When I see all the daily insanity in the news I'm reminded that we'd all be better off if we understood who we really are. We are an assembly of atoms that's 13.8 billion years in the making. We are the product of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and social and biological entropy.
I started this blog in 2004 to explore the constant pushback I was getting as an environmental activist. I first began my writings and thinking in 1997 when I began participating in various online discussions groups. It only took me a year to realize the integral connection between environmental sustainability and social sustainability, so I began writing on that topic as well.
To sum up my blogging for the last three years I will say that at the moment of the Big Bang atoms began to interact with one another to create more complex matter, following the laws of physics, which, in turn, is defined by the properties of matter. The Universe has limitless time and sooner or later it was a given that atoms would arrange themselves into a high-functioning mammal. So, here we are.
While entropy is chaos, evolution is all about forming order out of the chaos. Social evolution is all about creating equity and harmony and enjoying the benefits of our technological evolution. Evolution and entropy, or disorder, can exist side-by-side because the Earth is not an isolated or closed system. Our evolution on Earth is completely powered by the heat of our Sun, which continually releases energy and becomes more disordered. We live and progress as the Sun dies.
There is no god, no reincarnation, no afterlife, and no nothing. All these ideas are the result of a human brain that got too large and had too much time to think. Nature does not care what we believe and our beliefs and ancient superstitions won't change reality one bit. As a child sitting in church on a Sunday morning, I often wondered how God could hear the prayers coming from thousands of churches all at once. So, to summarize my earlier blog posts, nothing can happen without technology, and technology cannot break the laws of physics. So, to attribute some fantastic feat to a god there must be technology, or else it's magic. And as I learned from watching many magic shows that magic is all about distraction, illusions, and tricks.
When my beloved cat Sassy was dying of feline leukemia she was purring on her last day of life. It gave me the false hope that she was getting better. I later learned that cats purr to comfort themselves in difficult times. Right now I see my entire country purring. We purr through delusions and believing things that comfort us, even though we suspect they are lies.
I cannot begin to comment on this horrible national disaster called Donald Trump. All I can say is that social evolution requires order, which, in turn requires civility and mutual respect. The current American politics are now all about entropy, chaos, and disorder. I can only hope that the madness we are now seeing will move us to a higher social order. If anything, Donald Trump is doing good by allowing the evil and vileness in the Republican Party to come out into the open. Maybe soon the conservative masses will learn that the GOP is all about short-term revenue extraction for the wealthy. Maybe the American middle class will learn that corporate greed and graft are a greater danger than the brown people coming over the border.
As for my own life I am getting old. When my end comes I simply want my ashes to be thrown away. I don't want any marker to show that I was part of a species that so wantonly and brutally destroyed the very environment that sustains them. As for our species' love for self-destruction, I wouldn't care less. But every day I grieve for the innocent wildlife that suffers because of us. As an enlightened and intelligent species we should be the caretakers of this planet, but instead we are the complete opposite.
Humans are a pathetic species that doesn't understand the consequences of its rapid population growth or continual drive to own more and nicer stuff. We are sick. But, again, I hope that order will one day come from our excesses. While few and far between every day I see beautiful people pushing the way forward for social and environmental sustainability and equilibrium.
I've now been blogging for 15 years and I vowed that if I ever lost hope I would stop blogging. After all, there's no point in just spreading negative energy. I want to define a reason to live and I want to try to make the world a little better while I'm here, even if that just means putting a smile on someone's face.
When I see middle-aged conservative white men attacking Greta Thunberg or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez I am blind with anger. But then I am reminded that these pitiful males are just trying to preserve the status quo, even if it means blatant hypocrisy and self-destruction, I am reminded that conservatism is all about preserving the Old Order, while entropy provides the uncertainty and chaos to allow a new and better order to form. Greta and Alexandria are bold and courageous women who are standing up and saying things that need to be said. They are my greatest heroes.
If you think that global climate change is a myth or conspiracy, I would not care less what you think and neither does nature. When I left Christianity 22 years ago I found a new religion called Reality. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of all the other hundreds of mythical religions, but there is a certain beauty to accepting things the way they really are. Excuse me if I don't wear a red MAGA hat and repeat lies about how great the U.S. economy is. I am just trying to survive and I do a little volunteer work where I can to help nature and animals. To me, that's the meaning of life. To engage in wealth accumulation or phony spiritualism is only a diversion, distraction, and a part of a greater delusion.
I encourage everyone to throw partisanship out the window, listen to other viewpoints, and educate yourself objectively. If your only source of information is Facebook memes, then you will only be fed lies or manipulated facts. Take the time to educate yourself through multiple sources. I'm finding that real truth is completely elusive. Tomatoes used to be considered poisonous and coffee was once considered bad, and now we know that what we were fed as TRUTH was unTRUTH. So, while there may be no solid truth in the Universe, I at least try to form my thoughts by the "preponderance of the evidence," which works well in a court of law and is the best way I know for finding my reality in a world of distortions.
Source: LibreTexts
Photo: George Gvasalia
