Seeking a Balanced Life? Good luck with that!
No matter how much we try to live a balanced life, the universe just won’t let us. Here is the reason why.
The Quest for Balance
It’s another morning and even after a solid full nights’ sleep, I am sluggish in getting my body moving and energized. Perhaps it is age creeping up on me, but thinking back, I was just as sluggish in my younger years as I am now. I know I am not the only one who needs a bit of time to get things moving in the morning. So why is that?
Sleeping and waking are so engrained in our daily routine that most of us do not even bother asking why we need to do them in the first place. Our daily winding up and down is a cycle that extends to the whole world of night time and day time activity, that is in turn, driven by the rotation of our planet. And our sleep cycles are not the only ups and downs we deal with. There are cycles in our relationships, finances, career, family, politics, the economy, and the list goes on. And have you noticed none of them ever seem to be on the same wavelength? Go figure! But in the midst of all turmoil it causes, we still try to maintain some kind of balance through it all. Or at least we strive to.
Have you ever wondered why life could not have evolved in such a way that everything would be just permanent bliss? I may not be the only one to ask such a question, because we also know that no matter how financially wealthy or secure some people may be, there is always a desire for more balance, more fulfillment, and more freedom to pursue. It seems our desires are forever chasing that proverbial carrot on a stick that is constantly exceeding our grasp. The quest for balance seems never ending, doesn’t it?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not dissing living a balanced life or striving for one. Like many people, I have experienced some amazing moments in my life when everything just seemed to come together. From the ecstatic feeling of winning a sports championship, to the euphoria of falling in love, or accomplishing a major achievement through work. But as great as they are, there is always a downside. They never seem to last very long. And if they did, I wonder if we would we still feel the same if they lasted for longer periods of time? Who knows?
So why is life this way? Do we just accept it as the way it is? Or is there something underlying it all that can offer us better insight, so at least we can gauge our expectations in life and manage them accordingly? Maybe because we spend so much of our time dealing with day to day affairs on the surface that we fail to appreciate the real mechanisms that underlie why life is the way it is. Or, as the 13th century poet Rumi put it: “Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots”.
So let us put these questions aside for a moment, and dig into something that might help with us understand things a little better. If we look beneath the surface, we just might find something that was there all along that we just do not appreciate as much as we should. No doubt, this kind of digging may be uncomfortable for some. After all, you never know what you might find or what you might end up having to deal with. It requires changing our perception of things from what we are normally used to.
If you read my previous articles, you may sense where I am going with this. Somewhere deeper in the science world? Umm…yeah. Because in this case, I think all these questions about balance and cycles in life has a lot to do with the stuff we’re actually made of. That is, the physical stuff of ‘energy and matter’. Does it seem scary? Well, it shouldn’t.
My aim is always to keep things a light as possible. We will also take another trip back to the beginning of the universe. But it will be fun, I promise! Because if we learn a few basic things about how energy and matter work the way they do, it can help us take a different perspective on why we are such constantly striving animals, and why we get ourselves all tangled up in the complexities of life in general. So, let’s take a look.
Heating Things Up
In a previous article Size Matters [1], I presented a STEM visual that illustrates how infinitesimally tiny stuff came into existence to simultaneously form the very big stuff in our our universe. The universe evolved through a series of stages, or levels, from the sub-atomic to molecular, to larger chemical compounds, then microscopic organisms and then to life. But have you ever wondered how it came into existence in the first place? How did the universe seem to start with nothing at all, and evolve to the point at which we find ourselves here on Earth dealing with all of the complexities of life?
Some people have pondered this question very deeply, and with sound scientific probing, discovered some very interesting answers. At least enough to get us started on a path of a new understanding. It turns out the answers are not just interesting from a scientific standpoint, but are highly relevant for how we think about our common everyday experiences. It all has to do with the stuff that makes up our bones, our skin and organs, and every other living and non-living thing we see on this planet. All this stuff exists primarily because of the dynamics of matter and energy (which are not actually two separate things, but we will get into that later).
First, a trivia science question. Do you know if you give off heat, or do you absorb heat? If you answered both then you are correct. It is what we experience every time we feel the need to put on a sweater or adjust the thermostat; it is fundamentally a physical thing. I remember back in high school learning that chemical reactions that give off heat are called exothermic, and reactions that absorb heat are called endothermic. The biochemical processes in our bodies give off heat when we need to cool down (exothermic), and absorb heat when we need to warm up (endothermic). We maintain a delicate body temperature of around 37o C on average, from which any deviation of one or two degrees could be an indication of illness. This is something we are all familiar with, and as long as we are healthy and feeling fine, we tend not to think much about it. But as soon as our body temperature deviates from that value, we may have cause to worry. In short, heat matters! And understanding how it works is, or should be, part of our basic education.
Thermo-dyna-what?
The branch of science that deals with heat is called thermodynamics. Now I suspect the mere mention of such a word may send some people running; but it is not as scary as it sounds. In fact, if you have managed to stay alive for any length of time on this planet, then you already have a lot of practical experience in thermodynamics. Quite simply, the word literally refers to the dynamics of heat (thermo), or heat-dynamics. And because heat fluctuates constantly in our bodies, homes, buildings and with the weather, we are constantly adjusting to it in one way or another. The difference between what scientists do and what everybody else does is that scientists conduct specific experiments to understand more precisely how it works, whereas the rest of us have practical experience adjusting to changes in heat in whatever way we can.
For scientists, the word heat means something very specific. For them, heat pertains to the activity of the stuff that makes up matter (atoms and molecules, and the ultra tiny stuff at the quantum level). Oxygen molecules in hot air move faster than those in cool air for example. By comparison, heat is to energy what mass is to matter. Heat is really the thing we measure to better understand how energy works. So thermodynamics is really about the study of how energy works in things such as air and water, organisms, climate, our blood chemistry, how we digest food, and practically everything else we need to survive. If I had my preference, I would prefer a different word than thermodynamics, such as energetics, because energy is what it is really all about when we get down to it.
Whatever we call it, from everything we have learned about energy so far, there are two well-known laws that provide a lot of explanation for what we see happening around us at any moment. The first law tells us that the total amount of energy is always constant. Energy is neither created nor destroyed; it is simply transformed from one form to another. Or, another way of saying it is an increase in energy at one location occurs at the expense of losing energy at some other location. It always all adds up to the same total amount.
This first law has profound implications for how we think about everything in the universe. From the big bang, to everything we see today, it is all the very same total amount of energy as it was in the very beginning. One way of thinking about it is to think of the universe as a mega-giant fireworks display, where the big bang was the source of ignition, and all the galaxies, stars and planets are the stuff that formed from its initial explosion. When we look up at the night sky, it appears relatively still to our eyes, but in reality, everything we see continues to move and transform from one form to another.
It is kind of like if you video recorded a fireworks display and played it back very slowly, perhaps at one frame at a time, everything would appear still. This is because our Earth-scale space-time reference is so much slower and smaller than the full scale of the universe. But much like fireworks, everything in the the universe will eventually fizzle out just as fireworks do after the energy is dissipated (but that will be a very long time from now, so there is no need to worry about it just yet!).
So how is it that energy works this way? If the universe is full of constant energy, how can the universe expand and transform into so many different things? This is a very puzzling question, but we will try a simple analogy.
Imagine that the total amount of energy in the universe is like a sponge; when it is wet — it expands, and when it is dry — it contracts; but the total amount of sponge material remains the same. According to the latest theories, this is basically how the universe functions as well. When the universe is expanding, the same amount of energy is spread out further within larger amounts of space and time overall. The weird thing is that although the universe is expanding and cooling down overall with the same amount of energy, there are localized areas where energy heats up and things contract; such as in the formation of galaxies, stars, planets. This is illustrated in the STEM visual above. As I like to think of it, it is all part of the paradox of how our present universe formed by both blowing apart and coming together at the same time. If this boggles your mind, you are not alone!
But Wait, There’s More!
If we think these vast amounts of space and time are mind-boggling, how energy behaves is where things get really bizarre. This is where the second law of thermodynamics comes in (if you’re ready for it!). Whereas the first law tells us that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant, the second law basically tells us that it has an irreversible tendency to make things more complex. In short, the first law can be thought of as the law of conservation (a quantity), and the second law pertains to increasing complexity of energy in different forms (which is more to do with quality).
A simple way of thinking about it is to suppose you have $100. At one point your $100 is made up of three $20 bills, three $10 bills, and two $5 bills. Now suppose you exchange one of your $20 bills for two $10 bills, and one of your $5 bills for five $1 bills. You still have $100 in total, but you have different numbers of bills in different denominations. So when things like stars, galaxies, and planets form in the universe, they are kind like denominations of money. The total amount of energy in the universe remains constant, but the forms themselves will change as energy continues to flow and transform into more complex structures.
What the first law does not tell us is how or why those changes happen when they do. The reason why things like stars and planets form in the universe has to do with a tendency of energy to take a path of least resistance on the whole. The stuff that makes up the stars and planets (i.e. ‘matter’) is actually energy bound up in particular forms, but in much more concentrated forms than it was previously. And once something forms, the energy invested is no longer available for other things as it was before (at least not until a very long time in the future after the form disintegrates).
The reason why things form the way they do has to do with the quality of energy available at a particular time and location. Different qualities of energy are suitable for some circumstances and not others. Going back to our money example, the different denominations of money you have that make up your $100 can be used for different purposes. Suppose you had five $20 bills and you tried to purchase something that only cost $2; if the cashier did not have appropriate change then the $20 denominations are not much use. But if you have five $1 bills, you could pay with two $1 bills without having to receive any change. In other circumstances, it may be more convenient to have $20 denominations on hand for more costly purchases. So whether you have a $ 20 bill, or 20 $1 bills, the total amount of money you have is the same, but they are of different qualities suitable for different purposes.
So being the law of complexity, the second law basically says that energy tends to dissipate in such a way to create more diverse qualitative differences. It tends to increase in complexity and diversity to suite different purposes, much like having different denominations that make up $100. The word scientists invented to describe this property of energy dynamics is called entropy, and in scientific terms, the second law simply states that entropy always increases.
If you have never heard of the word entropy before, you are not alone. And even if you have heard of it, and have been confused by the explanations given for it, you are still not alone. The concept of entropy is one of the most challenging concepts in the history of science. If you google the term, you will find numerous articles that attempt to explain it in many different ways, and you may still not be satisfied. Part of the problem is that many scientists still describe entropy as the degree of disorder. And so from that perspective, there is a common tendency to think the second law is equivalent to saying that disorder always increases. For example, ice will melt into water at room temperature; rooms tend to get messy when we do not maintain them; and things will fall apart at work when people get lazy. This is all true. But entropy is not synonymous with the word disorder. If it was, we wouldn’t need a separate word for it now would we? (And a strange one at that!)
If we think back in terms of our $100 example, if one person who has five $20 bills neatly folded in their pocket, while another has three $20 bills, three $10 bills, one $5 bill, and five $1 bills in their pocket, then the second person’s pocket is likely to be more disorganized than the first. In other words, with increasing diversity and complexity, things can tend to get more disorderly. But although things may get disorderly with increasing entropy, it is not always the case. This is something that many scientists and science writers have had difficulty explaining over the last one hundred years. The misunderstanding is that disorder can be a result of entropy, but not necessarily the only result. This is because while there is an overall tendency for a system to become disordered, it does not mean that it does so everywhere in the same way or at the same time. It really comes down to how different qualities of energy and matter interact under more local conditions. After probing many scientific explanations for it, I have found it easier to think of entropy as the irreversibility of events as energy continues to find ways to dissipate more efficiently. And that’s not all!
An Open Concept
This is still not the end of the story! Here is something else we know about the second law: entropy only increases under closed system conditions. By a closed system, we mean a system where additional matter or energy does not enter or leave a system. The quality of energy in a closed system will degrade simply because it is not being refreshed or resupplied with higher quality energy. In an open system, all this changes because of energy flux entering in and out of the system. It is constantly being re-charged.
If any of this sounds too abstract, consider following experience we are all familiar with. If you close all the doors and windows in your home, and you keep the thermostats for each room at the same temperature, after a while the air will be the same temperature throughout the house. But if someone opens a door or a window, we will feel a difference in temperature, perhaps along with a breeze as the cooler outside air flows in and begins to mix with the warmer inside air. This is because by leaving a door or window open, we create an open system, as there is now a flow of air in the house as a result of the difference in temperatures from inside and outside. It creates an energy flux.
And here is the real crux of the matter (or the crux of the flux if we want to sound catchy)! In a closed system (i.e. all doors and windows closed), the air temperature will establish an equilibrium. But in an open system, where there is energy flux, there a constant dis-equilibrium. In a closed system, a plant, a dog, or a human will not need to adapt if the temperature never changes. But these same life forms will need to adapt to there are changes in energy flux, such as in an open system. As it turns out, this is a fundamental basis for how living systems came into existence (yes, the origin of life). A number of prominent scientists have been working in this area of non-equilibrium thermodynamics (or NET for short) for decades, all stemming from pioneering work in the 1960’s by a renowned scientist named Ilya Prigogine [2]. And guess what? It all goes back to the very beginning, yet again!
Back to the Beginning
How the basic laws of thermodynamics were set in motion from the very beginning of space and time is something scientists discovered by looking out into very, very deep space. The further out we look in the universe, that is, the further out in space we look, the further back in time we are looking because of the length of time it takes the light from distant bodies to reach us. It turns out that the furthest out that we can see is what remained immediately after the big bang some 14 billion years ago. It is a type of gamma radiation known as the cosmic background radiation.
It seems weird, doesn’t it? That if we look out far enough, we are looking back so far in space and time to what was left behind from the very beginning of the universe? The interesting thing about it is that physicists were able to determine very subtle differences in temperature created immediately after the big bang; very, very small differences in fact, in the order of thousandths of degrees. However small those differences were, they were just enough to create an energy flux in the universe and to get some interesting things happening. In his book A Brief History of Time, the late Stephen Hawking called these differences entropy watersheds[3]. They are what set the wheels in motion for the formation of matter; from quantum particles, to atoms, then molecules, and so forth. As weird as it may sound, what we think of as matter is really just energy configured in different ways.
How matter comes together to form more complex matter (e.g. how quantum particles form atoms, and how atoms form molecules) or break apart (how molecules break up into atoms) is fundamentally dependent upon not only the quantity of energy available (the 1st Law), but also the quality of that energy (the 2nd Law). Although the overall quantity of energy is constant, it is not evenly distributed. This is because the quality of energy is not the same everywhere. Even very small differences were enough to set the wheels in motion for different types of matter to take form because of these non-equilibrium conditions.
The implication of all this is that the universe has been out of equilibrium from the very beginning, and it is within these non-equilibrium conditions that everything started to take form. Once the universe got this ball rolling, everything else followed. More and more complexity emerged due to the increasing entropy and energy flux in the universe; all the way up to and including the evolution of life on Earth.
A Fact of Life
While non-equilibrium thermodynamics (NET) proves to be the backbone for the theory of evolution in the universe, its role in the evolution of life on Earth is even more fascinating. Among many who have worked in this area, two notable scientists Jeffrey Wicken [4] and James Kay[5] applied NET theory to understand how energy works in the evolution of life and complex ecological systems. Essentially, because the Earth receives most of its energy from the Sun, it requires the Earth’s atmosphere to function as an open system. The combined effect of solar variation and seasonal fluctuations related to the Earth’s orbital motion cause the energy we get from the Sun to continuously fluctuate[6].
So what we have is an atmosphere that is in constant energy flux; and therefore, it is fundamentally out of equilibrium. This is the reason we have climate and weather; and if climate and weather is out of equilibrium, then so too is everything that depends upon it. According to Wicken and Kay, life evolved as a result of an energy crisis in the early periods of the Earths’ history. Organic molecules started to form as a means for energy to dissipate more efficiently than the surrounding inorganic compounds [7].
This did not happen overnight! It took over 2 billion years for even the simplest forms of life to evolve — and they were just single celled organisms. But once we got that ball rolling, life complexified initially through the Cambrian explosion at about 500 million years ago, through the entire Phanerozoic Era, through the Mesozoic (the era of the dinosaurs), to the most recent Cenozoic Era which includes ourselves, homo sapiens. In short, as life evolved under constantly changing non-equilibrium energy conditions, different forms of life evolved to adapt to the changes in the energy flux in their environments. The complexity (and diversity) of life intensified over time as a result of different species competing for diminishing high quality energy (food).
On a philosophical level, these incredible discoveries using non-equilibrium thermodynamics are forcing us to re-think what we have normally thought of as notions of balance and equilibrium in nature, and perhaps even in daily life in general. It seems at best, what we may refer to as balance is really a dynamic equilibrium whereby the health and integrity of a species or an ecosystem, or even a persons’ life, is maintained only within a specific range of suitable conditions. The reality is that life thrives only in non-equilibrium conditions as it strives to maintain some degree of dynamic equilibrium with environmental change. Without it, life would stagnate and die. There would be nothing to strive for. When conditions are pushed beyond certain thresholds, both individual species and the complex dynamics of entire ecosystems may either collapse or need to adapt to the new changes. It is what it is, but in another way — it’s a beautiful thing!
So it is a fundamental fact of life that explains much, doesn’t it? It certainly presents another paradox for deeper contemplation. As with the universe that both blew apart and came together at the same time, what we like to think of as a balance of life on Earth is really only maintainable by being out of equilibrium. No form of life has ever achieved any true balance; be it bacteria, insects, plants or animals, entire ecosystems nor us humans. So from that sluggish feeling we have waking in the morning, to the need to constantly supply ourselves with fresh food, to that thing last week that did not quite work out as you had hoped, and basically everything that happens in our lives — are all rooted in the non-equilibrium nature of the universe itself. At best, we can maintain some degree of dynamic equilibrium, but as the saying goes, change is constant, and life is much about making constant adjustments and adapting to change. It is fundamental to the very fabric of the universe in which we live, and therefore, should probably be included in how we think about life in general, shouldn’t it?
References:
[1] Brian Gregory (2021). Size Matters: A lot more than we think! geosophy.medium.com
[2] Ilya Prigogine (1977). Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems. Wiley. ISBN 0–471–02401–5.
[3] Stephen Hawking (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books. ISBN 978–0–553–38016–3.
[4] Jeffrey Wicken (1987). Evolution, Thermodynamics, and Information: Extending the Darwinian Program. Oxford University Press.
[5] James Kay (2000). Ecosystems as Self-organizing Holarchic Open Systems : Narratives and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In Sven Erik Jorgensen, Felix Muller (eds.), Handbook of Ecosystems Theories and Management, CRC Press — Lewis Publishers. pp 135–160
[6] David Kaplan of Quanta Magazine gives a great explanation of this on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9QYtbjzjAw.
[7] Understandably, there are profound implications of this discovery for conventional religious beliefs, and there has been much written on it. It is hot topic that is beyond the scope of this article, but one that I will return to in the future.
