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Reality is evil
What, then, are we to do? The only ‘ought’ we can tentatively derive from the vision of reality revealed by the thermodynamic revolution is this: it is our duty to strike back at the Universe. For it is precisely in the possibility of retaliating against the moral horror of existence that new ethical imperatives and aesthetic insights might be forg... See more
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
This makes me think of Camus and the attitude of absurdism. He believed that we should say fuck you to the universe and play at living for as long as possible; that we should revolt against nature and it’s decreative mission. I also think of the Dylan Thomas poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” He says “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Indeed, from Plato onwards, philosophers have generally agreed that living well means aligning with the rational order of the cosmos. ‘Live in accordance with nature,’ Marcus Aurelius urges in his Meditations. For these thinkers, nature serves as the ethical guide for our actions and the lodestone of our aesthetic ideals because it embodies... See more
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
Rather than something to align with, the Universe appears to be fundamentally hostile to our wellbeing.
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
we are nothing more than cups destined to shatter endlessly through time until there is nothing left to break.
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
If being complicit in the destructive flow of the Universe is evil, then goodness might be redefined as that which resists the nature and structure of reality, however futilely. Goodness could consist in any act that seeks, however briefly, to bend the entropic thrust of existence back upon itself – holding it at bay, even if only momentarily.
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
The laws of thermodynamics encompass the whole of reality, from beginning to end, top to bottom, in origin, order and operation. We exist by virtue of heat exchange alone, and work entirely in service to the entropic decay of reality prescribed by that exchange.
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
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... See more
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
Decay, it seems, is the ultimate essence of existence, which means that our being must be understood as a mode of unbecoming.
Drew M Dalton • Reality is evil
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.