Philosophy

Entropy is a powerful force pulling everything apart, from the big bang to energy radiating away from stars to your kitchen exploding from a crimped gas line. Creativity is an even more powerful force that brings things together in new way, bonding energy into the swirling galaxies and whirling dervishes, inspiring us to sing and paint in diverse contrapuntal rhythms. I don't pretend to understand the mathematical proofs of physicists, but my personal sniff test says every force in the universe boils down to one of these, creative power to build or entropic force to destroy.

As we move through the process from the lusty union of sperm with egg to the final decay of buried bones, we see these two forces wrap around each other like the fractal yin yang, each force dependent upon the other, entropy opening opportunity for creative direction of explosive force blasting out the resources to build a new form. As much as we pretend to serve only creativity, we utilize entropy to obtain that from which we build. Spinning through life, blasting and building, we wonder how our scores will balance. On which side of Shiva do we stand?

Life is creative force, binding together energy into ever more complex and diverse organized patterns. The green leaves gather energy from the sun, storing it in carbohydrates shared into the micro-rhizomes of the living soil. Complex cultures of diverse cellular structures collaborate symbiotically to shuffle all the earth's elements into the complex protein chains of DNA that allow your mind to understand the meaning of these contrasting squiggles on the page.

Death is part of the dance, allowing room for rebirth, for all that is to become more than it was. Even the apparent entropy of decay can be harvested by that living soil to serve the creation of new life. Constant evolution spins unique communities each with local color, from the fungus that thrives on the broken containment walls of Chernobyl to the springtails that lurk in the world's deepest caverns.

Does human society serve the force of creativity or that of entropy? Does our war mongering toxicity serve our desire to expand the symbiosis of life? Does the compulsion to control the creative process lead us toward species extinction? Do we flatter ourselves to think we might know?