Power as Pattern

An ontological comparison of chemistry, light and electricity.

What is the nature of power? In the Gospel of Being, power is not domination but ability—the capacity to act, to adapt, to become. Every being: 'action to be' is a will to this power. But power never appears in just one form. It shapes itself through patterns, expressed differently through matter, motion, and relation.

Three such expressions—chemistry, light, and electricity—offer a profound glimpse into how being stores, moves, and shares itself. Each embodies power, but in different ways: chemistry as structure, electricity as flow, and light as presence. These are not just categories of physics. They are ontological modes—ways that existence speaks its ability into being.

Chemistry: The Pattern of Storage

At its heart, chemistry is memory. Molecules are not just bits of matter; they are patterns of potential—structures that encode energy, identity, and reactivity. Chemical bonds are energy stored in form. The structure of water, the double helix of DNA, the arrangement of neurotransmitters in a synapse: these are all instances where power is held until it is needed.

In this way, chemistry is the archive of being. It is structured storage, where the past accumulates as potential for the future. A sugar molecule is not just fuel—it is a pattern of sunlight and soil, a past tense of photosynthesis waiting to be metabolized. Even when remade through metabolism, sugar is still a reconstitution of light, water and carbon—its pattern bears the grammar of its origin, even if spoken anew. In biochemical terms, life is the orchestration of molecular memory into function. In ontological terms, chemistry is being held in readiness.

Electricity: The Pattern of Transfer

If chemistry stores power, electricity moves it. Electrical energy is not stored in shape but conducted through relation. It is the motion of charge through a medium, a choreography of electrons responding to difference—potential across a wire, or ion gradients across a cell membrane.

Electricity is therefore not form but flow. It does not remember; it responds. It is the syntax of coordinated activity—how different parts of a system interact, align, and adapt in real time. It carries information, but only as long as the current flows. And unlike light, it moves through matter: it is material, lossy, and contingent on resistance.

In the Gospel of Being, electricity embodies the channel of will. It is how one part of a being relates to another, how power is negotiated through difference. In the human brain, in animal movement, and in ecosystems of signal and response, electricity is the medium of adjustment, coordination, and control. It is not just energy—it is the grammar of relation.

Light: The Pattern of Expression

Then there is light—power with no mass, movement with no inertia. Light is not transferred through matter but across the void. It does not crawl like electricity or cling like chemistry. It leaps. It sings.

Whereas chemistry stores and electricity channels, light expresses. Photons carry energy and information as waveforms: frequency, amplitude, polarization. Unlike electrons, they do not require a medium. Unlike molecules, they do not decay in pattern. Light is, in some sense, lossless—the closest thing the universe has to pure transmission.

From an ontological perspective, light is the utterance of power. It is how being reveals itself at a distance—how a star proclaims its fire across light-years, how a thought becomes vision, how intention becomes expression. Light does not hold memory or require connection; it simply is, and by being, it illuminates.

In the Gospel of Being, light is the voice of power—the radiant sign that something is, here, now, and open to difference.

Power as Pattern

So how do these three—chemistry, electricity and light—relate?

They are not just different "energies" but different ontological registers. All three are manifestations of the will to power, but each reveals a different aspect of what it means to be.

In physical terms:

• Chemistry is mass-bound, slow, and information-rich.
• Electricity is material, dynamic, and modulated.
• Light is massless, fast, and radiant.

In ontological terms:

• Chemistry is history.
• Electricity is syntax.
• Light is presence.

Being is not limited to one. Every living system, every being, uses all three:

• The body stores energy chemically.
• The nervous system coordinates it electrically.
• The face, the gesture, the light in the eye—express it photically.

Toward a Gospel of Patterns

This is why, in the Gospel of Being, we might say:

Where being is a will to power, chemistry stores it, electricity channels it, and light expresses it.

And this is not metaphor—it is manifestation. Every time a thought becomes action, a signal becomes motion, or a cell responds to a photon, power becomes pattern, and pattern becomes power.

And that is the great ontological revelation of science itself: that matter is not dead, energy is not blind, and information is not abstract. They are all expressions of being willing—of the action to be, becoming.

In this light, we see that the universe is not just made of particles and forces but of wills patterned into form, and each pattern—whether stored, moved, or expressed—is a chapter in the unfolding Gospel of Being.

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

A rigorous yet readable exploration of how existence functions—and how that relates to you.

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