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We normally think of phase shift as transition from one stable state to another.  But what of the transition from stable to unstable.  Many phase shifts are sudden,  quantum or just very fast, such as water molecules turning to ice crystals.   But for someone who has lived through a political revolution can tell you, the unstable state can sometimes last longer that one would like.  Nevertheless, unstable states tend toward stable states, almost by definition.   An unstable state that lasted for a million years would sound like an oxymoron, or a contradiction in terms.

We tend to equate unstable with undesirable.  Certainly political revolutions and physical explosions, for example, have their downsides.  Nevertheless, stable states by themselves do not indicate a “higher” value than unstable.  Slavery, for example, was a stable state for thousands of years in the history of humanity; and there were aspects of slavery that worked well, in system-wide terms; otherwise it wouldn’t have been stable.  If we are looking at stable states as “stuck”  states, as in the case of slavery, we must look at what is the glue that keeps the state stable, as a system, and not just “one part of the system vs. another”.  In a stable state there is no such thing as one part of the system vs. another.

In the case of slavery, for example, we must ask, not why was it “good” for slaves – because in very obvious ways it was not.  We must rather ask, what was it that provided some advantage for each component of the system and for the system as a whole, which kept it stable.  Stability by its nature implies and requires that there is an interest and a stake for all parts and for the system as a whole, otherwise the state, by definition, is not stable.

For example, it is said that ancient Sparta was comprised of 90% slave and 10% free.  How is this possible, you might ask.  Could 1 person in a room of 10 people dominate the other 9 for several hundred years?   There must have been some advantage for the other 9 over some unstable state.  That is not to say over some other stable state.  That is a different question.  Stable states are not adjacent to one another, as water is not adjacent to steam; there is an unstable state in between.   Therefore, in the case of slavery, the slaves (as well as the slave masters) did not really have access to comparing one stable state to another, in order to chose.  And this is an unavoidable dilemma in the matter of state change – that to go from one stable state to some “more desirable” state, there must be an unstable state in between, and therefore experientially, the comparison is between the current stable state, and the adjacent unstable state.

What might be the system-wide advantage of slavery in ancient Sparta that would keep the system glued together?  Consider, for example, someone living in a small “apartment” in Downtown Sparta.  Such apartments consisted of basically four walls enclosing say 150 square feet, a door and a window, and some crude furniture.  Let us say that for the total number of people living in Sparta to live in such housing, would require 10 people living in such a space.  Would the owner of the house in this very patriarchal society tolerate 9 other people cluttering up his space?  Probably not.  But if those people represented wealth, instead of clutter, then he would be much more likely to accept so many people in so small a space.  (I’m making up these numbers.)  Likewise, in terms of expense to feed all of these people, the head of the household could calculate fairly reliably how much service or income that he would receive from how many mouths that he had to feed, and plan the size of his household accordingly.  For the slaves, on the other hand, what kept it together, besides the use of  force (which alone not have the capacity to keep systems stable) was that there was access to having a roof over their heads, food, and a defined place in society.

This line of reasoning opens up a huge inquiry into looking at history from the model of state change, one which we shall be diving into in future posts.

Then, there is a school of thought that says that intelligence and even thought content actually exists in the spaces between the dendrite connections, and that more content is accompanied by the growth of more connections, not more neurons. An interesting play to think about as you watch this video.

Rare cases:

1. Extreme unstable states, particularly explosions, such as TNT.  This may not correspond exactly to what physicists and chemists would refer to as phase transition, but for the purposes of looking at phase shift in the human sphere it will be very useful.  This is rare by definition, because highly unstable states tend, by definition, to resolve themselves to more stable states.  Less stable states always, also by definition, tend to resolve to progressively more stable states, unless energy is either released or added.
2. Mass in a state of fission – Nuclear generators, nuclear explosions.  That is to say, phase change from matter to energy.
3. Mass in a state of fusion. – Stars, fusion reactors
4. Sub-atomic particles in isolation. – Inside of particle accelerators.

Only once:

1. Various phases of the Universe from the moment of the Big Bang up to about 2000 years after.
   1. Nano and micro seconds after, various incomprehensible phase shifts.
   2. During the first 2000 years when the Universe was so hot that the sub-atomic particles could not coalesce to form protons, neutrons and electrons.  The “Quark Soup” state.

So far only theoretically, and maybe never:

1. In 10  ^{2700+some really big number} of years from now when the Universe will completely run out of gas (if it does) and all matter will simply evaporate into nothingness.
2. Various states leading up to #1.
3. Various scenarios pertaining to the ultimate fate of the Universe.
4. The various states immediately after the Big Bang.
5. Phases of matter in and around a Black Hole.
6. Alterations of time in and around a Black Hole and immediately “before” “during” and after the Big Bang
7. The collapse of the Universe back into the Singularity.

We will add more as we go along.  Some we could also call arcane or esoteric states, in terms of human understanding, such as Quantum state, Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking The main thing to get here is that we should not restricted ourselves to just using an ice-to-water-to-vapor metaphor, however rich that metaphor might be.  State change for humanity could be every bit as exotic and intellectually demanding as some of the examples above, and possibly more so.  Or it might be something really simple.  Just the study of all of these physical phase shifts is exhilarating and transforming when we start to explore where these metaphors might lead in the world of humanity.

Phase Changes of Matter

so it’s probably a good idea to spend some time on that subject.  This is not rocket science, we’ve all learned this in the 8th grade, give or take a few grades, but it’s worth reviewing to have it fresh in mind when looking at what real state change, or system phase change would look like in the human sphere.

State change is a more or less vernacular term for the more technical term phase transition.   The link in this diagram to the Wikipedia article is worth spending some time on.  Phase transition is a complex business going way beyond simply going from solid to liquid to gas by raising the temperature.  While we don’t want to get too technical, or too attached to following the metaphor exactly, a good going over the various state changes/phase transitions in physical systems in this Wikipedia article is extremely valuable.   For one thing, we may want to remind ourselves that phase transition in the human sphere may be more complex than exists in any popular literature (or any literature at all, for that matter – I doubt if there is any “technical” literature in this arena), and considering the various complexities in physical systems may give us food for thought on the particulars.  It is also good to consider that phase transitions are not inevitable, and that not all phase transition is “good”, that is to say, what we would necessarily want.

I’m not very familiar with Andrew Cohen other than this and a few other videos, and I’m certainly not partisan to his or any other methodology or system, nor am I against it, rather the terms he uses are valuable in this particular part of the conversation on state change.

“These times of change call for a new model of leadership. Not just leadership to overcome the moral and financial crisis, but leadership related to the energy- and environment crisis as well.”

So begins the introduction to a website that has the potential to cause major state change on the planet.  When high level leaders start to explore this business/leadership model it will cause a extreme leverage in the matter shifting global perspectives and results.  Send this link to anyone you know who is in a high level business or leadership position, including accademics, politicians, labor leaders, etc.

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam: Jensen (eng)

So what is state change?  State change is different from transformation or enlightenment, context or paradigm shift.  When H2O goes from ice to water to steam, or when a tadpole turns into a frog, it is not just the context, or the paradigm or the model that alters, but the very form of a substance, such that the new state is barely recognizable in terms of the old.  What we are here to consider is what would a state change for the planet look like, is there a way to affect it, change it, speed it up, slow it down, and what we might like that state change to be; what are the signs of it, what could we imagine the unimaginable to be, what have people already said and written about it, and what has yet to be said and written.   This conversation is intended to cause an impact, of unknown  and unpredictable size and consequences.