Life is order with the capability to maintain itself in a world where order only decreases. An organism, or a living thing, is an angsty bundle of organized particles rebelling against the law of entropy.
The concept of entropy tells us that everything in a closed system becomes more disordered. Effectively, things fall apart because it is more likely for them to fall apart than to stay organized. Steven Pinker has a good metaphor for this:
“If you walk away from a sandcastle, it won’t be there tomorrow, because as the winds, waves, seagulls, and small children push the grains of sand around, they’re more likely to arrange them into one of the vast number of configurations that don’t look like a castle than into the tiny few that do”.
It’s extremely unlikely that a human will randomly materialize out of particles that happen to be bouncing around and interacting. Things just aren’t likely to go from disorder to order.
But as a form of life, humans have the ability to reproduce, and in doing so, to create more order. At least on a local scale. In order for us to live (maintain our bodies’ order) and reproduce (create more order) we need energy.
Energy is basically movement or the potential for movement. It’s what makes stuff happen.
In order to keep our body alive and regenerate our cells, we need energy and nutrients. We have to find energy and nutrients by walking around, foraging, hunting, and going to the grocery store. Doing all that takes energy too. Usually about 2000 kilocalories of energy every day.
So is 2000kcal all it takes for us to stay the winner in the war on entropy?
Well, it depends on how much order we want. And these days, we're greedy pigs. We don’t just want to walk around, eat, breathe, and sleep. These days we have the audacity to want to drive, live in houses, go to concerts, have air conditioning, eat food from another country, own electronics, and not die as young.
Here’s a breakdown of our total energy usage (including food, home, industry, and transportation) over the eras:
Primitive human (no fire): ~2,000kcalI absolutely love seeing these measurements in calories because I interact with calories every day. An apple has just about 100 calories, so every day in the modern world we use about 2,250 apples of energy
So over time we’re clearly gaining ground in the war. We now rely on more energy per day, but that's because we are spending more energy to make more order each day. To continue this success long term, we will of course need to switch our reliance to renewable sources of energy.
Alright time to go out on a limb...
If life is a war on entropy on a fundamental level, does this say anything about how we should live our day-to-day lives?
I like to think that as my cells are fighting the good fight on a microscopic level by turning energy into order, I should be using my energy equally well on a personal and societal level.
I’m starting to notice that anything that increases daily energy and order in my life has a very natural good feeling attached to it.
Decluttering my house, writing to organize my thoughts, committing to life decisions, and even just building something from raw materials all increase order and all give me a feeling of peace and rightness.
Working out daily, eating healthy, doing breathing exercises, and even just moving fast (literally…moving fast) give me feelings of high energy and also give me feelings of peace and rightness.
This is definitely a romanticized idea based on the scientific concepts energy and entropy. But ever since I’ve started thinking about it when making a decision, considering whether an option will increase the energy and the order in my life has been a pretty good heuristic for peace and fulfillment. If biologically-speaking life is the harnessing of energy to combat the loss of order, maybe philosophically it’s the same thing too.