The statement I’ll be making today is simple… very simple. Nonetheless, I think it’s of tremendous importance. It’s the type of thing that, if kept sufficiently in mind, can revise your mental universe.
It’s the type of thing that makes me want to write, “Meditate on this at least once per day for several years.” This concept can not only revamp you, but could revamp humanity.
So, here are those three words:
Life reverses entropy.
If that sounds too simple or not entirely clear, no problem; I’ll continue.
Entropy Versus Life
Entropy (a physics term) is the nature of all inanimate things: rocks, water, air, and so on. These all wind down and wear out eventually.
Entropy breaks up concentrations of energy and things; it spreads them out till they are all dispersed and everything is a neutral and useless mass.
All inanimate things eventually wind down and wear out. By themselves, they remain tied to entropy.
Living things, on the other hand, reverse entropy.
A fruit tree, for example, takes in gasses from our atmosphere, light from the sun, minerals and water from the ground. Then it organizes, concentrates, and harmonizes them… and produces oranges, apples, and so on.
The same can be said for all living things. All of them take material from the entropic, inanimate world and concentrate it, making it useful. This is what life does. And more than the “characteristics of life” we were forced to memorize and repeat in school, this is the nature of life. Truth be told, it should be taught as the central observation of life:
Life is recognized by its reversal of entropy.
Mere matter does not organize itself. Life, on the other hand, continues itself only by concentrating, organizing, and productively using mere matter.
(There are certain crystals that seem to grow. Properly, however, they accrete rather than grow.)
Plants and animals reverse entropy very effectively. Each, however, is able to reverse entropy in certain ways, but not others. Mankind is the great exception; we can reverse entropy willfully. We choose how we will reverse entropy, and we can choose more and newer ways, seemingly without end… or we can evade such choices.
In this way the old idea of mankind being superior to the beasts is entirely correct; there is nothing on this planet that is remotely like us. We really are “the crown of creation.”
Back to the Three Words
If all of this is true or even just substantially true, there are huge implications:
-
- If life is the thing that lies at the center of usefulness and survival (entropy would eventually erase all usefulness and survival), then the function, growth, and positive evolution of life, especially of human life, is a cardinal value… the cardinal value.
-
- And if this is so, the restraint of life must be considered a cardinal offense.
-
- The subjugation of life and its actions to man-made rules – whether sold as “the wisdom of the ancients,” “the voice of the people,” or whatever – becomes a mass transgression against the functions of life, and thus a transgression against both survival and thriving.
If the three words are true – or anywhere close to true – a great many things are opened to being questioned, and thus to being improved.
And so again, I think this is a concept worth holding in your mind and examining over protracted periods of time.
**
For more, see A New Model of Self-Experience.
**
Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com
Well said, Paul! Life strives against decay and chaos. It can’t escape it but it does separate itself from it.
Thanks. 🙂
There is a natural law that governs all human life. Thousands of years ago, Roman emperor, Cicero, in ‘The Republic’ wrote about the natural law, “There will not be different law at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one elegant and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times.” And, I think, for all cultures, including aliens we come in contact with. I believe I have come up with that law which can be stated in one paragraph and taught to small children at home. “One’s life is one’s responsibility in its entirety. Any conceivable innocent act one can perform in the pursuit of one’s happiness is one’s absolute, inalienable natural human right. Any negligent or intentional act of harm to the innocent or their property by anyone is a crime. It is the responsibility of the criminal to make his or her victim(s) whole again through a process of restitution.” Law, to be law, must be reasonable, make sense. Does that make sense to you? That is the law I wrote for myself and have lived by for decades and recommend that all other individuals around the planet adopt for themselves.
I forgot 2 things; after listing innocent acts as one’s rights, I should have included the sentence, “These include the 5 rights of property of innocently acquiring, innocently possessing, innocently using, innocently defending and innocently disposing of any conceivable item of property including money, weapons of any kind, drugs of any kind and one’s own labor but excluding another human being.”
And I forgot to comment about life reversing entropy. My life is one example as is yours. I just received a Science News magazine that has an article about new thinking about the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the fact that order cannot last, “Disorder Reigns”, by Tom Siegfried. Perhaps the universe will burn out, but not this weekend or next so I intend to sleep well the rest of my life.