From the Editor

Controlling Power

By:  David Deschesne

Editor/Publisher, Fort Fairfield Journal, August 10, 2013

All energy comes from the sun. Even radioactive material had to have been created in the belly of a star somewhere in the universe at some point in time. We are all literally made out of dust that came from stars.

Now, the energy that we ‘burn’ to do the things we do all came to us from our sun. Sunlight is used by plants in the process of photosynthesis to create simple sugars for the plant or tree to grow (oh, and for you carbon dioxide-hating environmentalists out there, the plants also consume carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen in return. So, CO₂ isn’t really the problem Al Gore has led you to believe, but I digress).

After the plant grows we either eat it directly or eat an animal that has eaten it and thus derive its energy. The energy that came from the sun gets transferred from one entity to another, obeying the First Law of Thermodynamics—The Conservation of Matter and Energy.

Burning wood for heat releases the sun’s energy that was stored in the wood and can be used to heat our home or cook some food. The same goes for fuel oil and natural gas—both deriving their energy from the decomposition of plants that at one time gathered and stored energy from the sun. (There is stuff called abiotic oil that is found deep in the earth that is made from other processes not related to carbon-based plants and animals, but all those elements ultimately came from stars.)

The sun’s energy is very powerful. If it weren’t for our atmosphere and the intricate fine-tuning of the ozone layer and ionosphere life as we know it would have never been able to develop because Earth would be a perpetual charred cinder. Even in outer space, astronauts have to protect themselves from the sun’s energy when space-walking and their ships also have to be insulated because the raw power from the sun, uncontrolled, would destroy them in very short time.

The lesson here is that of control over power. The sun has the ability to destroy if its power is unchecked by protective devices. Even in its miniscule packets of energy that are contained in plant-based life such as grass and trees, the sun’s energy can be destructive. Consider a forest fire or house fire that is burning unchecked. Devastation will result when the power of the sun is ignited here on Earth and left to its own devices.

The same can be said for gasoline engines, stored natural or propane gas and any other compound we burn to harness energy. Energy can be very useful when controlled, but very destructive when not.

By extension, energy that is burned within the physiology of a human body, when coupled with consciousness can either be very creative or extremely destructive.

We can choose to use the power we glean from the sun from the food we eat to exert our labor to paint a beautiful painting, build a house, wash a car or help our neighbor. We can likewise choose to use that same human labor energy to tear up a painting, burn down a house, smash up a car or do bodily harm to our neighbor.

Thus is the nature of power. Left uncontrolled, power has the tendency to be destructive. Even at the microscopic level we can observe unchecked power destroying things. Consider, for example, when steel is rusting it is actually “burning” as water and oxygen combine with iron to turn it into an oxide (rust). If allowed to remain in that condition long enough, the solid iron will ‘burn’ to an ash heap of iron oxide. This is vividly described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as ‘entropy.’

This is the rule: Unchecked power ultimately destroys and disintegrates that which it interacts with. Now, let’s move on to another form of power: the police power (you just knew I was going to get there, didn’t you?).

Like the controlled explosion in an internal combustion engine, or the controlled flame in a wood- or oil- burning firebox, the police power is a necessary and useful part of our daily lives. In the aforementioned paragraph on how our consciousness can choose to use its human energy for constructive or destructive means, we do need some sort of policing mechanism in society to keep in check those who would choose to use their power destructively. In that respect, we absolutely must have a police presence to maintain and control the conscious energy of a collective society—just as one would have paint on iron or wood to prevent its decay. (This is not necessarily advocating for a coercive, government-controlled police power; I’m using police in its generic form and it applies to private security and voluntarist societies here, as well.)

With that said, the police power—and government power in general—are forms of power that constantly need to be kept in check or else they will grow to a point that they consume and destroy the society they are intended to preserve. That takes the application of energy from the citizenry to watch over their government and police and not allow them to get out of control. Unfortunately, most people are not interested enough to put forth the effort to watch their government and its police. They would rather sit and watch TV, go to a ball game, drink beers with their buddies, or rely on political parties, hoping somebody else is watching that raging fire that is government and its police power.

These apathetic people would certainly not allow a gas leak to spill fuel all over their car’s engine, or a hole in the firebox of their oil furnace to go unrepaired. If they did, their car or house would be destroyed and they would be out that investment and the use thereof.

Isn’t our society just like that house or car? Isn’t it a place where people live that needs to have the power within it maintained and controlled so it doesn’t end up destroying itself with the uncontrolled burn of raw, unchecked power? I should say, the parallels are very similar.

So, why is it when someone like me comes along and starts watching government and the police, then reporting on when they start to get out of control—that is, the fire is burning outside the firebox—I have to be called a kook, or my ideas and writings are “way out there?” It’s because those people have been taught by the government, through the mainstream media, to label me as such in order for the government to preserve its own power base and continue to monopolize more of that power to itself.

Such is the nature of power when coupled with consciousness. Power alone consumes its surroundings without bias, prejudice or forethought. When coupled with consciousness, the consciousness attempts to monopolize power to itself in order to control and subjugate the entities around it in order to gain more power. Left unchecked, that use of power will, like all unchecked power, completely destroy all that it touches. Surely, the most apathetic and politically disinterested person can agree no good can come from that.

More Editorials by David Deschesne