Existence

My good friend Dave McClung has recently opened a fascinating can of worms. One that once a person's opened, they can never close. Kind of a Pandora's Box, if you will. Here's a brief excerpt from his thinking:

However, even though a lower population would use less energy, according to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy in the universe is increasing meaning that more unusable energy is being created every day. Humans are very ordered in comparison with other parts of the universe. Eventually, humans will be broken down because they can no longer keep their organized state because of the increase of entropy. However, with the sun helping us out by providing us unimaginable amounts of energy, the entropy created is replaced by Gibb's Free energy, which is energy that we can use to do work, or make order.

And here's an excerpt of my response:

It's funny how a little science can go a long way towards tearing the world apart. Entropy, the laws of Thermodynamics, evolution, etc, I agree with all of these (to the extent of what we know). But I also think/know that there's more to the universe than that. More that we don't know. There has to be.

Let's face it. We've been around for a mere 2E5 (two hundred thousand) years. Compare that to the 1.2E10 (twelve billion) years that this universe has been in existence. That means we've been around for 0.000167% of the history of the universe. Or, since I like scientific notation so much, 1.67E-4%. And yet we think we know shit about the Cosmos. Dude, we don't know shit.

Now let me expand on this whole "not knowing shit" concept.

One of the things science is still working on is finding out what about 93% of the universe is made up of. Because it doesn't know. We call it "dark matter / energy." I spent a good 3 weeks on this topic with a brilliant physics professor at Governor's School. And the best explanation he could give for this "dark" stuff was that it was like a fluid. Like water. But he still couldn't say WHAT IT WAS.

If we honestly don't know what such a large part of the universe is (and it's a really huge part. Think about it. All the stuff you think the universe is made up of is ONLY that 7%. The billions upon billions of planets and stars are only 7%. To quote myself, "Holy fuck!") how can we even guess at, let alone proclaim, that we know how the universe works. Isn't that just a tad bit pompous? A little infantile?

Then there's systems theory and all its fun offspring (like chaos theory). That stuff takes classical mechanics, thermodynamics, etc, and turns them on their head. Literally redefines how we think about EVERYTHING. It isn't anything new. Just not something they teach us at school. Why not? Probably because it's "too hard." Or maybe too esoteric. You know, like General Relativity. ("Can you explain this with something a little less esoteric than Relativity? Something more believable?" ROFL. Inside joke with Governor's School people.) But it explains emergence and the complexity of life better than evolution on its own ever could.

Finally, one thing we as the generation of the quanta have learned is that the universe is (literally) uncertain. And perhaps that's the best way to go about this whole ordeal: to be ever humble, knowing that we don't know. Because we are mere dust on some insignificant ball out in an arm of a spiraling galaxy. At the same time, we're the universe's best attempt at getting to know itself that we know of. And that too is humbling AND inspiring.

I'll end this with the note that the only thing that I know for sure is that I know nothing for sure. But living life on the edge is like that. It's beautiful. Truly, effortlessly beautiful.

And then there's always the chance that all my ideas are wrong. And that no one's watching.

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Writer's Note:

None of these ideas are my own. Like I could come up with something this elegant. Psh, right. All of this came from hundreds of philosophers, scientists, and mystics, nicely distilled to me through Ken Wilber's writings.

If you're at all interested in some of these concepts, check out Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality by Ken Wilber. It's a killer read. Or really any other book by this guy. He's an amazing compendium of all the philosophy of the East, West, North and South.