Energy and Psychology
Energy and psychology terms are completely different terms. But, we will associate these two terms point of view the energy consumption, energy generation and energy requirements for our daily life.
Actually, these two terms are related to each other if we think of point of view energy psychology. But, I am not going to mention about the energy phsycology. Namely, mental energy or human body energy is not our topic. In this essay, we will discuss on how our psychology is affected by blackout, water shortage, gas outage or consumption of fossil fuel in all over the world.
Let’s start with the definition of energy. Energy can be defined in more than a hundred sentences, but I will give a direct definition. Briefly, energy can be defined as cash. Of course, we learned the definition of this term in our primary school that energy is the ability to do work or heat objects. This is the basic meaning of energy, but as I said, we could define it in many sentences, including orange juice.
Human life strictly depends on three things: air, water and energy. Except for air, we must pay for everything to get it. Why? I will explain.
Since the beginning of humanity, humans have needed two essential things as lighting and heat energy. Heat energy is necessary for water heating, medium heating and cooking. These two requirements come from the sun or solar energy during the day. But sunshine depends on the season and geography and there is main disadvantage of the sun. When the sun is not shining, there is no energy generation. In other words, when people watch the amazing sunset view, they also become stressed due to the lack of light and heat. They are asking themselves what we will do.
Maybe energy generation stress or energy sustainability stress started after sunset.
Then, humans tried different energy sources besides the sun to supply their requirements. Of course, the energy supply needs extra effort. After the invention of fire, wood was the most important energy source in summer and winter. To reach the wood is not also easy. Anyway, as energy is defined with cash, if somebody does not have money, they do not have the energy either.
If our income is insufficient, we can get stressed for energy-related bills such as electricity, gas or water. This stress goes to anxiety. Somebody makes control electricity with measurement devices or gas measurement devices every day, even every hour. When they look at increasing number of m3 or kW, they come back and turn off devices. Even they turn off lamp and start to watch TV in a dark room, and they sit wrapped in blankets. In this case, we can not mention about comfort. We mentioned about thermal comfort. We may think that we are saving energy or energy efficiency. If there is no thermal comfort, we can not mention about energy efficiency. Thermal comforts change with thermal stress in hot or cold weather.
When I was in primary school, my teacher said: “Oil reserves will be depleted in 45 years. The year was 1980 or 1981, I do not remember exactly. Now, we are in 2023. And experts say we have oil,but it will be depleted around 2050 or 55. We are asking ourselves if oil is depleted entirely in the world, what can we do? If the country meets its oil or natural gas entirely through imports and if countries stop oil or natural gas exports, what can we do? There are lots of questions in our minds related to enough energy sources.
Today, electric energy is the most important source to supply even humans with all requirements, including cooking, heating, manufacturing, lighting, transporting etc. Thus, electricity storage is becoming popular even for the automotive industry or buildings. Generators which can be used during blackouts, are also becoming popular. In the case of blackout, we can not say what we will do. We are relaxing that we have big batteries or generators.
Finally, if we do not have enough energy sources or energy supply personally, or if we do not have enough stock of these sources or enough money, we feel stressed due to lack of energy.
“Redundant life” can be the remedy to supply energy and reduce energy-related stress.
What are other remedies to supply energy? I will discuss them in my following essays.