The Theory of Equilibrium in Nature
This thought has been constantly on my mind these days. It started with something personal and then it grew to all of the matters I came across. Whether it’s a public, state, national, worldwide, galaxy wide matter, the theory seems to apply to everything. It could be just my own insanity that creates the link between everything; but who knows, it could be true, somehow.
It started during a presentation of new control products that would help making automation in the water treatment world easier. It’s nothing new, people come up with new innovative products everyday. However, as I was listening, as these products make things easier for the user, or the operator, to monitor and control things, it also makes the work of the engineer, who has to design these systems, more difficult, more complicated. Then I thought, about the law of conservation of energy. This law states that “energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but only changed from one form into another or transferred from one object to another”. This law can be most easily observed in physics. However, it appears to apply to almost everything we can name. Let’s consider “difficulty” as the matter that is conserved. As we try to make things easier for one group of people, in other words, making things less difficult or trying to take the difficulty away for this group. Applying the law, difficulty doesn’t disappear to thin air. It is just transferred from one group to another group of people. Specifically, in this case, difficulty is transferred from the equipment user or operator to the engineer. So if we look at the user and the engineer as a whole system, the difficulty is conserved within this closed system. From here, the theory of equilibrium also comes into play. The world is balanced by opposite but equal forces. As the level of simplicity increases, the level of complexity or difficulty has to increase equally, somewhere, somehow.
Now let’s think on a little bit larger scale. Let’s think of the rich, the powerful and the poor, the weak. As one person gets richer and more powerful, someone else, or many others, or something else, will be poorer, or weaker. He, rich and strong, has to take from someone, something, somewhere. Again, all matters, whether concrete or abstract, cannot be created or destroyed, but just transferred from one to another. The reason for this is so that any system as a whole is always in the state of equilibrium. More of the rich - more of the poor. More of the powerful - more of the weak. The theory of equilibrium in nature does not care what is right or wrong, because right and wrong are only human defined terms, it has nothing to do with nature.
Let’s think about civilization, defined on Merriam-Wesbter as “a relatively high level of cultural and technological development”. Everybody wants civilization; every nation strives to be civilized. What do people think of when they hear of the term civilization? Modern technology, better living standards, advanced medicine, longer lifespan, etc.? All wonderful things. What can be so bad about civilization right? Not so bad if we could think ahead of time before we create new things, trying to make things better than they already are. “Every solution comes with a set of problems”. The more things we try to create, the more things will be destroyed. It’s the law of nature, everything has to be balanced. Now, hold on, what did the law of conversation say about “create” or “destroy”? Remember, we can’t. We simply take something from somewhere, someone, to make something else. What is this circle of mess? My messed up mind. As we try to develop new medical measures to improve health, extend lives, let’s stop for a second and see whether it is really working for humanity as a whole. Where do new diseases come from? Where do new forms of cancer come from? Why are we going against nature and try to live longer than we’re supposed to? All of these are extremely controversial subjects, depending on where we view them from. Should we stop trying to save our sick, dying, suffering loved ones? Of course not, not a sane soul will. Should we still try to save our loved ones at the expense of many lives in the next generation? Regardless of the answer we may give, we will try anyway. Why? Because it is human nature, we only have the capability to care for what we can see, can feel, here and now. We can imagine what is going to happen in the future, but we can’t see it, or feel it. Therefore, we cannot connect with it. We are just human. What is the answer? I do not know. However, these are the extreme cases. Let’s not get into the miraculous things advanced medicine can do to your dying loved ones. Let’s talk about other less extreme things like thousands and thousands of drugs and vitamins that supposedly make you healthier, stronger, stay young and beautiful longer? Do we really need all of them? Many people’s answers for these will be yes! definitely yes. But why? Why can’t we accept things for how they are? Why do we keep trying to make things “better” when there’s no ending to “better”? When a new “better” comes, a new “worse” is born. When are we going to stop? How about anti-depressants? Why are people depressed? Does drugging our bodies with chemicals really help? Is anti-depressant really the answer? If you think yes, I won’t argue, you have your personal reasons that I have no rights to object. If you think no, that it is just a way to run away from the problem, then look somewhere else for the answer. All of what we think are the “solutions”, are only temporary countermeasures, to avoid the problems. We are not solving the problem by starring it in the eyes.
Now let’s turn to modern technology. There are some pure applications of technology to help the disabled, less fortunate ones to have a normal life, to do things that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. That’s marvelous. However, the majority usage of modern technology is to assist our daily life tasks. We depend on our smart phones to do many things. Now you can sit at one spot, in a short amount of time, do all of these things: grocery, clothing, anything shopping, check your bank account, see the face of your loved ones, switch your insurance company, etc., the list goes on. Years ago, it would cost us the entire day, or days and a few gallons of gas to do all of these mundane tasks. How nice, how convenient. We don’t want to give that up, and we won’t. Why would we when we get to save a ton of time to do other things.
Everything nowadays is supposed to be quick, fast, smart. Smart watches, smart cars, smart TV, fast food, fast internet connection… All of these technologies are believed to make our tasks simpler, our lives easier, to give us more time, and ultimately to make us happy. But do they? What do we think we are saving time for? From the moment we wake up, we check our phones for newsfeed, to learn about the world’s problems, or about how much money a celebrity makes, or who is dating who. Then we rush out of the house, get in to our cars, to some drive-thru’s to get a cup of instant coffee, a bag of instant breakfast, instantly, quick and fast. We get on these grand, wide layers of high-ways, hoping to get to work quicker, faster. Then we sit at our desks starring at the computer, a device that is supposed to make our tasks easier, thus our lives easier. How come our job does not seem easier? How come we are getting more overloaded and stressed out? Does this computer really help? Does our fast car in the fast traffic on the highway really help? Work is stressful, life is stressful. The faster we finish our tasks, the more tasks there will be for us to do. Then we go home, have dinner with our family, while on our phones, checking work emails for the next day, facebooking, texting, instagramming… Does the phone really help? What are we really saving time for? We complain we do not have enough time for our family, for ourselves, to do things that we love. So what are we really saving time for? Or are we really saving time at all?
Remember, the law of conservation, nothing simply just disappears. Think of when we used to play at the beach when we were little. We would try dig a hole in the sand, then watch the waves come to fill up the hole with water. After a while, the hole will be completely gone and the sand surface will become flat again. The flat surface symbolizes the state of equilibrium. Nature will always try to bring everything back to its original state. Think of the time in your day as the sand, you are trying to carve a hole in it to make room for something else, but most of the times, that something else is not what you intended it to be. Imagine years and years ago, a day in a person’s life might be just as flat and filled with sand just like our lives in the present day. He woke up in the morning, took his time to make his own coffee, read the newspaper, listened to the radio. She made him and their children breakfast. They got ready to send the kids to school and both went to work. She worked at a farm, he worked at a factory. They also worked 8 hours a day. Then they went home, had dinner, talked and then went to bed and prepared for a new day to come. Their day was also filled with events just like our day now. They didn’t have computers or phones or fast food places to make things easier and faster for them. They didn’t have cars or highways; they walked or biked to work. How come their days weren’t any longer or more stressful than our days? How come they still had time to do everything that we are doing or wanting to do now? How come we feel like we have even less time in our day than our parents or grandparents used to have? It is because they did not try to carve too many holes out of their time. They did not try to accomplish as many things in a day as we are trying now. As we try to take the sand out of our day to make a hole (or free time), life will bring its waves and fill up our hole with other tasks. Before we know it, our day is completely full again, with more tasks and responsibilities than we are originally equipped for. How? because we created holes for them ourselves, with our seemingly amazing technologies, our new inventions. That is how amazing life is, it doesn’t care what we want, it just brings everything back to equilibrium. Now, will we give our modern lives up? No, hell no, nope, nuh uh, no way. Because we are human. Human, what a funny creature I am.
Okay, let’s switch to war shall we? Today I happened to come across a video showing the lives of children in Syria. The destruction of any war is horrendous beyond imagination. We can only imagine what these kids are going through, but we will never know or understand completely, because we weren’t there. Where is the root of wars? From human’s greed, from human’s thirst for power, wealth, obviously. This goes back to one of my earlier points. If someone wants more power and wealth, he will have to take from somebody else, someone else will have to pay. Now, what happens when the United Nations try to intervene and stop this civil war in Syria? The United Nations, supposedly the “good” side, use forces, army, weapons, more violence to stop the war. What happened next? Other powerful forces and organizations will side with the government, so called the “bad” side, to fight against the “good”. What is the result? The war is prolonged, maybe longer than it was supposed to be. Why? Because these so called “good” sides and “bad” sides are literally adding more fuel to the fire, by lending more forces, weapons, adding violence, anger, conflicts. How is war sustained? When there are two equally opposite forces. As we think we are helping by adding more force from one side, the law of equilibrium will increase force from the other side, equally. No side is going to stop until they run out of resources. That is looking from within war itself as a closed system. If we look at a country that lends force to war, how does this system stay balanced? Where does the money to fund wars come from? From taxing the people. Where does the human force come from? From drafting the people. You have to take away something to make something. How to stop wars? That’s a million-dollar question. Had there been an answer, there wouldn’t have been wars from the beginning of time. There will always be the good and the bad everywhere. I just know what is not the answer - violence.
Lastly, let’s give some spotlight to the environment. Everything that I have mentioned, as we human try to “create” new things, we are simply taking things from someone, something, somewhere. In order to build greater, better, larger infrastructure, we will have to cut down more trees, flatten more lands, old stories. To develop more advanced technology, medicine to serve our made-believe “needs”, to build better weapons to “protect” the world, we will have to emit more toxic gases into the air, have to release more toxic chemicals to the rivers, to the oceans. Consequently, we will have to kill more plants and animals, and ultimately, in the long run, ourselves. Why do I use the term “have to” in everything? Because we didn’t intend to do any of that. We didn’t intend to kill things, to make things worse. It’s not in our plans. It is just the way things are supposed to be. Why? Applaud nature. We think we are winning in the game of conquering nature; perhaps we are a little bit naive. The laws of nature govern everything we do. We are using force against nature, nature will exert an equally opposite force against us. Everything is meant to be balanced. Nature is not bad, perhaps we are just not finding the right ways to understand nature and live with it.
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