The Duality of Nature: Why Good Things Are Energetically Unfavourable

✦ Introduction: The Strange Truth About Goodness

From a young age, we’re told to be honest, kind, grateful, and disciplined — as if these are our natural states, the default settings of a good human being. But anyone who has actually tried to live this way knows the deeper truth:

Goodness feels uphill. Badness feels downhill.

The right choices rarely come easy. Being honest is harder than lying. Being disciplined is harder than indulging. Staying calm takes more energy than reacting in anger.

So why is it that doing the right thing feels so unnatural?

Is it a flaw in human nature? A failure of upbringing?

Or is this uphill feeling simply part of how the universe is wired?

Let’s explore that idea — not just morally, but scientifically, psychologically, and personally.

🌀 I. The Duality Principle: Nature Always Offers Two Paths

Look closely at the patterns of life, and you’ll see a familiar duality everywhere:

Path of Least Resistance	Path of Conscious Choice
Chaos	Order
Laziness	Discipline
Selfishness	Compassion
Lying	Truth
Entropy	Structure

This isn’t just philosophy. It’s physics.

Nature favors decay. It takes no effort for things to fall apart — but sustained effort to keep things whole. And the same holds true for human behavior.

The morally easier path — self-interest, reaction, shortcuts — requires little energy.

The morally higher path — patience, discipline, empathy — consumes it constantly.

And that leads us to one of the most powerful metaphors for understanding this friction:

🔬 II. The Thermodynamics of Morality

In physics, entropy is the natural tendency of systems to move toward disorder.

Left alone, a clean room becomes messy. A hot object cools. A building deteriorates.

It takes energy to build. It takes effort to preserve. It takes discipline to resist decay.

Morality works the same way.

• It’s easier to lie than to admit fault.
• Easier to indulge than to delay gratification.
• Easier to fit in than to stand alone.
• Easier to go with the crowd than to question it.

Just like physical systems, ethical behavior requires constant energy input. Left unattended, we default to self-interest and inertia.

So no — you’re not flawed if being good feels difficult.

You’re just fighting the natural drift.

You’re resisting entropy — and that, in itself, is an act of meaning.

🧠 III. The Psychological Parallel: System 1 vs. System 2

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes two operating systems in our brain:

• System 1 is fast, reactive, automatic — our default mode.
• System 2 is slow, effortful, and deliberate — our reflective mode.

Virtues like honesty, discipline, and compassion live in System 2.

They are not instinctive. They are practiced, chosen, and often exhausting.

So when you feel like doing the right thing is hard work — you’re not failing.

You’re simply operating in a mode that’s designed to be difficult.

🔥 IV. A Quiet Battle I Remember

When I was a teenager, I had a big circle of friends. I treated everyone the same — laughed with them, shared lunch, visited their homes — without thinking about who came from where or what they had.

But slowly, I started noticing something strange.

Unspoken divisions were forming in the group — based on caste, wealth, and lifestyle. Who had the most gadgets at home. Who got the most pocket money. Who spoke the most polished English. Invisible clans were forming.

At first, I didn’t understand what was happening. But over time, it became clear: those with more — status, money, access — began forming inner circles. And others, who didn’t “qualify,” were left behind.

I wasn’t at the top of these ladders. I was somewhere in the middle — not poor, but not elite. I didn’t fit neatly into any of the groups. And more importantly, I refused to participate in this quiet sorting of people.

I kept treating everyone equally — the neglected ones, the popular ones, the “invisible” ones. I made new bonds, often with those pushed aside. I stayed neutral. I stayed honest.

And I was bullied for it.

“You’ll be left with the losers if you don’t join a group,” they said.

“You don’t belong anywhere.”

“You’ll be forgotten.”

But something inside me resisted. It didn’t feel right to divide friendship like that. I couldn’t force myself to see people as more or less based on where they lived or how much they had.

I held my ground.

Years passed. The excitement around those cliques faded.

Some of the “clan leaders” lost respect as people saw their selfishness. But my relationships — across all groups — remained. In fact, many of those friends still reach out, even today. The way I treated them back then is something they remember and value.

That experience taught me something I’ve never forgotten:

Goodness doesn’t win quickly. But if you stay steady, it becomes undeniable.

🌱 V. A Better Question: Not “Why Is Goodness Hard?” But “Why Is It Worth It?”

It’s easy to feel disheartened when doing the right thing doesn’t bring instant reward — when it isolates you, exhausts you, or makes you doubt yourself.

But let’s reframe the question.

What if the value of goodness lies exactly in its resistance to decay?

What if its difficulty is what gives it weight?

Gold is rare because it resists corrosion.

A strong bridge is trusted because it holds under pressure.

A person who stands for something — even quietly — becomes someone others can lean on later, when everything else has collapsed.

🔭 VI. Closing Reflection

Goodness is not the default.

It is not automatic.

And it is certainly not cheap.

It is, in fact, thermodynamically unfavourable — a constant climb against the pull of ease, ego, and entropy.

But that’s exactly why it matters.

The harder it is to choose — the more powerful it becomes when you do.

So if you’ve ever wondered why doing the right thing feels like such a struggle —

remember this:

You are not failing.

You are climbing.

And even if the world doesn’t see it yet,

you’re changing the landscape — one uphill step at a time.