Two warriors stand on a dust whipped battlefield waiting to face each other in single combat, the fate of their respective sides hanging in the balance. Each side is aware of the warriors’ track records, they can see the warriors’ physical stature, they know and compare their equipment.
On one end of the field stands a scrawny boy whose most notable professional accomplishments include herding sheep and playing the harp. He’s brave at least – he volunteered for the battle despite the fact that his side’s leader attempted to dissuade him on account of his stature and inexperience. Rail-thin, he is bereft of all armor and holds only a slingshot and a few stones.
On the opposite side stands a genetic anomaly of a man. Terrifyingly tall, muscled and broad shouldered, his record on the battlefield is as storied as it is bloody. He is covered in armor head to toe and carries weapons that look to be built to cleave men in half.
Each side draws on their instincts, experiences, particular cultural history to size the situation up. In a collective drawing of breath they come to the same conclusion – the little guy is going to get creamed. Nobody had to articulate this appraisal, they just knew. This conclusion is collectively reached through a process of social consciousness I call the functioning of an energy expectation formula. Energy expectation formulae mediate social exchange and facilitate social interaction. They manifest in every goal-oriented human interaction and are unique to both people and situations but operate within boundaries established by the cultures in which they occur. That is to say that there’s a reason you – and the entire audience – are almost never surprised by judges’ reactions on talent shows. Being on the same wavelength is a thing, or at least it is when estimating the conversion of ability into output.
You, dear reader, as a well-cultured person with a careful eye for detail (and unparalleled good taste in blogs, I might add) will surely have recognized the story I’ve outlined above as that of David, the Isrealite, and Goliath, the Philistine. You’ll know then that the energy expectation formulae on both sides of the conflict I described above are about to be shattered. David identifies a weak point in Goliath’s armor and falls him with one well-aimed stone. The shock felt on both sides of the battle, the shock of any underdog victory, is the breaking of an energy expectation formula.
In adapting their internalized energy expectation formulae to the new facts on the ground the Philistines turn and flee, denouncing Goliath as an oaf while the Israelites lift David up as a holy warrior, redefining the abilities of strength and valor.
Beyond the illustration of energy expectation there are several aspects of the story worth pointing out.
First, you’ll notice that each side arrived at this reaction despite their varying cultural definitions of merit and ability. Thus, some energy expectation formulae can be transcultural – see Olympic judging for further examples. Others, of course, are culturally specific – is your neighbor a good pearl diver?
Second, the lionization of David following the battle is an example of the construction of an ability around a new phenomenon. In this case it is a reconception of the capacity for battle which, by virtue of existing within a field with many points of comparison, can be compared and evaluated as an ability.
Finally, Goliath is posthumously crippled. The once great warrior’s legacy of victory is forgotten and he lives in memory and legend as slow and stupid. Goliath demonstrates the social construction of disability.
That’s not to say energy expectation formulae are always ability evaluative. There are plenty of examples of non-ability related estimations. These tend to be conceptual – do you trust your doctor, does that mother love her children equally – or linked to taste – will Steven King’s next book be good, will this bar serve tasty chicken wings. Nor do they necessarily relate to others. Think about the decision to hire a cleaning person or personal chef, those choices are made based on your personal evaluation of your own energy expenditure to clean or cook. They can become ability based judgements when we specify the standard of cleanliness or health or flavor we expect.
This is something you can try at home. Reflect on your own life. Were you picked last in gym class? Maybe team captains flipped coins for the privilege of choosing you. Did the math teacher call on you to answer the hard questions? Or did she ignore your hand no matter how long you held it in the air? Were you the child your parents trusted with pizza money when they went out of town? Were you asked to help chop vegetables? Or did your family put their faith in your sisters’ knife skills over yours? Were they right about your skills and talents?
Or, instead of a drive down memory lane, consciously consider the amount of energy you expect your daily activities to consume then reflect on your estimations after the fact. Dollars to doughnuts your estimations will be off (and who knows you better than you?!).
Though our estimates are wrong more often than not they are supremely necessary. A world without energy expectation formula would be one of inaction and paralysis as they are a precursor to coordinated action. That is to say that energy expectation formulae exist because they must. If we were incapable of guessing at our own and our counterparts’ capacity to transform energy into action we would be in stasis. As with most things that just are, energy expectation formulae are, pre-usage, morally neutral – granite is just a rock until you use it for your countertops or to smash someone over the head. In the same way energy expectation formulae can be good or bad depending on the way they interact with value systems. The rub lies in our inability to recognize and systematize our predictions.
At present our expectations are visceral and intuitive. They derive from a philosophical lineage that traces its roots to Freud, through Jung, and to Lecanne’s conception of colliding collective unconsciousnesses, the shifting tectonic plates of complexity including class and community that lurk, often unobserved, beneath our social interactions. These phenomena tend to be intuited as their immense complexity often forces them beyond the realm of direct observability.
For this reason we intuit how much energy a given interaction requires rather than coming to our projection by some empirical, quantifiable process. The process is indirect and imprecise. What’s more, bringing more precision to the discourse will have a positive impact on society as a whole.
The underlying problem here is that the imprecision and overall fuzziness of our estimations leave a wide margin for error and for, well, marginalization. In fact, I assert that the visceral dialectic applied to energy expectation formulae creates disability. That is, a warped energy expectation formula leads to a disabling perspective on others’ ability to carry out a given task based on factors other than ability.
The energy expectation formulae I propose will mitigate the creation of these disabilities of practice by giving direction and intentionality to our visceral collective understanding of effort. They will shape a civilizing discourse around projections of energy expenditure. They will do for ability what the imaginary i did for physics, building a meta-reality scaffolding from which we can observe, shape, and color ability itself. That is not to say that the discourse around energy expectation formulae can be fully civilized, to borrow a term for Hegle. Nor does it imply establishing some sort of quanta, I don’t know if that can be done but our current technology of thought and measurement don’t allow for it.
I do know that at present our perceptual abilities force us to operate in the general and still pose a limit on our ability to identify and quantify energy expectation formulae, the anecdote related above demonstrates the necessity to begin building the framework for the quantification of energy expectation formulae so as to reduce present harms that the lack of intentionality in the discourse produces.