As I leave the comfort of my desk to go grocery shopping, I face, week after week, the following dilemma. On one hand, I would like to spend as little as possible in order to ensure I can continue to pay my university fees, rent, bills and the like. “Perhaps I might even be able to do some travel if I am conservative enough with my spending”, is my teleological rationale. On the other hand, I am aware that cheaper consumer products often come at a cost of being less healthy, produced by big industrial corporations, and more damaging to the environment (for instance, using unsustainable ingredients like palm oil, overseas manufacturing and its carbon footprint, and/or cheaper non-recyclable packaging).
The industrial complex, as a system, requires input (capital, raw materials) to produce its output and continue to thrive. Consumers provide the capital and nature provides the raw materials. In the process, they become instruments for the production of prestige goods and weapons in the interest of domination by the ruling class Gare (2010). One of the astonishing phenomena by which this dynamic is perpetuated are heavily processed foods. These are a manifestation of our technological prowess, in the sense that they exploit the principle of least action, whereby systems (in this case, humans) have a tendency to increase their potential energy while trying to minimise any action (e.g. movement) Feynman (1964), Das (2013). The consumption of such products is made easy by their cheap and time-saving qualities (both in the preparation and procuring thereof) Pollan (2013).
Closely related to the principle of least action is entropy, or amount of chaos. The second law of thermodynamics states that “the entropy in an isolated system can increase but not decrease” Wehrl (1978). Open thermodynamic systems such as living organisms, however, are able to reduce their local entropy through increasing that of their environment, with a resultant net increase in entropy overall1. Thus once again humanity as a whole—by means of industrial streamlining of production—continues to exploit this phenomenon to our immediate benefit and long term detriment of our habitat (and, unwittingly, of ourselves).
So we find ourselves at a critical time at the edge of chaos McLaren (2009). Within the limited conditions in which life and order are possible, equilibrium is delicate2. We need to change our ways to ensure the long term prosperity of our environment (and through it, of ourselves). I believe that a powerful way in which we can assert our free will is by acting against the principle of least action.
We are privileged to have a wealth of knowledge and connectedness at our disposal (largely as a result of industrial civilisation), which we can deploy as local, small scale, sustainable production of sustenance and goods, working in communities within communities, as suggested by the likes of Chomsky Chomsky and Foucault (1971), and Bookchin Bookchin (1987).
In order to make an impact in the correction of our course as a species, a critical mass of people willing to inspire change is required. It is our role as thinkers to convince our fellow humans that everyone has a stake, that democracy manifests in subtle ways, and that every action counts. A way to inspire people to act might be to romanticise production as we have consumption—for which we would have to overcome the principle of least action—making it desirable, commendable. This is achievable through an Aristotelian virtue ethics.
References
Footnotes
It is important to note here that there is no escaping the arrow of time Hawking (2009). It points in the direction of entropy increasing, hence why the scattered pieces on the ground come after the vase being on the shelf, and not the other way around.↩︎
I invite the reader to consider the relationship between complexity and entropy, as outlined in Rosso et al. (2007).↩︎