All is Wonderful

In a previous article entitled “What is a Tsotl?” I introduced a concept, which I named a tsotl, which described (roughly speaking) things containing things which in turn are made of other things. But there are other, more precise, ways of looking at this.

One of the fundamental principles of the objectively-observable universe is called “entropy.” Entropy is, roughly speaking, the tendency for things to fall apart. More specifically, entropy is the tendency of reality to proceed from order to disorder.

Nothing is immune to the principle of entropy. Indeed, some scientists have predicted that in the far future there may be something called the “heat death of the universe,” when everything that exists is in a state of utter disorder. If you could still somehow survive to that time you would find yourself alone in an unimaginably vast cosmos of particles too scattered, too far away, and moving away too fast to see.

Entropy is thus truly a principle to be reckoned with! But there exists a counter-balancing principle — a yin to entropy's yang, one might say, or another aspect of Shiva, to put it in even more mythopoetic terms. We can plainly see — and we are examples of — a principle that one might call anti-entropy. Tsotls are the result of this anti-entropy. To put it yet another way:

One principle attempts to tear apart while another principle attempts to bring together.

Lest we get all dewy-eyed about how sweet and love-like all this is, let us not forget just how titanic are the forces we are talking about. Tsotls (and life in particular) did not arise spontaneously; they require energy. Lots of energy. More energy than we can comfortably imagine.

Those sub-atomic particles that are joined to make up large, useful atoms in our bodies were brought together by colossal compressional forces inside exploding stars. That is the natural way to obtain the energy levels required to fuse the constituents of matter into bigger atoms.

Next time you look up into a clear sky toward the sun, note that you cannot bear to look directly at it. The source of energy that nourishes life on Mother Earth is so powerful, so energetic, that gazing at it for only a few moments can cause you to go blind. Is it any wonder the ancients worshipped Father Sun as a demigod?

Yet most of that searing energy is initiated by nuclear fusion — the coming-together of small atoms (such as hydrogen) into larger atoms (such as helium). Rather than flying apart, as entropy would seem to demand, gravitation causes them to come together, thereby liberating vast amounts of the power that makes life possible on our little planet.

From destruction comes the potential for construction. From death comes the potential for life. And the reverse case is obviously true, too: constructed things do not endure forever; living things eventually die.

Indeed, when living things die, it may be that we are stealing some of their order in order to feed our own. That's part of what it means to eat your vegetables: the sun's power is converted for you into a form that (after several additional steps) you can easily use.

In the time between disorder and disorder there is order. And that order seems to follow the principle of tsotls: things made of other things, organized from tiny particles all the way up to planetary ecosystems in seeming defiance of entropy.

One can speculate even higher up the scale, with “evolving universes” and such — I'll explain that sort of stuff in a later article about “Operational Reality.” For now, though, let us stick to that which we can observe with the simple instruments of our time. And these let us see something truly wonderful:

The universe seeks to destroy us even as it nurtures us as we evolve toward ever greater levels of organization. 

We can see it, and be it, ourselves: the ongoing dance of entropy and anti-entropy.

As literally awesome as all this is, as mind-boggling as it might be, there is no mysticism here. There are no gods invoked. This is not religion based on wild guess-work. This is the way things actually occur.

It is beyond our capacity to fully, directly comprehend all of this. So it evokes reverence in all who appreciate it. And whether or not we do appreciate the magnificence, we're all part of it.

It's all one thing.