Shantaram and The Tendancy Towards Complexity

During the break, I finished off a rather wonderful book called Shantaram, which I have now somewhat contentiously placed in my quadrifecta of favorite books (Atlas Shrugged, The Road, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and Shantaram). The book, which was based I presume rather loosely on the life of the author, captured that heady mixture of philosophy and action whose coexistence lends a great deal of credibility to both. Without delving into the greater landscape of the debate on the nature of good and evil which the book pertains, I will move to a particularly fascinating concept that was discussed; a sort of paradigm through which we can view good and evil, God and the malign, order and chaos, which the book termed the "Tendency Towards Complexity". 

The basic principal is this: in the beginning, during the singularity, all that existed did so in a condition of the purest possible simplicity. The singularity was incredibly hot and almost infinitely dense, leading to a massive expansion, the big bang. As the universe expanded and cooled, energy was transformed into the first subatomic particles, and eventually the first few elements as we know them. These atoms (principally hydrogen, helium, and lithium) formed massive clouds, which eventually, due to the attraction of gravity, coalesced into the first stars. Within these stars, the first of the more complex, heavier elements were synthesised. Even later, as the universe continued to cool (though at a slower and slower rate) solar systems were formed. Add billions of years, and (not to delve into the biology) life is born, through some nigh on miraculous combination of elements and amino acids. This is basic life, single cells, which grew more and more complex. Suddenly there are multicellular organisms, and eventually, the first homo sapiens walk. We construct a society that hails progress and technology, and here we are, with the potency of microprocessors increasing exponentially with each passing year, beginning to realize the amazing possibilities that lie ahead. 

Now, why list all these facts and occurrences, which I am sure you have all heard a thousand times before? It is because in all of them, there is one overwhelming trend: the simple becomes more and more complex. And so the book went on to qualify good and evil, in that good is what advances the complexity of the universe, and evil is what destroys it, reverts the process, creates chaos. This was particularly fascinating to me, because it made me realize that even random events can be considered good or evil, where previously, I had thought both to be purely human characteristics, which could only be the result of human actions. I will give an example. In the universe, though many would say it is probable we are not alone, we have little concrete evidence to that effect. For all we know, we could be all the life the universe has to offer. As such, that makes the human brain the most complex object in the universe. By the system I have just described, that also makes it the purest manifestation of good in existence. Aside from the rather obvious conclusion that murder, as it would essentially destroy the function of a complex being, is evil in any scenario (a sort of categorical imperative), this calls into question natural events. Death becomes pure evil, rather than a necessary force. And say that, at random, a hunk of rock hurtling through space collides with earth and destroys all life. That rock, and its trajectory, and perhaps even the previous collision that spawned it, is evil. 

Now, I am well aware that many physicists would disagree with this idea. After all, doesn't the second law of thermodynamics state that in an isolated system, entropy can only increase? If the universe is in fact hurtling towards heat death, then complexity becomes an agent of its own destruction. A sort of tragic hero of sorts, tragically flawed by nature. However, for the moment, in the timeframe we inhabit and what has come before, the concept holds, despite the inevitability of an end. Besides, every concept has its counterpoint.

Return to the idealisation of complexity as a final goal. It is here that the author draws the inevitable connection between the fundamentally good, the complex, and the concept we so often call God. I will make a more personal connection. I was in art class recently, sketching some anatomy (specifically the muscular system), and I could not help but marvel that this is the product of essentially random events and a process of selection. I remarked to the person sitting across the table from me: "How can this be? This sketch alone is the most compelling argument for the existence of God that there is." This from someone who is far from religious. But then again, perhaps that what makes this idea so monumental to me; it proposes God as an inevitable product of the universe, not the inverse. If God is complexity, its existence cannot be denied. However, its prevalence (or its inevitability, I suppose), as aforementioned, can be questioned. Rather than continue to write a dissertation on how murky the semantics can become, I'll force myself to an end here. I've been thinking for a long while on the nature of good and evil, and how far we are willing to draw the lines that divide the two. And on the subject of knowledge, what could be more fundamental? Ethics is one of the most difficult places to truly know an answer. Such a comprehensive one as this was too fascinating to pass up.

TL;DR - physical complexity = good, destruction = bad.