If we were closed systems, then we would tend to the maximum disorder. This means we would soon cease to exist. Complex structures, like you and I, are ordered: our complexity is a measure of our order. The more disordered a system, the less complex it is. A maximally disordered system is one that has broken down into its constituent particles. This is the destiny of all closed systems. ‘Entropy’ is the name scientists give to disorder. To avoid the ravages of entropy we need energy. This is what the second law tells us. But the first law tells us that we cannot simply create this energy from nothing. We need to get it from somewhere else — or, more precisely, from something else. And so, like any living thing, I am an energy converter: I take something else’s energy and make it my own.
Think of what God did when He said, ‘Let there be light!’ and chose to implement this injunction through the laws of thermodynamics. In that instant, the world He will go on to create is destined to be a zero-sum competition for energy. The first law makes it zero-sum: since energy can be neither created nor destroyed (presumably this applies only after the initial act of creation), there is only a certain amount of energy and no more. And anything that wants to avoid the depredations of the second law must take in energy from other things that have it — and it must do this by breaking those things down, and so appropriating the energy they contain. Complexity is order, and order is a defiance of the second law. We are all minor outlaws. We live in defiance of the Law. We live on borrowed time and stolen energy. Ever since God said, ‘Let there be light!’ the universe has been a brutal, unforgiving place.
The laws of thermodynamics shape all living things, and they have one clear consequence: the fundamental design structure of most living things is the tube. The reason is not difficult to discern. The tube is the energy-conversion device par excellence. Plants are stationary tubes; animals are mobile ones. For those tubes that became animals, energy, in the form of structured living matter, goes in at one end. The matter is broken down, the energy released and the waste products excreted at the other end. From a design point of view, the tube is the simplest way of satisfying this requirement. A zoologist from another universe, where we can suppose the two laws do not apply, might justifiably classify most earthly fauna as subspecies of worm. We are superstructures built on and around our alimentary canal — on and around the worm that we once were.
Before he was cast to earth, Satan was Morning Star, the most beautiful of the angels. Lucifer is Latin for ‘Bringer of light’. But to be cast to earth is to become subject to the first and second laws of thermodynamics — the fundamental laws of the earth. Morning Star, the bringer of light, is transformed from producer to exchanger of energy. It had to be a serpent in the Garden of Eden, because Morning Star had to become a tube. When Satan appeared to Eve in the form of a serpent, he was both medium and message. His form simply reminded us of something we have tried to forget. Our fine bodily clothes are draped around the frame of a worm. We can almost forget this, but the evidence just keeps seeping out.
The worms of life become more and more complex: more and more impressive bodily frames become built on and around the worm. This, too, is a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. One worm tries to eat another and so appropriate its energy. The other worm develops a defensive shell — a carapace — to prevent its being eaten. The first worm develops mechanisms — teeth, claws — to break down the carapace. The other worm develops a more robust carapace, or means of locomotion to escape those teeth and claws. And so life unfolds.
But, then, something strange and unexpected happens. Some of the worms — or what the worms have become as the result of this arms race — reach a certain threshold level of complexity and become conscious. No one is entirely sure how or when this happened. But it did happen. Was it a blessing or a curse?
The two laws of thermodynamics entail that death and destruction are built into the process of life, as essential elements of that process. One organism can live only if another dies. A universe designed by way of these laws will be a montage of destruction. However, until consciousness — in the form of animals — developed, there was no suffering in this universe: there was nothing capable of suffering. A living thing — like a plant or very simple animal — that is not conscious can be damaged and it can die. But it cannot suffer because suffering is consciousness of this damage and this dying. It is consciousness that brings both suffering and enjoyment to the world. If the enjoyment it brings outweighs the suffering, then I don’t think anyone would deny that it was a blessing. However, it is difficult to see how consciousness could do this given the sort of universe in which it developed.
The nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer — usually thought of as German although he was actually born in Gdansk, in what is now Poland — saw this more clearly than anyone else. Even though he knew nothing about the laws of thermodynamics, and the idea of a zero-sum competition for energy was one that he did not consider, his view of the universe was similar to the one I have just sketched. Given the sort of universe in which it developed, Schopenhauer thought, it was inevitable that consciousness should introduce more suffering than enjoyment: ‘A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.’ Consciousness is not, itself, a bad thing. But it has arisen in a bad universe: a universe designed according to the laws of thermodynamics.
When the descendants of worms reach a certain level of complexity — and so become conscious — then each is able to consciously discriminate how it is faring in the competition for energy. Roughly, the sign that the battle goes well is called ‘enjoyment’ or ‘pleasure’; and the indication that it is going badly is called ‘suffering’ or ‘pain’. When the battle is going well, then as long as nothing changes it will keep going well. But when the battle is going badly, this needs to be addressed — because soon there will be no further opportunities for the battle to go at all, well or badly. Therefore, the consciousness of the children of the worm needs to be far more sensitive to a battle for energy that is going badly than one that is going well. And so, in the life of any conscious creature, if it is not extraordinarily lucky, it is likely that its suffering will outweigh its enjoyment: that the pain it experiences in the course of its life will overshadow the pleasure.
That is why we never really notice when things are going well. My snarling right Achilles tendon — it went to sleep for the last couple of miles, but has now woken up in a foul mood — makes this point for me in a painfully unambiguous way. I am utterly oblivious to just how well everything else is going. It’s all relative, of course, but my heart is still beating nicely, my lungs are still doing a passable job of inhaling and expelling air and, the one Achilles tendon aside, the remainder of my legs are still doing what they are supposed to without any complaints. So all in all, my body is doing a good job. But do I notice this? Do I feel any sense of gratitude that things are going so well? Of course not, as Schopenhauer realized:
Just as a stream flows smoothly as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will. If we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, or to have experienced a shock of some kind. On the other hand, all that opposes, frustrates and resists our will, that is to say all that is unpleasant and painful, impresses itself on us instantly, directly, and with great clarity.
Our consciousness, or awareness, is inevitably going to be far more concerned with things that are going wrong in our lives rather than things that are going right. That my heart is beating efficiently as I run is not something that needs to be addressed. As long as things don’t change, it will continue beating efficiently, and so there is nothing I need do about it. But the vociferous Achilles tendon does need to be addressed, even if addressing here means nothing more than turning my attenti
on to it and making a judgement about what to do — continue with the run, stretch it out or maybe even stop. If it is not addressed, then it might rupture and that will be curtains for my life of running. Bad things need to be addressed, but good things do not. That is why consciousness will tend to focus on the bad.
For humans, Schopenhauer argues, the situation is further exacerbated by our relatively sophisticated cognitive abilities, especially the ability to remember past events and anticipate future ones:
The chief source of all this passion is that thought for what is absent and future, which, with man, exercises such a powerful influence upon all he does. It is this that is the real origin of his cares, his hopes, his fears — emotions which affect him much more deeply than could ever be the case with those present joys and sufferings to which the brute is confined. In his powers of reflection, memory and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing and storing up his pleasures and sorrows.
Schopenhauer is, here, building on his argument concerning more basic forms of consciousness. Suppose we accept that consciousness will tend to focus heavily on things going badly rather than things going well. Memory and anticipation are just relatively sophisticated forms of consciousness. Therefore it would make sense for them, too, to be concerned predominantly with the bad rather than the good. Our memory and anticipation would tend to favour the malign rather than the benign so that we can prevent these occurrences from happening again (memory) or prevent them from happening at all (anticipation). When consciousness becomes progressively more sophisticated, the imbalance of suffering and enjoyment becomes progressively more accentuated. Life is bad for all living things, but it is — all other things being equal, which humans will go out of their way to ensure they never are — worst of all for humans.
Schopenhauer claimed that the story of The Fall is the one thing that reconciled him to the Old Testament because it was the ‘sole metaphysical truth’ contained in that book. He did not believe in the literal truth of this story. Neither do I. Schopenhauer, perhaps more keenly than anyone, understood that the most important truths always appear clothed in allegory and that the most important part of the story is not what it appears to be about, but rather what you find reluctantly crawling out from between each line. In these stories — of Creation and Fall — we need to distinguish the literal truth or falsity of the story from what, following Schopenhauer, we can call its ‘metaphysical’ truth: ‘For they lead us to the insight that, like the children of libertine fathers, we come into the world already encumbered with guilt and that it is only because we have to atone for this guilt that our existence is so wretched and its end is death … For our existence resembles nothing so much as the consequence of a misdeed, punishment for a forbidden desire.’
If God is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing, He can do whatever He wants to do, and doesn’t make mistakes. So why would He have created a universe designed in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics? These laws guarantee that the resulting universe will be a zero-sum panorama of destruction and death. They guarantee that, should consciousness ever arise in this universe, suffering will always have the upper hand on happiness. They guarantee that while life is bad for all living things, it will be worst of all for the, self-styled, ‘highest specimens’. If this is all the work of the Father, then why would He do this to his creation? The most obvious explanation — and it seems difficult to imagine another explanation — is that He is punishing us for our misdeeds. If there were a God, and He created us, then we could be pretty sure that He has pulled up the ladder and sealed shut the gates of heaven. The Father, it seems, does not like his children very much at all.
This is monstrously sad. There is a good reason why Schopenhauer became known as the philosopher of pessimism. But what I find most interesting and instructive about Schopenhauer is not his description of the human predicament — in which I think he is largely correct. It is his response. This is, to say the least, unexpected. When people think of Schopenhauer, they won’t think of this response at all. But I’ve come to think it is the most important thing Schopenhauer ever said.
Imagine you are on a seriously unpleasant bus ride. The road is little more than a dirt track, sprinkled with potholes, and you are constantly bounced around in your seat. This seat is nothing more than a wooden plank, and your backside is getting more and more bruised as the journey continues. There is no air-conditioning and you are uncomfortably hot, sweat is dripping down your back and you are starting to smell. But this is nothing compared to the people around you: a reeking, belching, farting, pestilential quorum of humanity. Many of them have brought livestock and other animals along with them on the journey. Kids are screaming, nappies are being changed in front of your eyes. The toilet is blocked and overflowing, and people and animals are pissing and defecating in the aisle. It is clear that no one on the bus, including you, has any idea where you’re going and only the haziest idea of where you are coming from. Nevertheless, all around you people are making up ridiculous stories, lacking any sort of grounding in logic, evidence or even satisfying narrative theme, of where it is they are going to alight and their prospects once they have done so.
Then, out of the corner of your eye, you catch someone looking at you and you look back. In their eyes, you see the same anguish; the same recognition of hopelessness and futility, the same disgust, the same fear. And, at that moment, you realize that you are both in this together. And this realization quickly extends to all of your fellow passengers. They are perhaps not as lucid or aware as the person who caught your eye, but it is all a matter of degree. You realize that to some extent or other — some more, some less — everyone on the bus understands his or her wretchedness. The silly stories they tell each other are fuelled by confusion and terror. The realization is like a bolt between the eyes. And so you realize you can forgive your fellow passengers for what you have regarded as their flaws. They are scared and bewildered, shocked and disgusted, just like you. The only reasonable attitude to your fellow passengers is tolerance, patience and solicitude. It is what they both need and deserve.
This, in effect, was the conclusion Schopenhauer reached from his reflections on the nature of the world:
In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, Mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Soci malorum, compagnon de misères. This may sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in the right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life — the tolerance, patience, regard and love of neighbour, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes his fellow.
The crucial question, however, is one that Schopenhauer didn’t appear to even consider: in a world that is a zero-sum competition for energy, how are things like tolerance, patience, compassion and love even possible?
I have returned home from my run with Hugo and my metaphysical speculations are interrupted by more earthly and immediate concerns. So here I am, a new daddy, staring down the barrel of fifty: tired, sweaty, back from the run and with duties to perform. Brenin is nearly two years old. Macsen is two weeks old. Both of them have nappies that need changing. The energy goes in, the energy comes out. For the last two years and for the next two at least, my earthly existence has been crushing testament to this consequence of the two laws of thermodynamics, the fundamental design principles of life.
I love my sons in a way that is difficult to put into words; or even into thoughts — at the moment I just don’t have the distance to do this. The love started at a few weeks of age. I would like to say that it was love at first sight — that I loved my sons and wanted to hold on to them tight and never let them go from the moment I first saw them — but that wouldn’t be entirely true. After my first son was born I spent the next couple of weeks or
so in shock; and the prospect of having to hold on to him, tight or otherwise, occasioned fear and trembling rather than love. But then he did something to me, something unkind and, I can’t help but think, ruthlessly calculating. In fact, they each did the same thing around the same time — when they were a few weeks old. They smiled at me. They smiled at me — and I’ve been their bitch ever since.
But that is just an expression I use to denote my inability to write and think about what I do feel. That’s just my way of saying — and this is just another crude, overtly macho, metaphor — I love them so much I’d gladly take a bullet for them if there was one around that needed taking. But where does love fit into the view of the universe sketched by Schopenhauer? In a zero-sum competition for energy, what place is there for love?
Love is a funny little puzzle. First of all, love is clearly compatible with the two laws of thermodynamics. After all, love came into existence in a universe built around those laws. Love is therefore compatible with the laws in the sense that they clearly do not rule it out. But sometimes in a sporting event, when someone does something that is, by the rules of the game, legal but questionable, people say that what he or she did was not in the spirit of the game. Love might have stuck to the letter of the law, but there is something about it that seems to have ridden roughshod over the spirit of the great game of life. The most obvious consequence of the two laws of thermodynamics is that life will be a zero-sum competition for energy. And then somehow, with stunning improbability, love insinuated its way in too. How can something so brazenly opposed to the spirit of a zero-sum competition for energy have emerged from that competition?
To protect themselves and the energy that was the currency of the great game of life, some of the children of the worm developed a hardened carapace. Those who would steal their energy developed teeth. Others developed methods of locomotion to escape those who would steal their energy. Those who would take their energy developed legs to chase and claws to catch. Then, at some point, some of the children formed groups; either to more effectively protect themselves from those who would take their energy or to more effectively hunt those whose energy they would take. This turned out to be an effective and stable evolutionary strategy.
Running with the Pack Page 12
