December 30th, 2020
I read a thought-provoking essay on John Messerly’s blog, and was inspired to write a response. I was so pleased with myself that I decided to paste that response here:
I'll expand on some ideas I have previously presented on this blog. This discussion of meaning strikes me as merely a secular version of arguments over the nature of the soul. The underlying misconception is an abstraction of the notion of God. Simpler minds imagine the existence of a person who provides meaning to life. More complex minds imagine the existence of a principle that provides meaning to life. More cynical minds (such as mine) see no external reality to the concept of meaning in life. I believe that meaning is supplied internally. I define my own meaning. I set my purpose in life. I follow a star of my own making. I do not understand why other people cannot trust their hearts.
On the matter of biological evolution, this is easily resolved by thinking in thermodynamic terms. We have the sun pouring scads and scads of negentropy all over the planet. The chemistry of the surface of planet affords the possibility of chemical structures responding to this negentropy by collecting and storing it. Because the biosphere stores negentropy in the form of its chemical structures, and the sun continues to spew negentropy all over the planet, the total amount of negentropy stored by the biosphere continually increases.
Negentropy is a difficult concept for most people to grasp. It's best described as 'orderliness'. A bunch of playing cards lying scattered on the floor have little orderliness. The same bunch of cards lined up in a row have more orderliness. The same bunch of cards built into a house of cards have a lot of orderliness.
This is not a question of "better or worse". A house of cards is not intrinsically better than a random scatter of cards on the floor. It's just more orderly. Questions of value, aesthetics, or merit are purely subjective.
Money provides us with a useful way of thinking about the matter. Money is, after all, a human manifestation of negentropy: you can use money to organize the world in a manner better suited to your values. You can use money to heat your house, to surround yourself with art, or to influence the government to suit your personal preferences. Money is the power to organize the world; money is negentropy.
So, is wealth better than poverty? It's certainly more desirable, but does anybody think that wealth makes you a better person? Is Donald Trump better than Mother Theresa because he has gold-plated toilets? No, wealth isn't intrinsically better. A gold-plated toilet is not intrinsically better than a Tesla or a trip around the world. It's just a different manifestation of orderliness. It is our own personal values that make things "better" or "worse”.
More on negentropy: