Newton’s Laws in Society: How Social Forces Move Physical Bodies

In a world of heterarchies and hierarchies, we often struggle to find our place.

Pushed around by internal and external forces, the human soul seeks a stability and grounding in itself which is difficult to master in a world that sells insecurity.

Yet as physical bodies, we are subject to the laws of physics, and being alive only excites their effect further as we face forces from every side. I created this to highlight the nature of physical forces in social interactions as we seek out trust.

This trust is the core social force that we build our societies on. While it typically carries a positive aura, trust builds tools, and builds weapons too.

These 3 laws are the foundation of all powers of the mind and society.

The First Law: The Law of Finity

“an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

Imagine you and I were part of a remote island tribe.

We don’t know exactly how our ancestors got here and what made them stay. We have native technology and metaphysical origin stories with supporting beliefs & customs. We’re okay with a good meal, some palm wine, some dutty whine, and warm friendships.

Newton’s law states that we’ll keep living life like this forever — unless we’re visited by a stranger who creates a different flow to our norm. This is true.

This stranger would act as chaos in our world of order and suddenly we’ll begin to question our compliance with certain norms in the tribe.

But this stranger’s effect only works if our customs/decisions give them the space to operate with agency.

This stranger is not necessarily a mindful agent. They could be:

1. A bizarre child born to normal parents, a shipwrecked traveller, a foreigner, or a group of conquerors setting foot among us.
2. Hardship from internal/external conflict, deception & competition, famine, or disease.
3. A new resource or technology with the potential to solve many of our worthy problems in the tribe.

It also applies the other way around.

If all we ever did was question everything and never accept permanence, an “agent of chaos/change” is bound to convince us to slow down.

Such a tribe, for example, would be nomadic. We’d see the whole world as our home and our lives as a journey. Our only constant would be our tribespeople & customs.

After finding a contrary force, resource, or solution to the very motivation for our nomadic lifestyle, we might find it easier to stay than to keep moving. We tend to pick the easier option.

Because we live in a predictably unpredictable world, forces never remain at rest or in motion.

This is the Law of Finity. Newton’s first law, in society; where the only constant is change.

We change with our environment and change our environment

Speed and direction become variables. If someone observed all our motivations & behaviour from outer space simply as forces and objects, the law would play out perfectly.

You can apply this to dating, marriages, friendships, business, money, jobs, career paths, interests, religion — anything social.

As long as the internal (mind) or external (society) environment that supported initial conditions is altered even a little bit, the result is a different trajectory from what was expected or considered normal.

But surely, cultural resilience tends to smoothen out the effects of any radical change.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

— Anne Sullivan

The law of Finity only applies to things people automatically care about, and its influences weaken as we go up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Society is built on biology (and geography). We are not designed to give up biological needs for societal ones — until we’ve seen our peak*.

We’ll never stop wanting food, but we may change our sources of that satisfaction depending on new information or situations. We are animate objects, but we are still physical objects driven by certain forces.

So as your needs become more complex, the law of Finity is limited by perception — knowledge and understanding of your circumstances and options. This is crucial to designing any long-lasting society, and why education systems determine its future.

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Change is inevitable and uncontrollable. I refer to it as chaos because while our actions or inactions create ripples, we do not control the wave.

The Second Law: The Law of Effect

the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass. The equation for this law is F = ma, where F is the net force, m is the mass of the object, and a is its acceleration.

Back on our island, we find ourselves accepting some changes and refusing others. If you were the human agent of chaos — the bizarre child or stranger critiquing our customs, you’d quickly get in a lot of trouble for your resistance.

Know this: all society is hell-bent on maintaining itself or its code. They don’t call it a matrix/system for nothing. And no authority exists without your acknowledgement, usually tied to control over resources/safety.

So if you wanted to hack any individual or society, your attempts would only be as effective as the depths you can penetrate (aka relevance), and how easy it is for people to adopt your new way of thinking.

No amount of chaos will stop living creatures from ever craving food. Sure, they can fast to death, but it’s easier to do that in a group, and death is most certain for everyone involved.

The effectiveness of any societal change depends on the potency of its relevance and the ease of mass adoption.

This is the Law of Effect. Newton’s second law, in society; where the goal is ease, please, and more ease.

Nothing changes until there’s a valid pain point (mass) and a clear way out (force)

Force = mass x acceleration. Societies will accept new ways of life, thinking, and technology as long as the change conditions are met. Society will also work to silence or negate any unsatisfying attempts or approaches.

It’s disappointing to measure the damage to our lives because we were too lazy to double-check.

Sometimes, potent changes to our thinking are disguised as trojan horses, as typical agents work to conceal their motives in our ignorance.

We tend to default to truth when faced with emotionally-heightened changes, and this is how scams typically work. The problem is whose truth.

It’s easier to believe our natural biases, or that the messenger carries a true message when alternatives are more difficult. The word true comes from “trust”, and society today has massive unfilled vacuums of it.

However, if we all decide to assume everything is fake and everyone is lying, we give way to paranoia & isolation, and eventually, society breaks. Or we do.

Superficial changes hold weight as long as the ease of adoption is high, or even aided by popularity (aka trends).

And even if the agent of change was an external disruptor, its effect is only as potent as the magnitude of both relevance and ease of adoption of new options. You need as little resistance as possible in the adoption period.

How do we effect change without intimidating people? Keep reading.

Ask Galileo and any other disruptors, no one wants to feel stupid.

“…are those who know equal to those who do not know? None will be mindful ˹of this˺ except people of reason.”

— Surah Az-Zumar 9

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People considered smarter than their peers typically get bullied for it. As far as the social order is concerned, you’re not fitting in and the goal is to beat you into submission.

If you’re one of us, your job is to remain steadfast in your learning and teaching until your last breath. Without agents of chaos, animate and inanimate, society would never change. This world is evolve or die, and you have a job to do. Do it with courage and pride.

If you conform, you’ll die with regret. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

The Third Law: The Law of Consequences

for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts a force back on the first object that is equal in magnitude but opposite in direction.

You might be more familiar with this one in your day-to-day. Good relationships are maintained by reciprocity.

Humans are always trading, and there’s no trade without trust. That doesn’t mean all business deals are fair or all businesspeople are good, rather; they need your trust to get your money.

Conflicts arise because of the differences in trade — fueled by perceptions of value and the illusions of satisfaction.

If we scale up our island village to the whole planet with countries and tribes warring and collaborating for dominance and freedom of agency on social, economic, and political grounds;

You understand that you’ve always been a member of some tribe, even down to your family, your job and the group chat you hate but are too scared to leave.

In accepting membership in a unit, you support the never-static power structures and competition for dominance. The currency? Trust. Who controls resources and thinking?

Interestingly, the state of any society is discernable from the homes and the relationships between the first difference between all humans; sex.

It is because of this difference and others like it that economies, cultures, religions, and political structures exist as they do: in trade. Without differences, trade could never exist.

More on trade & competition in another article.

As we’ve established in the Law of Effect, both positive reforms and diabolical policies will be met with as much resistance as its members can muster.

Their outlets for resistance will only be limited by what the agent is willing to do to achieve their end, and how much liberty the members have to express their dissatisfaction or acceptance without suffering for it.

For example:

A typhoon might kill us all if we don’t run for cover. We cannot complain about it, it does not care. A dictator might do the same to assume power.

So we might find other outlets for our emotions, like engineering or escapism, or store them inside us and grow more bitter till it becomes drastic action.

The effective agent’s job is to filter through the feedback to negotiate as much balance as possible or lose their footing if they’re in power.

Remember, an agent of chaos is not necessarily morally upright, rather only destroys an existing order to establish theirs. It can be anything from our heartless typhoon to a cyberterrorist, a hopeful entrepreneur, a new religion, biological weapons, our our own undoing.

The end is disruption.

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Our universal understanding of reciprocity doesn’t bind everyone to its code. A lot of people enjoy cheating others, yet are furious when they get cheated too. Still, the butterfly effect applies.

The recurring pain of victims births the desire for (or action of) revenge as punishment (aka karma) on Earth and/or hopes for judgement after life, depending on the culture of the people.

They inevitably ruin themselves.

Wars are mostly about resources, and if you effectively teach a cheat a lesson, they likely won’t do it again. Consequences inform human behaviour more than anything else.

So the easiest way to adopt a new way of thinking is to fuel conformity. If everyone’s doing it, it’s harder for a non-conformist to thrive.

They’ll likely leave the group if they don’t agree. Or work to decapitate the enforcer.

Energy is always flowing, and people’s anguish or joy can’t be hidden forever. Even neutrality is picking consequences, no matter the intention.

People will always seek out equilibrium, no matter the skewness in power. It is inescapable.

[In Africa, colonial powers banned our worship, burnt palaces & temples and doctored the number of people killed. My people were stripped of agency, and some were sold as livestock. Unstoppable rebellion looms.]

Even in your internal environment, any feelings of dissonance will consistently be attacked by your mind and exhibit themselves in your behaviour until a counterbalancing force is created.

This is the Law of Consequences. Newton’s third law, in society; where our relationships and trust are equations always seeking balance.

Pain shapes social dynamics; intended or unintended

We create counteracting forces in response to our limitations in society, ranging from acceptance to regurgitation to rebellion.

“The whole city celebrates when the godly succeed; they shout for joy when the wicked die.”

— Proverbs 11:10

After causing a group or individual significant pain, they’re likely looking forward to or plotting your pain; whether you intended to be helpful (constructive criticism) or simply cruel and brutal.

To maintain power, others will work out your demise if they consider you a threat. They’re less likely to seek revenge the more the pain you cause them, preferring to focus on recovery.

In the case of the Transatlantic slave trade, Africans fought for centuries and are still fighting to this day to regain our heritage and freedoms. There is no trade without a market/demand.

Mention the Holocaust and no Jew has yet forgotten, or will allow the world to forget. But we’re not comparing suffering right now.

If you plant a good seed in good soil and give it enough attention, you’ll get a plant. And if you use your best ingredients to cook and eat a rotting corpse, you will still fall sick. Consequences abound in this world.

When the gods are offered a sacrifice, people do so in the hopes of balancing out whatever actions caused or could cause an undesired consequence in their society or community.

Pain shapes social dynamics.

Applications in Social Engineering: Designs of African Societies

Africa is a continent that hardly operated as a unit until we had a common enemy.

Yet it has been common between tribes to design our societies to prioritise both merit and support; a balance of individualism & collectivism.

By seeing each member of society as a stakeholder to manage with varying levels of influence and interest, our ancestors painstakingly designed our cultures to manage power and social order between us in ways that ensured people’s needs were met, and codes were adhered to.

In today’s world where you’re taught to doubt everything starting with yourself, people can only think in finite terms — the next meal, step or goal. The collective only matters for some approval, yet individualism proves insufficient to satisfy our human needs.

We live in a world where trust is necessary, starting with ourselves and our influence, the systems that govern us, and the capability of those who dorn power.

Yet due to the effect of colonisation, our social structures — painstakingly designed — were shat on and abused by Europeans, and till today we lack ways to hold our leaders accountable.

“The best fortress of tyrants is the inertia of the people.”

— Niccolo Machiavelli

This has been a motivation for this study. I will now combine Newton’s Laws in Society with fundamental principles of Sociology to describe social forces in post-colonial Africa.

Marxism as a lens for decolonisation

Nobody wants to be seen as less.

Karl Marx, a sociologist, founded one of the most basic principles of a happier society; one where profit and people are equally important.

But this was the foundation of operation in African societies. You cannot wield power if the people you command do not have confidence in your ability to lead. In fact, tribes like the Yoruba could order the ọba (guardian) to commit suicide if they failed in their work as steward.

The ọba position was revered, but not envied or fought over. A delicate balance.

In the Igbo land, they say Igbo enwe eze, meaning “Igbo has no king”, thus every citizen is king and kingmaker, practising a true democracy. The Yoruba ọba is chosen by representatives of non-royal lineages, giving the people the power to undo this guardian.

Leadership roles like the Iyaloja (Mother of the Market, who held the tribe’s trade powers in her hands) were reserved for women, providing them with desirable statuses to aspire to. Capable women commanded armies and led them to victory. But when there’s no focus, people are lost.

“If a man sees a snake and a woman kills it, the important thing is that the snake is dead.”

— Yoruba proverb

Africans have never traditionally seen women as less. We’re the ones with goddesses as the mother of all other deities. Even our sex positions deeply honour and prioritise the sexual appetite and satisfaction of our women.

Our societies were painstakingly designed to prevent unnecessary conflicts by ancestors who had seen their consequences. All your problems have been solved before.

But it is with the introduction of Western worldviews as the agent of chaos, defaulting ọba were spared and my people lost the decentralised governance our ancestors set up for us. They described colonial powers as the ones who “ate the ọba”, destroying centuries of social engineering.

The leadership of most Yoruba markets and status of African women was stripped from them, replaced with foreign values and annihilated the prestige of the next generation, who today believe that African societies have always been patriarchal, losing the truest pride of femininity.

The ability of women to earn their own upkeep and contribute to their families was also stunted by modern urban lifestyles and jobs that were never ours. We borrowed culture for a few years and are becoming as unhappy as the lenders.

Are these worldviews ours?

Are you understood and acknowledged by your society and government today?

Surely we can take whatever is useful and do away with the rest.

Hierarchies & heterarchies are how healthy societies are built. African tribes could’ve fought one another in endless quests for power but the Arabs and children of Rome found each tribe in their land — mostly minding their business and trading.

[Why do you need to be number 1?]

Yet if we expand Marxism to observe Africa as the proletariat and other exploitative world powers as the bourgeoisie, you find that Africa has been in a tussle for many centuries for her freedom.

For me, the worst part of losing to foreigners is that they so crippled our recovery on a systematic and economic level that there won’t be a rematch anytime soon.

I’ll tell you for free that we can go toe-to-toe with their most cruel and sick bastards today, wasting energy that would better serve us in productive work or revolution. We regurgitate the suffering they dealt us to our own.

Yet, the only way to have a Marxist-style revolution is to reach a breaking point; from the peace of comfort or extreme poverty, where the easiest way out is a revolt.

[People will hurt each other if it’s easier than hurting the government.]

This revolution applies all of Newton’s laws in society, where:

1. We change with our environment and change our environment: Situations become unbearable or exponentially better and we become uncomfortable.
2. Nothing changes until there’s a valid pain point and a clear way out: We can no longer bear the pain or are no longer dependent on the government for security or safety. We start acting to take back power.
3. Pain shapes social dynamics; intended or unintended: In an attempt to control outbursts, the government makes a mistake; kills someone, says something, passes some policy or refuses to address an elephant in the room— just the trigger we need to uproot the system without fear of the consequences.

We thus become the agents of chaos; knowingly or unknowingly.

Without such conditions, Africa won’t be able to shake off foreign puppeteering, first in our governments and then cutting their puppet strings from our systems completely.

There will always be problems, but they’ll be much simpler to deal with when we can see things clearer.

Instead of looking to our ancestors and understanding their lifestyles, mistakes and values, we see our worldviews as uncivilised, low or razz to exalt a people that can never understand them.

Individualism & Collectivism: Like Husband & Wife

Because nobody wants to be seen as less, some frame others as less to improve their own self-esteem. Don’t be fooled: a healthy society needs both hierarchies and heterarchies.

Humans are highly self-conscious and want to put their best foot forward when it matters to them. In African societies, merit and support were two sides of the coin of a good life.

In Western ideology, interactionism posits that we create meaning in our lives through our interactions with our environment.

This principle is limited by our knowledge of self and the effects of our choices and mostly applies to external compulsions stimulated through comparisons and social dynamics.

Yet, without others, our sense of self does not disappear.

Simply, meaning is more than the social explanations we attach to it. It’s even more than we have words to explain sometimes.

This is best seen in The Law of Finity, where we change with our environment and change our environment.

The way Yoruba understood this in our educational psychology was to correct a child with one hand and embrace them with the other.

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth”

— African Proverb

Like husband & wife, mind and society create the well-being in each of us.

The state of your society affects you as an individual; capable of uplifting you or of being uplifted by you and vice versa. We’re neither slaves to society nor free from it. It is a part of our programming.

Even autotrophic organisms need sunlight and nutrients, including the ones that can survive without sunlight. And in human society, every religion is set up around social forces vs the individual.

Religion is a code of conduct based on perceived consequences. Are they stupid?

While postmodernist principles of sociology criticise grand views, I don’t think the world is stupid.

If we’ve had certain grand views persist long enough, there must be something worthwhile in them. Trends work that way.

[You secretly love Despacito, don’t you?]

But just because there’s a trend doesn’t mean you must follow it blindly. Critique is healthy to increase our understanding of self and the world.

Yet without a counterbalancing force supporting why we should believe grand views, social cues, religions, work culture or tribal codes, we blame existence for our unhappiness and let culprits run free; exploiting our fear of the credibility we so deeply need in our uncertain world.

We’re designed to trust. It is a need.

Our ancestors who trusted and trained us to trust certain things were not stupid. The same water we drink, they drank. The same processes that made our biomass made theirs. And the same natural systems existed in their world. My catchphrase is, “all your problems have been solved before.”

We should be more humble and grateful for systems to guide us. Our current lack of sufficient social systems is the cause of our problems today.

We had primarily apprenticeship systems designed to pass our heritage, knowledge & wisdom to the next generation. Now they’re aborted for certificates in schools where we learn outdated knowledge that neither serves, protects nor promotes us.

Fluent in Conflict: Is Society Fine the Way It Is?

Of course not. I’ve spent the past few minutes showing you that.

Until we return to reverence and respect for others with us as our operating principle, we’ll only keep suffering. But these changes won’t happen overnight, and especially not without consequences.

We established that society will work to regurgitate itself in the next generation, whether the values are helpful or harmful. The problem with blind trust in anything is that it’s difficult to break. This can be beneficial or detrimental, depending on what is trusted.

It’s up to social engineers to consistently audit society’s code and systems to ensure that people can enjoy life here, or it’ll feel like punishment. The social engineers of African societies were leaders, chiefs, warriors, masters and great people.

Regardless of the damage foreign oppression has done to our societies, it will only get worse if we don’t decide what our values are — and build systems to educate and enforce them.

It’s not easy, but there’s no other way. Things will only get worse without agents of chaos, as seen in the first law. We can’t afford to live in the back seat of our societies.

Yoruba people revered our ọba as a sacred leader, yet trusted in our power to remove them should they fail.

Simply, where there are no consequences, there is no working system. No reaction to the excesses of those with power becomes validation (3rd law), and everyone begins to seek power even more; driving up its price and shooting down society’s stability.

That’s the summary of many African nations today. A vicious cycle, with leaders continuously draining the loop by escaping accountability. Thanks, oyinbo. You’ve done well.

The United States of America, a country the world copies a lot, hardly practices the values they preach in their content. They’re eager to keep their borders closed, keep foreigners out and/or under and keep outside influence to a minimum.

China’s main language is Mandarin, not English. Their policy is that you adapt to them, and they don’t adapt to you. Each society has to enforce the values in the best interest of their community and future or there will be no future or identity for the people involved.

The New Right strives to maintain the values of their existing society and progress them more slowly so as not to lose the pricelessness of their ways of life. It’s valid, there’s no place like home, and there’s no home that survives without protection.

As we’ve seen in all 3 laws, conflict is inevitable.

I believe more strongly in facing conflict than avoiding it. It’s not the type of thing that stays quiet. Humans always express our aggression and grievances somehow, and usually in unhealthy ways with this new world order.

Competition is necessary for society to survive. Kumbaya only works in theory.

I think it’s better to have healthy outlets for our grievances, instead of being forced to hide them under the covers and appear nice. The whole facade is exhausting and benefits no one.

[If it gets to a fight, it must’ve been really serious.]

It’s better than sneak tactics and all the slyness used to maintain power in society today; smiling and spewing bullshit.

Let people know the situation. Conflict will never end in this world, so we’re better off investing our energies into creating healthy outlets for it.

Haven’t you noticed that arguments will repeat themselves if nothing changes?

Trust is required for any power to be potent. No currency or office holds weight without trust. No collaboration, progress or transformation happens when it is nonexistent either.

Change is uncomfortable, and we create our own intertia to resist it. But those who learn to surf through the discomfort always win.

Using these laws, you have affected society in dangerous or helpful ways. We are all agents of order and chaos, yet they remain beyond our absolute control.

1. Law of Finity: We change with our environment and change our environment.
2. Law of Effect: Nothing changes until there’s a valid pain point and a clear way out.
3. Law of Consequences: Pain shapes social dynamics; intended or unintended.

Society is a game we play for life, let’s play it well. There is no spare life.