Essay Abstract
I make the case that civilizations are actually expeditions in conservation laws, expeditions seeking ever more efficient ways to preserve self by "harnessing" nature, therefore the ultimate civilization will be when this "self" namely man confronts the situation that it is in fact the most authentic i.e. de facto of conservation laws. This is in the rigorous sense that the very stationary action or configuration space or "quantum" at work in nature is man himself. Now is it possible that man is his own very quantum/uncertainty? Grant it thus: after seeking perpetual motion of all ranks and failing, humanity came to the humbling Carnot conclusion that the efficiency of any system cannot be more than 1. Next phase, humanity confronts the even more humbling thesis likely in Quantum Gravity that the very efficiency (or so-called probability) 1 --the very "matter wave" at play in nature, is its own self (the prototype "life"). Third phase, there is trouble, man would rather not see himself as an uncertainty principle but instead as the entity; the "absolute" which actually steers all of nature. Therein lies his decadence--that possibility that the ship of "self" has gone mad, against the very soul of man as we know and cherish it today. This would be then the collapse or decoherence of a wavefunction. Thermodynamics probably pictures it as heat death of the universe. The point is, for any equilibrium at all as life surely is; collapse is an ever clear and present danger.
Author Bio
I think of myself as a bare-foot scientist, often lacking in formalism but often dead on point in principle. I have no good justification for this opinion of myself other than that I often try to extract predictions from my speculations, and on my own authority they do not often fail me. I like to be free to tinker and to have the resources to build my fancy. I work as a graphic artist. I hope to create life someday (on television!). I have a B.A. (hon.) in Mass Communication.