Disturbing Universe

    “Do I dare disturb the universe?”  T. S. Eliot mused in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”  I really don’t remember anything else about the poem, but it’s a great question.  I can be pretty shy, so I know the general feeling of “do I dare disturb” pretty well.  I hate disturbing people.  As a kid I was once in a relative’s car on some pretty windy roads.  I started feeling motion sickness, and an oncoming upheaval of my latest meal.  I decided to wait and hope it passed, but it didn’t.  I tried to act like nothing was wrong and just held it in.  Eventually, I knew that something was coming up and there’s nothing I could do about it.  I waited for a break in the conversation and said politely but very quickly that they might prefer to pull over and that I would appreciate it very much.  I’m the guy who will stand over your shoulder for ten minutes at a party, hoping to get in on the conversation, or I might have a great story to tell, but I’m not sure how everyone in the circle will react to it, or if the established members of the group are straining to tolerate my presence and the less words I say, the more accepting they will be of the intrusion.

    Disturbing a conversation and disturbing the universe seem entirely different, but they both help you know what Charlie Brown feels like when he talks about his stomach hurting.  Entropy is this crazy idea that certain things only go one direction.  There’s a certain amount of order in the universe and no possible occurrence can give us more order (it’s not exactly order the way most people think of it, there’s a very technical and mathematic definition).  That means everything you do is introducing a certain amount of chaos into the world and removing some of the order, in a certain sense.  Chemical reactions also have positive entropy.  That means that breathing is introducing a certain amount of chaos.  Of course, in scale with the rest of the universe, it’s not much chaos but still if your very breath is contributing to the perpetual collapse of order in the universe, you will disturb the universe whether you intend to or not, and the more you do, the more the universe will be disturbed.  Think about the people in history books.  Think about how different history might be if not for them.  They disturbed the universe and history and the course of your life.  The nerve! 

    There are a couple different philosophies that have a clear opinion about disturbing the universe.   There’s a school of thought that is very scared to disturb the universe.  For a naturalist (or environmentalist I guess), the world is in working order and operating well enough by itself.  We all know well enough should be left alone.  The idea of harmony with the universe doesn’t seem quite as silly in this context.  If you can make a smaller smudge on the delicately balanced world by behaving peacefully and thinking slowly and living simply, go for it.  On the other hand the humanist wants the people in the world to feel comfortable and for humanity to survive forever.  He knows that the universe is big enough to handle a few dents and scratches.  So we’ll disturb the universe as much as we need to in order to survive or thrive or improve every situation or environment we find.  Between these two options (which are extreme) I would personally pick the first.  For one, it’s more of an eastern idea which means I’m not very used to it, and I’ll probably err on the other side naturally.  Secondly, for pragmatic reasons, I would probably enjoy life more if I wasn’t obsessed with pleasure.

   I need a better reason than pleasure to do something really disruptive.  I’ve already disrupted the universe by being born in it with a sinful depraved nature.  Trust me, I’ve messed up some great stuff already.  I don’t want to be a net negative force on the universe.  I don’t have any brilliant plans to make improvements on the world.

    Some people don’t get the Bible.  It has scores of significances and a million applications.  One way that I like thinking about it is a guide to disturbing the universe in a good way.  OT stuff has some clear lists, biographical examples and poetic motivation.  The NT has essays and some fantastic speeches.  The thing is , within the universe, it’s been established that there are no net positives.  Everything goes downhill eventually.  That’s why the Bible works so well.  It considers consequences that aren’t under the sun or Alpha Centauri or the Milky Way.  Our actions might disturb some of the order in this universe, but there’s another one without laws of entropy.  I don’t mean that we should intentionally accelerate the erosion of the planet, or completely forsake anything enjoyable.  But if we can choose tradeoffs with eternal benefits, (no rust moths thieves or entropy) they’ll prove to be worth it every time.