It’s not about the kings and khans.
The QFT
When you think of an electron, what do you see? Is it a little ball zipping around in space, perhaps even orbiting some nucleus in neat loops, like a tiny planet around a star? Or is it a cloud? A wave?
The mental model we use to understand the world matters, even though each one is almost always an oversimplification of the truth. It helps our minds intuit the unintuitive. But each model has its limits: how can things be both a particle and a wave at the same time? My mind struggles to see how a ball could simultaneously also be a pool of water.
This is why I love the Quantum Field Theory (QFT): it peers deeper into reality, and gives a more understandable analogy, a better mental model, for many purposes. It neatly combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics.
In QFT, particles are simply excitations in more fundamental fields. For instance, that electron is a ripple in the electromagnetic field. This allows us to gain a deeper, more unified view of reality: no longer are there magical spheres flying in confusing patterns and teleporting over barriers. The underlying field is where the stage upon which the particle performs, providing the fundamental laws and predictability (to an extent).
(You should know by now that I’m not a physicist, or generally knowledgeable or careful with my analogies. This is just a thought experiment. So follow along and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. )
Where’s the particle now? (Image credit: DEREK LEINWEBER)
Comparing to the Water Analogy
In my last piece, I discussed the analogy between power and water. It helped me make my point succinctly: power obeys simple laws, often shaped by the generation and distribution of wealth. It sees no good or evil, and bends to no one’s will — a man who built a dam can keep much more water, but the water won’t spare the man when it comes gushing out at the dam’s collapse. The water doesn’t give a dam.
It was a simple analogy, yet it conveyed many of my thoughts in a consistent framework. I intend to expand on that analogy and civil engineering further in the future. For now, let’s take this back to the quantum realm. In a way, a flat body of water could be compared to a field, where ripples and waves are the excitations of that field.
The PFT
Introducing the Power Field Theory.
In this analogy, power is a fundamental field in a society — it’s always there regardless of what structure, faith, or -ism a society has. It’s a direct product of human myth-making, which is to say that it’s ubiquitous. This field, like quantum ones, is rarely tranquil. It’s filled with fluctuations and complex interactions.
People’s power, on the other hand, are the excitations in this field. They’re temporary, localized incarnations of an underlying reality. Hence, an office worker might be a little ripple, wielding his power to gain access to food, resources, and other pleasures. Powerful people, then, would be big waves, capable of drastically impacting much more around them. But they’re all just waves. Each inevitably dissipates, and that energy is then redistributed to form new waves.
To better understand where the waves come from, and where they go, we should look beyond the waves; we should examine the underlying field. I’m sure the first kings and emperors of the world had incredible tales of their rises and falls, but they all rose and fell, sometimes repeating each others’ stories, because of something more fundamental, such as the technological shifts like the agricultural revolution that set the stage of larger communities and enhanced mobility and communication allowing for a small group of elites to control large swaths of land and sea. Given these conditions, on a macro scale, history can appear almost predictable — and that’s a good sign if you’re looking to establish a theory. A theory should explain the past and predict the future.
The fascinating part about PFT is that the field, unlike its quantum counterparts, can have changing rules. I will elaborate on this point further in a future post.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same. Boundaries shift, new players step in, but power always finds a place to rest its head.” — Shepherd
History books, which are often commissioned or endorsed by those in power, perhaps unsurprisingly focus far too much on the personalities. “[A] did something bad to [B], and [B] is a proud people who is done tolerating [A]’s [insert action here], so [B] had to go to a just war. Because that’s the only way to restore justice, or die trying. All hail the great leader [B_1].”
I love those stories as much as the next person, but they’re often geared more toward stirring up emotions (the carrier) and teaching a lesson (the payload) than revealing bigger trends and predicting the future — what a useful theory is meant to do. What’s behind the stories is more interesting than what’s in them. Until we see past the zipping particles, our ability to understand the field remains limited.
It’s not about the kings and khans.
