is not at all unlike the awe-inspiring transactional display of stored energy released during violent volcanic eruptions or earthquakes.
As an academic discipline, Psychology has its beginnings with Wilhelm Wundt, and thus equally and rightfully straddles both physiology and philosophy. And so, it is no small wonder that the ensuing foundational personality theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung spoke broadly, if not abstractly, of psychic energy and psychic force.
Every individual inherently taps into a boundless universe of consciousness by way of the psyche where energy can be stored and transacted. Inherited energy is initially and uniquely provided to the psyche along with DNA creation. Individuality is thus determined immediately at conception.
Physicians monitor the physiological growth of the fetus and track the more immediate and noticeable releases of stored energy such a prenatal heartbeat and physiological development with ultrasound images; and then into birth as transacted by an infant’s first breath, and then further by the action of suckling.
As the autonomic nervous system altogether activates, the human individual as a mechanical integrated system now becomes fully functional for a lifetime of affirmative growth. Just as the physiological determinates of DNA are set in motion, so too are the psychological determinates of the psyche where the energy dynamics function always for the betterment of an individual throughout the life process.
Noizat’s thesis of money plays nicely as a psychological analogy to the life process and the development of personality. Psychological systems can now be thought of in thermodynamic and mechanical terms; and, as such, are things that also produce something of value, behavior.
A deep look into the system of personality development reveals that it is within the human psyche where the energy dynamics of subjectivity and objectivity are initially provided and transacted. The action stimulates an autonomous appraisal regarding the overall operational efficiency of the system which is regarded as the psychological health of the individual. That psychic dynamism then generates the criterion of a feedback mechanism for affirmative personal growth throughout the life process.
As the ego develops and matures, this thermal feedback dynamic acquires a unique transformational awareness of the self that is subjectively conditioned by one’s personal history. As an operational ensemble, this is known to be the foundational architecture of one’s persona. It is one’s projected countenance and character derived from previous personal decision and manifest behavior.
In this way, the more one comes to recognize a more efficient use of available psychic energy the more productive or personally rewarding the life process becomes. Likewise, any demurral, retardation or breakdown of efficiency will inhibit, and therefore lessen, the amount of available energy for productive work thus resulting in less rewarding behavior.
Much has been attributed to Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum and the ethereal, transcendent numinous character of human consciousness. Theologians celebrate the omniscient propensity of the Holy Spirit to establish morality while philosophers argue a divine life force that properly guides human awareness to ethical and proper social behavior.
As individuals evolve through the life process, personal history and memory supply the continual flow, storage and transactional release of energy during the transition from the past into the present tense, and into projections of times yet to be. The alignment of individual intentionality with the inherent energic impulse from dharma within the psyche determines the value of resultant behavior in real time. Dharma provides both a window to and an expression of correct behavior. It is the quintessential psychological energy dynamic of, and for, the human individual.
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1. https://medium.com/@pierre.noizat/money-and-energy-e65399dcb09d
2. The Mendelbrot Set is produced as a pure mathematical calculation of programmed iterations at necessarily very high computer speeds. The energy supplied to produce the Set is then stored within the Set until released through visible color rotations, for example. Likewise, the energy supplied to mine and produce crypto coins is then stored within the currency until released most typically during transactions of commerce.
3. Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga II, Tome One, Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1958, p.254.
