The Two Lines of Reality — A Canonical Orientation Document

This document presents a unified orientation framework that connects historical power structures with thermodynamic viability conditions. It proposes that civilizational change is not only shaped by political, economic, or technological forces, but is fundamentally constrained by structural limits of stability, reversibility, and dissipation. By aligning the historical sequence Bretton Woods → Platform Sovereignty → Ambient Civilization with the thermodynamic sequence ΔR → Ψ(t) → Ω, the document identifies Ambient Civilization as the first historically plausible regime whose form of power is compatible with long-term systemic viability. This is not a claim of physical causation. It is a structural orientation model that describes how socio-technical systems must be organized if they are to remain coherent under increasing complexity and scale.