Sunset on Mars: entropy: our sun is burning out

                                                                          (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

16. A Second Universal Trait and its Attached Beliefs/Values

The next basic trait of reality is entropy. In human lives, this fact of reality means life is hard. It is always uphill. Adversity permeates our lives, and our balances are, therefore, always being eroded away by our environments.

All things in the universe are gradually cooling and breaking up. Suns burn out, woods rot, metals rust, plants and animals die. Bundles of matter called “living things” in an area can seem to be holding more and more matter and energy together.  They seem to cheat the entropy of the universe by reproduction. They make more of themselves. But they only do this by stealing even more energy from things in their surroundings. In our planet’s case, all living things ultimately get the energy they need to run their bodies from the sun. Plants capture it directly from sunshine, then animals like us steal from the plants by eating them or by eating other animals that eat plants.

In Physics, entropy is a consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What it means for us as living things is that like all other living things, we must face adversity, not just in getting food, but in every way every day. The physical universe works in ways that tend to wreck everything we need to survive. Life is always hard because the universe is built to erode us and all that we build.

What we perceive as adversity is just the inescapable entropy of reality. We live in a world where we must ‘swim against the current’. Life can seem easy for a while, but that only means adversity will soon be back, often in new forms with even more power. Thus, in our cultures, we have learned to expect adversity. 

All tribes have done this by teaching to their kids values that motivate and guide them to stand up to the harshness of life. Values that enable a tribe to cope with the entropy harshness of the universe are found in all cultures. In English, these two giant values are called courage and wisdom. Note here that most primitive tribes in the forest a million years ago didn’t have these values driving them. We do because these values enabled a few of our boldest forebears to survive in greater numbers than did timider tribes who lived in the same forests.

The beginnings of courage can be seen in the behavior patterns of living things that move toward adversity rather than away from it. For example, some living things like beetles retreat from extremes of heat and cold. But we use the term courage to describe the behavior of any creature that consciously knows from stored up memories of past experience that it’s likely about to encounter danger and pain, but that then keeps moving in the potentially dangerous direction anyway. Courage works around pain. (Humans learned by pain to handle fire.)  

Note also that what we think deserves to be called courage is a matter of degree. Our ideas on whether a living thing is being courageous lie along a continuum from low level instinct to higher level, conscious decisions to take an action in spite of its known hazards.

A doe shows courage when she faces a wolf she would normally run from, but she faces and kicks at him because her fawn is lying helpless on the ground. This ingredient of recognizing danger but behaving abnormally to confront it and to handle it is the defining feature of courage.

We see actions by living things as more courageous the more we know that the living thing is knowingly behaving in a way that’s risking its own well-being. In those facts, we see the abstract (courage) in the concrete (facing a predator).  

Facing entropy – i.e. purposely acting in ways that make one’s own wellbeing harder – takes courage for any living thing. However, courage is only rarely seen in an unequivocal, primal form. Usually, it is balanced with another ideal that in English is called wisdom. The doe acts like she knows about wolves. She stands facing him and tries to kick him, and she aims for vulnerable spots. She doesn’t run, but she also doesn’t just stand between him and her fawn and get eaten first. She fights back with both courage and targeted strategy.

Humans show courage in both short term and long term threat situations with entropy-handling behavior. In the short term, a human can sometimes show the same kind of courage that a doe does. (Humans instinctively defend their kids).

In the long term, humans endure exhaustion and tedium to hunt big game while game is plentiful, drying and preserving the meat, even when the tribe currently has lots of meat. They gather berries when the tribe is already well fed, and its folk would rather lie in the shade or go swimming. It may be a hot day, with a risk of sunstroke or dehydration, but tribe members keep gathering, pounding, and drying berries still. Why? Because their courage is balanced with wisdom. They know they’ll need preserved food in winter just a few weeks from now when food will be scarce.

Probably, at one time, there was a tribe in this valley that didn’t work on saving food for the winter, but most of that tribe died out long ago. The few survivors were absorbed by the berry pounders. Saving food is an odds-raising practice.

In short, courage is almost always encountered in humans in behavior patterns that also contain knowledge, judgement, or, simply, wisdom. Efforts expended are expended strategically. Targeted. Over generations, the behavior set that formed in surviving tribes out of their balancing courage and wisdom became the virtue we call work. It is a key basic value; all tribes eventually come to it. We do what’s hard and tedious – but informed and targeted – to provide for our tribe’s folk, long term. Courage balanced with wisdom leads us to work.

                                                                    Work: harvesting yams in Africa                                                                           (credit: Bediong, via Wikimedia)

Work as a value tells its adherents to spend long hours of hunting and failing, and long tedious hours practicing with spear and bow. Hours gathering herbs or chewing hides. Or, in other tribes, long, tedious hours hoeing yams till they’re ready to harvest. The bottom line is that all tribes that survive live by cultures sculpted by evolution to handle this harsh universe. That survival requires a balance of courage and wisdom. In all environments, balancing courage and wisdom leads us to work.

Wisdom about hunting, for example, tells hunters where the heart of an animal is, and simultaneously tells them that they are going to need to learn to fire their arrows with fine accuracy. So, they practice. It’s tiring and boring, but it’s wise.

Farmers learn how they can stop wireworms in their yam fields. Put little pieces of potato into the soil for a few days, then dig them out, full of wireworms, and throw them in the fire. This adds more toil to the tedious job of growing yams, but it’s worth the effort in the long haul; it saves almost all the crop. It’s wise.  In short, courage alone is not enough. Over time, courage in all its forms gets balanced with wisdom in all its forms in all tribes that survive. We expect work.  

These two very general values – courage and wisdom – occur in cultures all over the earth in ways that go beyond any one tribe’s current situation. Gatherers, if they are forced to move to the coast, soon learn to dig for shellfish because they have come to expect that life is hard everywhere. It always demands work.

Work is to be expected in any environment. Tribes keep striving to find food if they move into a new environment until a way is discovered, often by one wise tribe member. Then, they use it. All environments similarly require some form of work from all tribes who choose to live in them. Entropy permeates all.   

One particular set of values and the behaviors that these values foster is seen in all tribes that have been invaded by other tribes: warrior values. Virtually all tribes that have experience of war learn and practice war skills.

The skills of war are most effectively passed to the next generation when we put exciting tales of warriors into the lore of the tribe. Kids love stories of heroes. In listening to these stories, kids absorb ideas of what makes a man or woman heroic. Then, motivated by stories of heroes, young people design and practice behaviors that raise the tribe’s survival odds. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by trial and error, sometimes both. As a result, the tribe is more likely to survive.

In short, virtually all tribes have at least some knowledge of how to fight off invaders. They may use spears, swords, rifles, or planes, but they must have – first – a willingness, even eagerness, to fight to preserve their way of life.  

It helps our understanding here to note that in hero myths everywhere, the hero has a mentor. Gilgamesh has Utnapishtim. Achilles, Chiron. Arthur, Merlin. Hiawatha, Deganawida. Shaka, Dingiswayo. Luke, Yoda. Katniss, Haymitch. Thus, by myths, kids in all lands learn courage must be balanced with wisdom. Warrior-hero myths are cultural responses to the hardest challenge: invasion by another tribe. Effective warrior myths enable tribes to fight hard because their armies are full of ‘heroes’ who fight with courage and wisdom.

Note that war is just one more form of entropy to any tribe that must fight one. However, it isn’t like famine or plague: humans choose to war on each other; they could choose not to. 

Terms for courage and wisdom, and heroes who represent them, are found in all languages because courage and wisdom are entropy-driven values that shape tribe members’ behavior patterns long term to create a durable tribe. One that faces and handles entropy in all real life situations, day by tedious day.  

Note also here that exactly how courage and wisdom will inform and guide a tribe’s morés can’t be set down in detail for all tribes everywhere. Knowing how to kill polar bears isn’t useful in Kenya. How to kill lions isn’t useful in Nunavut. However, both Masai and Innu teach courage and wisdom to their young.

                                                                                                                    

                

                                                               Modern myth hero warrior Luke Skywalker                                                                                     (credit: Wikimedia Commons)