The dogmatic interventionists,
by whom I mean people enchanted by socialism and green politics, get so much
wrong primarily because they have never understood the big tension that
underwrites human beings' relationship with nature. That tension is one of
conflict between order and disorder in the natural proceeding of things. Here's
how it goes - and if I succeed in my task of making this easy to follow, some
of you may acquire a fresh perspective on the matter of how we could view human
beings and our interface with nature.
The fundamental axiom about being humans (or at least one of the fundamental axioms) is that we are evolutionarily primed to strive for order over disorder in just about everything we do. We may experience minor peaks and troughs, but the overall goal of each human is to be in a constant state of improvement - to favour ‘better' over 'worse’ and ‘right' over 'wrong’ and ‘true' over 'false’. The species wouldn't have been able to thrive without these qualities.
The human journey,
especially in recent decades, has seen the explosion of millions upon millions
of thoughts and ideas into standards and values that draw us gradually nearer
to cultural and social convergence, and keep us pressing forward together in
search of more and more improvement. Order instead of disorder is our cultural
and social analogue. Whether it is a simple act like cleaning up some spilled
juice, or pruning a garden, or something more complex like improving our own
individual life, or trying to help a family get on the straight and narrow, or bringing
about peace in a war ravaged country – progression is our shared preference. Where
there is disorder we look to bring about order.
But if you've been
attentive throughout your life, you may have noticed that this puts us at odds
with nature's natural tendencies. The reason being: nature tends towards the
opposite direction - it tends towards disorder - and this is primarily due to
the first two laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics states
that energy is conserved in any process involving a thermodynamic system and
its surroundings. That is to say, the increase in the internal energy of
a system is equal to the amount of energy added by heating the system minus the
amount lost as a result of the work done by the system on its surroundings.
The second law of
thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system which is not in
equilibrium will tend to increase over time. This is what is meant by the
notion that nature's tendency is towards disorder, not order. In a closed
system, disorder increases with time, but amongst the tend towards disorder,
when one bit of the system becomes quite ordered, there will be an exhaust of
disorder elsewhere to offset the decrease in entropy, meaning the overall
effect still produces higher disorder. This process is what we call
thermodynamic disequilibrium, which exhibits a driven directionality of time
irreversibly (that's why we see time going in one direction not two - forwards
but not backwards).
But as you have no doubt
noticed, nature is not maximally disordered. If it was, we would not be here to
talk about it. In biological evolution we see this directionality of order in
action, because there is an evolutionary arrow of time which locks in organised
complexity in biochemical systems. That does not mean we have to believe there
is intentionality in the system, much less that evolution has an end goal – but
in the sense of being good at surviving at the genetic level, the ratchet
mechanism that occurs in the system creates pockets of order. This is the
process that humans try to mirror in our own endeavours.
And here is where things
get even more interesting, because although nature's tendency towards disorder
puts humans in tension with nature as we try to bring about order, there is
another one of nature's fundamental principles that humans have adopted to make
the progress as efficient as possible - and that is the principle of least
effort (also known as the law of parsimony). Because the total energy content
of the universe is constant and the total entropy is constantly increasing,
nature always prefers low energy, to tend towards maximum entropy - that is, it
will make the least effort to reach any observable pathway it tends towards.
That is why, for example, when light travels it reverts to the path of least
time; and it is why a hanging chain reverts to the shape of lowest centre of
mass; and it is why soap bubbles revert to the shape of least surface area and
volume.
Similarly, in human
nature, the physical mechanisms that underwrite our drive forward, our
biological evolution, the global economy, and the state of living things in
terms of the planet, are also all bound up in nature's thermodynamic principle
of the law of parsimony. Whether we are talking about Newton's laws of motion,
the biological mechanism of natural selection, electromagnetic radiation, the
second law of thermodynamics, or running a successful clothing business,
installing machinery in a new factory premises, trying to get from London to
Brighton, or setting up a remote controlled railway system for your children at
Christmas time, all these things are underpinned by the law of parsimony - that
what works most efficiently is the path that takes least effort and uses the
least energy.
Consequently, then, there
is often a big price to pay for the kind of short-sighted meddling we
frequently see in things like climate change alarmism, strivings for enforced
equality, stifling competition, price controls, state subsidies, damaging
regulations, censorship, and most taxes you can think of - the human state of
affairs would be greatly enhanced if left to many of its natural paths of
efficiency, and would progress a lot quicker than it is being allowed to with
the meddlings of the socialists and the eco warriors.
I'm not saying that
everything the state does is a hindrance to progress; and nor would I wish to gainsay the idea that some social justice warriors begin their endeavours with good intentions. But quite often the
motives of the establishment are not conterminously aligned with the overall
human drive for improvment, which is cooperation and mutually beneficial
transactions according to the Nash equilibrium of whichever system is in
play during the transaction. Because of humans pursuing their best possible
approach as per Nash equilibria, the agents of participation have to negotiate
strategies that identify risk in order to have sufficient transparency to
obtain an optimal (or efficient) end goal. When there is negative outside interference
that distorts this process and diminishes transparency, we get perverse
incentives and less-efficient outcomes.
And lastly, this has a big
implication on the other of society's big incompetence - the hugely pernicious
model of fabricated equality, whereby people try to artificially level the
playing field to achieve equal outcomes. Given that the underwritten hardwiring
of humans is competition for fecundity and species resilience, it is inevitable
that strivings for equality of opportunity are problematical (although not
necessarily undesirable) and drives for enforced equality of outcome are mostly
reprehensible.
Equality of outcome should
not be enforced because of its ultimate futility - it is anti-human nature. It
would be tantamount to forcing the species into a reduced level of prosperity
on the basis of a highly questionable, undifferentiated uniformity. The reality
is, if humankind was artificially flattened down to the common denominator of the
most unskilled, least hard working, uncompetitive members, it would not be able
to thrive as a species in the way it has.
There is transparent knowledge
and empirical understanding of how reality operates, how humans thrive best,
what helps our development along, what aids our psychological well-being, and what retards
progress - and whether you choose to swallow the red pill or the blue pill is
entirely a matter for your own conscience and whether you want to embrace
reality, truths and facts, or dwell in the realm of illusion and denial. Just remember that no one really ever gets away with anything negative they do; and no one ever really fails to benefit from anything positive they do.
