The Emergence and Dissolution of Self
A Wave in the Universe
Imagine a single wave moving across the surface of the ocean. It rises from the sea not as a separate thing, but as a pattern: a brief, coherent form shaped by the forces around it. It has no fixed boundary, no internal engine. And yet, for a time, it travels with grace and distinction, carving its own path through the vastness.
This wave is not apart from the ocean, but it is something. It persists. It maintains its shape as it moves. It is an event in the world that can be pointed to, spoken of, even remembered.
So too are we.
Each of us is a wave, a temporary coherence arising in the sea of the universe. We are made of matter, of energy, of information, none of it unique to us. What makes us a self is not the substance but the form: a fleeting pattern, shaped and sustained by countless interactions, rising for a time into coherence.
We live. We act. We think. We love. And then, like every wave, we return.
But between emergence and dissolution lies a remarkable story: how we sustain our form, how we engage with the world, how we walk the fine line between coherence and entanglement. This is the story of life, not as a thing but as a process: a dance of structure, energy, and identity, held together for a while by the very forces that will one day undo it.
Coherence and Free Energy
To live is to hold a shape against the pressure of dissolution. In physics, coherence is the sustained alignment of a pattern: waves maintaining their phase relationships, systems preserving their internal order. In the quantum world, coherence means the difference between a cloud of probabilities and a distinct interference pattern. In the world of life, coherence means something even more miraculous: a temporary resistance to entropy.
We human beings, like all living systems, maintain our form by consuming free energy, the portion of energy available to do work, to create order. We draw it in constantly through food, through oxygen, through sunlight captured by other forms of life. And we spend it not just on motion or growth, but on maintenance: the intricate choreography that keeps our structure intact.
At the molecular level, we repair ourselves. DNA, the molecule that stores our history and guides our function, is constantly damaged by ultraviolet light, chemical interactions, and replication errors. Yet we generate enzymes, molecular caretakers like DNA polymerase I, that detect and repair these breaks, preserving the code. This maintenance isn’t an afterthought; it’s at the heart of life. Without energy to maintain the code, the organism unravels.
But this hierarchy of repair doesn’t stop with molecules. Molecules sustain cells. Cells sustain tissues. Tissues make up organs, and organs support the integrated being we call a body. Each layer depends on the coherence of the layers below, and each draws on free energy to preserve its structure, repair its damage, and continue the flow of function upward.
It is this hierarchy that allows us to think, act, and be. We are not passive passengers in the universe. We are active processes, each a brief and improbable triumph of form over chaos. But this triumph is conditional. It requires constant input. Without energy, even the most complex organism begins to dissolve. The pattern blurs, the structure fails, and the wave begins to fall.
Life is coherence on borrowed time. We are waves held together by light, flowing for a while across the surface of the deep.
Entangled, Yet Coherent
Though each of us is a wave of coherence, we are never truly alone. We arise in context, in relationship, in response to the forces and forms around us. From the moment of birth, our coherence is entangled with other systems: families, cultures, ecosystems. The self is not a sealed container. It is a porous boundary, exchanging energy, information, and care with the world beyond its skin.
Our coherence is not the coherence of isolation. It is the coherence of connection, a local pattern supported by global structure. A human being cannot grow without others. We require not only food and oxygen, but language, touch, attention. Without these, the developing mind fragments. The wave cannot form.
Even in adulthood, our coherence continues to depend on others. The food we eat is grown by farmers. The ideas we think are shaped by conversations. The very act of reading these words is possible only because of centuries of cultural scaffolding. We are coherent beings, but coherent within greater coherences: families, cities, cultures, civilizations.
These entanglements are not chaotic. They are structured. They form a hierarchy of manageable complexity. I can name the people I depend on. I can trace the systems that sustain me. My embeddedness is real, but tractable. My wave exists within other waves, not lost in the sea but nested in a pattern of relationship.
This is what it means to be a self in the world: to hold a boundary, yes, but to hold it lightly. To be both distinct and dependent. To maintain our own shape, even as we ripple through the lives of others.
Incoherent Immersion
Coherence does not last forever. The structures that sustain us: the molecular machinery, the cellular repairs, the networks of care, depend on a steady influx of free energy. When that flow ceases, the structure falters. Slowly, and then suddenly, the wave begins to lose its form.
Death is not an event but a transition. The body does not vanish; it unravels. The cells no longer maintain themselves. The tissues begin to fail. The boundaries between systems soften. The body returns to chemistry, to soil, to wind, to memory.
And with this unraveling comes a new kind of entanglement.
While we lived, our entanglements were manageable, part of the pattern that made us coherent. After death, those entanglements become intractable. The molecules that once composed our lungs may become part of the grass. The calcium in our bones may be washed into the sea. The information that once formed a personality dissipates into a million causally tangled threads: memories in others, impacts on the world, subtle traces in the future.
The structured hierarchy collapses. The wave no longer has a name, no longer maintains a self-repairing boundary. Its energy diffuses. Its matter rejoins the broader flow. The coherence that once made us a person is gone, not destroyed but no longer localized. What was once a knowable system is now a wide and unknowable entanglement.
This, too, is part of the pattern.
Return to the Ocean
When a wave collapses, the water does not vanish. It simply returns, absorbed back into the body it briefly rose from. So too with us. The self, that astonishing ripple of coherence, eventually lets go. The boundaries dissolve. The shape unwinds. But the substance remains.
The matter that composed us rejoins the world. The energy that sustained us finds new channels. And the information, the patterns that once animated a personality, a voice, a way of being, scatter into a million causal threads. Some are faint echoes, like laughter remembered or habits passed down. Others are woven into the lives of those we’ve touched. The loop doesn’t end. It disperses.
There is no vanishing point, only a return. A diffusion into the deep. The universe that once gave rise to our coherence welcomes us back, not as selves but as sources of further pattern. Our form is gone, but not our trace. Our identity dissolves, but not our influence. We become part of the sea again, not lost but transformed.
And so the wave, having traveled as far as it could, surrenders to the ocean, not in despair but in completion.
And yet, to understand how these temporary coherences arise and fall, we need to look more deeply at the force that seems to resist them: entropy.