(Seed idea from “What we still don’t know”, C4, 20.12.04: the universe is finely tuned exactly enough to exist.)
Because we are a product of the universe, we:
because too much of either order or disorder would lead to our destruction.
In order to have life, some kind of activity is required. Too much activity in one direction leads to static order, too much in the other direction to chaos and dissolution. The binary urges towards order/control and freedom/chaos are the result.
Activity requires that things change, but equilibrium (and conservation of energy?) requires that they do not change too much; the result is dynamic complexity.
Does this lead to the conservative/liberal polarity? The one an urge for control, the other for freedom? Both freedom and control are destructive if taken to extremes, so does this innate knowledge—if that’s what it is—produce a collective human urge to resist extremes in either, as well as a constant dynamic ‘struggle’ or interplay between them?
Once differentiated from a formless whole, things will either seek equilibrium or yield to decay. A small change in one part will evoke a small corresponding change in another, and so on, yet the whole is still conserved even when this process has gone so far as to produce the detailed complexity that makes up the universe - because nothing is lost, yet things stay in motion, there can only be variation - not loss or increase. So it makes sense for the universe to be ’finely tuned’ enough for our existence.
Created: 23 Oct 2007 Updated: 5 May 2010