Fighting Entropy
The concept of entropy, within the context of the big bang theory and thermodynamics, stipulates that the universe wants us to get “messier”.
Modernity has often steered us against this current, with meticulous maintenance habits and great efforts taken to keep our living habitats neatly organized and sanitized, maximizing our comfort levels and minimizing our cognitive frictions.
Yet as we attempt to compartmentalize messiness and seek to endlessly maintain control over this increasingly complex world, we are simultaneously spewing all sorts of contamination into a previously pristine world, both intentionally and unintentionally.
As we progress through the 21st century, the hyper-sanitization and sterilization of our environment has never been greater, and the evolutionary pressure this places on natural selection is putting our ecosystems in tremendous jeopardy.
On an individual level, I feel like we are each fighting an entropy of toxicity, within our bodies and within our collective environment called planet Earth.
Plants, fungi, bacteria, and all forms of life have different ways to transform small amounts of toxins encountered in the environment into harmless compounds slowly over time, but the rate at which we are introducing these toxins far outpaces the ability to neutralize them, affecting our air, water, and food supply.
Within our most basic needs for survival, it’s all unavoidable at this point. To live and breathe on planet Earth is to expose oneself to an array of potential hazards, albeit diluted, but omnipresent. The Antarctic continent may offer the most untainted environment possible1, though it appears humans have essentially colonized that as well (un-fun fact = there are ATMs in Antarctica).
Thus, beyond mitigating exposure, the way to fight the inevitable toxicity is to increase resilience. Novel biotech innovations are being explored in this realm, bringing us closer and closer to actualizing the concept of “super-humans”, but one need not go down this road of experimentation to better themselves; there is a reliable, time-tested approach that we all have access to right now:
Devoted maintenance with the vessel we call the body.
Entropy is not the same thing as senescence, but from a grander cosmic perspective, they become rather similar; the body’s aging process is a commitment towards breaking down a functioning organism back into the building blocks of organic matter, to then incorporate into and be utilized by the surrounding ecosystems. That’s nature’s plan anyway, though humans have cleverly found ways to cockblock that particular aspect in the circle of life, albeit temporarily. (Nature bats last.)
Preservatives, such as potassium sorbate, are commonly found in food products. These additives are typically metabolized by the body and do not accumulate, and are considered generally safe for consumption. Studies done on rats using exceptionally high quantities have historically not shown toxic developments or tumor issues. Skimming through older articles (like this one) on sorbates illustrates the considerations once given for safety concerns and a somewhat comprehensive risk/benefit analysis for use as a common food additive.
On the other hand, this paper from 2002 indicates damage to DNA and other potential complications when sorbates interact with other compounds, and this one from 2010 shows genotoxic effects to the body’s lymphatic system2. These are the only (relatively) recent sources I was able to find on the subject, and considering that an antimicrobial compound is being metabolized by the body, it is not very surprising that there may very well be a downstream mutagenic effect from regular consumption of this food additive.
And then there are artificial sweeteners to consider. Sucralose (such as Splenda) was recently found to suppress T-cell proliferation in mice at high doses, negatively impacting immune system functionality, and there are implications that this could very well be happening in humans as well (though smaller doses were not tested in this experiment).
Rather than consider this an alarming wake up call worthy of further investigation, news articles (as well as the original journal article itself) are spinning this as a possible tool to use in future therapies for autoimmune disorders. While there is merit to this possibility, the larger implications of discovering a new observable interaction within the complex systems of our bodies is being swept under the rug, lest another industry come under intense scrutiny for potentially causing harm unto the public.
Food preservatives and artificial sweeteners are omnipresent in processed food, and avoidance (like the many toxins in our environment) can be rather difficult, especially when limited time and constrained finances force many people to consume these types of products rather than whole foods.
Is choosing to go against the current ever a wise idea? Depending on the circumstances, it could be the equivalent of a life or death decision.
Refusing to agree on a specific principal with an acknowledged leader could literally mean death, but refusing to join a mob that marches towards it’s own self-destruction could equate to literally avoiding death3.
A strategy like peacocking for the masses can gain attention leading to lucrative rewards, or it can be like painting a bullseye on one’s own forehead, depending on the context, the type of attention being attracted, and the agendas that are interfered with.
Modern society and media has subtly (and not-so-subtly) encouraged the desire to gain attention, and the ego of the self is all too happy to oblige, striving to gain the focus of as many eyeballs as possible, often accepting harsh repercussions in the process.
If we can take one lesson from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, perhaps it should be in the metaphor for the eye of Sauron, and the inherent dangers of attracting it’s attention.
This is why I tend to equate modern society to the Borg from the Star Trek universe ; the parallels seem to be overlapping more and more as time goes on.
Despite all these references I often make, I’m not a huge fan of science fiction. I used to read a lot when I was younger (often a book a day) but stopped around high school, when I realized the power of cinema and film.
I do however remember being quite taken by the Ender’s Shadow series by Orson Scott Card (an offshoot of Ender’s Game). Without going too far into the premise, the Ender’s Shadow series takes place on planet Earth after the human race successfully annihilated a previously hostile alien species. The books follow the societal turbulence as the nations around the globe return to fighting each other, with nationality and historical rivalries returning, as if the previous existential threat from an alien invasion never even occurred.
This was the part of the series that I always thought was outright dumb: “there’s no way that countries will still be fighting with each other after an existential threat” was the recurring thought of my teen-age self reading these books. A fine example for the definition of naivety right there.
Because in 2023, we seem to be on an accelerated course for acting out the timeline of Earth-side events that Orson Scott Card laid out in those books.
All that’s missing is the narrative of an impending alien invasion, which requires the unwavering cooperation of all humans across all nations…
[ … & cue the next AI-powered crisis4 … ]
Good for the penguins; they deserve it for being so adorable.
wouldn’t it be cool if we all had full access to these scientific papers which are supposed to be the basis for confidence in science?
this is an Open-Ended Allusion …
… and so is this one …