We’ve been studying charge and potential in the human body recently, attempting to understand how negative charge creates flow in the body leading to health and vitality. Conversely when things start getting sludgy, clumping together, and aggregating, sickness and disease follow.
Zeta potential, in chemistry, refers to the electrical charge difference between a particle’s surface and the surrounding fluid, which influences how particles interact, repelling or attracting each other. High zeta potential (negative charge) keeps particles dispersed, promoting flow and stability in a system like a colloid. Low zeta potential (positive charge) leads to particle clumping, causing aggregation, sludging, and instability.
When everything clumps together it generally means big trouble, such as blood sludging or inflammation caused by cellular clumping. The body has a number of mechanisms to control pH, which maintain homeostasis and keep all the elements suspended and flowing. It’s measurable and in the sewage treatment industry they check it all the time. Doctors studied zeta potential in the human body decades ago but interestingly no one talks about it anymore.
Healthy Society
So the thought occurred to us that perhaps society operates on similar principles (as above, so below). It’s optimized when there are varying opinions, beliefs and judgements, forcing space between cultures and people. Separation makes for a healthy society. On the other hand when everyone clumps together into one tribe or another it makes for a sick society.
Does a healthy society mirror a healthy body with high zeta potential, where diverse beliefs and opinions maintain a dynamic, flowing equilibrium? In contrast, does a society with uniform or clumped beliefs resembles a low zeta potential system, leading to stagnation, conflict, and “inflammation?”
A society with varied and diverse beliefs; where individuals hold differing perspectives but can coexist and engage in open dialogue will be more resilient and adaptive. Diversity of thought fosters creativity, innovation, and problem-solving, much like dispersed particles in a fluid maintain a smooth flow.
Tribal
When opinions polarize or clump into rigid, homogenous groups, it leads to social stagnation, tribalism, or even WWIII, akin to particles aggregating and clogging a system. This “sludging” also manifests as echo chambers, reduced empathy, and societal division, in other words, sick and diseased.
Consider historical periods of intellectual flourishing, like the Enlightenment, where diverse ideas about governance, science, and philosophy coexisted and sparked progress. Compare that to times of ideological conformity, where dissent is suppressed, leading to stagnation and unrest.
A healthy society, with high zeta potential, has diverse beliefs that flow and coexist, repelling just enough to avoid clumping but not so much they scatter chaotically. Oligarchs, act like agents that disrupt the charge balance—either forcing beliefs to clump (by suppressing dissent) or scattering them too far (by inflaming divisions). Their self-interest destabilizes the system.
Balance
So, maybe what society needs are the mechanisms to keep beliefs and ideas in productive tension. That may have been what the founding fathers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution. Federalists and Anti-Federalists held sharply different views on centralized power, but the Constitution and civic debate channeled those differences into a stable system (sort of). The “charge” was balanced.
Our relationship is another possible example. Vickie is an attractive (positive) force, and I’m a repelling (negative) force. We perceive life differently and have ideas and beliefs that are quite diverse, yet we coexist in harmony and balance (most of the time) ; > )