On Joining the Resistance - Entropy, Part 2
January 26, 2020

   The universe blasts forth – Bang! – gushing out matter and setting it spinning with an incomprehensible energy.  Was this, too, grace?  Let us assume so, for now, since it was, as far as we know, a wholly gratuitous event – and one, moreover, that unleashed the possibility of our being.  And let us further assume, for now, that being is preferable to non-being.

     How soon after that initial blast did the decay set in?  If the second law of thermodynamics is truly a law – operative at all times under all conditions in the universe – then I suppose it must have gotten to work immediately.  For that matter, perhaps it was (is) implicit in that original unleashing itself; once poured out, the marbles won‛t ever go back in the box by themselves.

     Perhaps.  But I am no scientist, so I am ill-prepared to contemplate – let alone come to conclusions about – when and how the laws of physics took effect.  Did the universe have a ‟honeymoon‟ period, all hot and fiery, before entropy began to cool things off a bit?  I don‛t know.  But I do know, if only in a mediated way, that the universe as a whole is now subject to the law of entropy.  Dissolution, cooling, disarray, chaos, decay, and death are universal constants.

   Of course, there is still a tremendous amount of energy left over from that first moment of Creation.  The sun, our local star, is just one example.  Comprising just a tiny bit of the right kind of debris from the first blast, our sun generates its energy by fusing the nuclei of hydrogen atoms into helium, producing helium to the tune of over 600 million metric tons per second.  And scientists estimate that the sun has roughly another five billion years‛ worth of raw material (hydrogen) stored up to continue this process, business as usual, before it transitions to the red giant phase of starlife, in which it will expand and cool and eventually collapse into a white dwarf.  

     So death by entropy is the ultimate fate of our star – and, by extension, ours.  But in the meantime, we "live and move and have our being" by virtue of the energy we receive from that left over ember of Creation. In scientific terms, earth is an "open energy system" because we have this external energy source to draw upon.  This mutes the effects of entropy on earth, enabling work that can reverse the entropic force.  

    This raises a question in my mind: if sunlight makes it possible, here on earth, to resist entropy, how well are we making use of the resource?  I'm assuming, of course, that, for humans at least, resistance to entropy is preferable to acquiescence – and I realize that some people might take issue with that assumption.  But in any case, I think it is a sound assumption, even if I haven‛t yet worked out a compelling reason why that should be so.  So assuming order is generally preferable to chaos, I ask myself the next logical question: Am I really part of the resistance – or am I unwittingly participating in, contributing to, or even hastening the death march?