I’ve noticed that lately, I’ve been having a peculiar fascination with the second law of thermodynamics. I’ve written about it in my previous blog posts and I often mention it during casual conversations with friends. I am perturbed by the fact that the universe is continuously moving towards a state of greater disorder. It is disconcerting to me that the same transformations that make our universe so beautiful and amazing are resulting to the accumulation of waste and heat that will eventually lead to its death.
I wrote in my last post that maybe the root of the second law of thermodynamics is the creation of deterministic reality out of a quantum nature of existence. What this means consequently is that every effort to control leads to waste and death and so to eliminate waste and death, we must absolutely give up control and embrace uncertainty.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this premise and as of late, it has not yet made any meaningful human sense to me. I must admit that in life as we know it, control is inevitable and necessary. And actually, we often control things to give our lives some structure and some order, to feel a sense of direction towards a certain purpose or meaning. We examine ourselves to figure out what we want and value in our lives, and we operate against these values and passions. Without control, the world will be chaotic and destructive, or at least that is the conventional way of thinking about it.
So maybe not all forces of control are bad. I think the practical way of thinking about this premise is that it is when we try to control and transform something into something else that is against its fundamental truth that the act of control becomes a creator of waste and death.
I believe that everything that exists and every human being has a fundamental truth in its core. You can call it different names – destiny, fate, divine will, calling, passion, the theory of everything – but I have always believed that we were born with something inside us that moves us to a certain destination that is not of our own choosing. It is a complete waste of life for us to go against this force that is much bigger than ourselves. Or at least this is what I believe right now, as I am a self-declared postmodernist.
Going back to the second law of thermodynamics, why is it then that the universe is continuously moving towards a state of greater disorder? Is the universe transforming itself into something that is against its fundamental truth? If so, then maybe the universe as we know it is just a beautiful mistake.
I would need more time to give this a little more thought to come up with something that is more coherent and makes more sense. It is always fun to think of complex questions without any expectation of resolution. It makes me wonder why as the collective human mind expands with more knowledge and more creativity, the more complex and incomprehensible things become.
Perhaps that is how everything in the universe is supposed to be. Maybe the continuous move towards greater chaos, disorder, and complexity is the single fundamental truth.
