Solar Ethics

6/8/24

With a constant stream of incoming energy from the sun, life on Earth is evidently negentropic, as revealed in the processes of evolution, civilization, and technology. In the sense that energy is a quantifiable sum, there is objective value to the energy humans store in body and mind and transform into actions and structures in the world.

Sunlight energy stored by plants in glucose becomes the basic substrate for cellular metabolism, which generates resources to create and maintain the structures and functions of all organisms. For the purpose of greater survivability, single cells collaborate in colonies, tissues, organs, organisms and societies with growing complexity. More solar energy is invested in more complexly organized systems. The energy flows from simpler to more complex systems, with simpler systems harnessing and organizing the energy that more complex systems can then utilize with greater efficiency. This directional streaming of energy is beneficial for all tiers, as the consequences of higher-order tiers feed back to organize the lower ones when the whole system is in balance. This balance, though teetering on the way to higher complexity, evolves naturally, as anything else would not sustain.

Humans represent a greater level of complexity than animals and plants, which is evidenced in the allocation of energy beyond core body functions into cognition, creativity and dynamic collaborations with other humans and the environment. The human brain is the most energy expensive organ in the world. Single plants and animals are of lesser complex organization, but forests or ecosystems can be altogether more complex and organized than a single human. Intuitively, most would not argue to protect a single plant at the expense of a human, and few would argue to save one human in exchange for a whole rainforest. The system of valuation based off of complexity, a proxy for energy investment, is thus intuitive or commonplace.

This is a natural system of ethics that emerges from an objective experience of this solar system. Behaviors that interfere with the streaming of sunlight into complexity or directly destroy energy expensive complexity, without purposefully directing that energy into higher organization, are wasteful and at odds with life. Meanwhile, supporting the flow of energy into complexity is being harmonious with the cosmic straining of evolution toward greater life. Because these ethical principles are grounded in measurable quantities of energy and complexity that are also apparent in everyday life, ethical questions can be approached either through calculation or intuitive understanding.

The value of organisms is not just stored within the energy of the body and mind but in their past and future collaborations with the environment that support succession of sunlight into order and complexity. Every organism alive today is the concrescence of immense energy ancestors. Each generation stores more sunlight and becomes brighter, continually concrescing as long as there is light to harness.