https://aeon.co/essays/philosophers-must-reckon-with-the-meaning-of-thermodynamics
We must start by admitting that the Universe is finite and will eventually end. Moreover, we must accept that the function of the Universe is to hasten this extinction. The laws of thermodynamics reveal, in other words, that what we might view as the generative power of the Universe is instead bringing about the annihilation of everything: the flourishing of life is always contributing to the eventual collapse of the cosmos.
Life is perhaps the most effective, albeit least obvious, consequence of and agent for thermodynamic decay in our immediate system, as the biophysicist Jeremy England has shown in his lab and the biologist Lynn Margulis has confirmed in field research with her son, Dorion Sagan. Everything in existence, including our species, both arises from and works in service to the destructive order of reality. Decay, it seems, is the ultimate essence of existence, which means that our being must be understood as a mode of unbecoming. It is but one additional way in which the ultimate annihilation of the Universe is accomplished.
No longer can we conceive of existence as something that is ultimately good. Nor can we conceive of it as something that is morally neutral, as others might have it. Instead, we must acknowledge that reality – which is organised antagonistically against all that it creates, and is the direct cause of the suffering of every entity it endows with consciousness – might be morally evil. If our existence means being forever at war with ourselves and our environs, and actively contributing to the suffering of everything we encounter along the way, then it is decidedly not good to be. Life is a moral catastrophe. To exist is to be unavoidably complicit in an order that is entirely evil.
Consider, for example, the practice of medicine that, while fully acknowledging the ultimate destiny of life (ie, death), nevertheless strives with tireless passion to delay the arrival of that destiny for as long as possible and to prescribe lifestyles that will enhance the quality of life in the meantime. This is a rather obvious good. What is less intuitive is that such efforts do not work in concert with nature. Medicine is not a way of affirming the intended direction of life and existence, and yet we think of the work that doctors do as ‘good’. What makes it good is precisely that it attempts to forestall, delay, slow down or put off what nature destines. In a similar way, every effort to work against and resist the entropic flow of reality must also count as good.
To do good is not to work in concert with reality, nor should we ever strive to live in harmony with nature. This would make us complicit in an entirely evil system. To do good is to break with that complicity – to seek ways of dismantling, resisting and reconfiguring the structure of reality to neutralise, alleviate or unsettle its entropic thrust. Only by pursuing goodness negatively, through acts of refusal and resistance, can we hope to animate a new ethics within the metaphysics of decay.
