The Laws of the Universe

You Can't Win - the Law of Conservation of Energy
The first law of the universe is that energy can neither be created nor lost. 

There is a certain amount of energy in the whole universe that eternally shifts from one form to another and from one place to another, but never disappears and cannot be generated. Therefore waste never gets actually disposed of and there is no such thing as an unlimited energy supply.

Nobody can "consume" energy. Nobody can "generate" energy. We can only pull energy into one form by taking it from other forms, such as what occurs when we generate electricity or when we turn oil into food into 6.7 billion people into...

It takes energy to pull energy from one place to the next:

You Can't Break Even - the Law of Entropy

Energy gain in one system means loss of energy from another system. It doesn't matter if the systems in question are physical systems, biological systems or social systems.

Loss of energy from a system has consequences: loss of options, loss of organization, loss of resiliency, loss of diversity or loss of mass (because matter is a form of energy, and all the visible, manifest universe is simply form of energy).

Generally speaking, loss of energy (increasing entropy) in any system is a detriment to that system - but a benefit to some other system, in the grand scheme of things.
 

For a physical system, the consequence of loss of energy seems fairly obvious: the system becomes less complex, smaller, less organized. For biological and social systems (for example, a society, a species, an ecosystem, or your own body-mind), the consequence of energy loss is exactly the same.

Loss of energy means loss of resiliency, which translates to a decreased ability to withstand shocks or unanticipated experiences. Shocks and unanticipated experiences that are not withstood and dealt with immediately become societal, bodily, and mental disease.

You Can't Quit - Samsara, the Wheel of Life
The energy in the universe will only stop moving around and creating entropic consequences in its wake when the temperature of the universe reaches absolute zero... in other words, when the universe has expanded infinitely at the end of time... in other words, never. Or at least not in your lifetime, dear reader, even if you live to be 10 billion years old.

All the universe, including your own body-mind instrument, is caught in a relentless treadmill called the Wheel of Life or Samsara. The Wheel of Life is the cycle of changing state - gain and loss of energy - that all beings (systems) experience.

No matter what you gain, it will begin to erode and disappear immediately. The loss side of the Wheel of Life brings you down and down until you must face the fact that what you once had or were is now gone. To "suffer" means to "be with." The moment when the hard truth of reality is suffered in your consciousness you will begin to experience again the Wheel's turn as you gain something new. It is inevitable that you can eventually enjoy the success of attainment... before it begins to erode away again.

To be happy and healthy, it's awfully important not to get hung up on trying to control this process.

Energy is Simple,  but its Combinations are Complex
Energy movement in the manifest universe is always from one system to another. A complex system is a collection of interacting parts that relate to each other in feedback loops, either reinforcing or balancing. Systems are nested within each other, with smaller (lower-energy) social systems nesting inside larger (higher-energy) biological systems, which are nested within larger (higher-energy-still) physical systems.

Gravity - the Law of Attraction
As a necessary aspect of total energy efficiency, all particles in the entire universe are attracted to one another. This is true in a physical sense, when objects fall toward the ground. This is true in a biological sense, when matter is organized into various organisms all based on the same basic nucleotide organization, put together as DNA. And, it's no secret anymore, the law of attraction applies in a social sense, too: when we find ourselves drawn into the same repeating patterns throughout our lives, into the same kinds of relationships and economic circumstances.

Economy - the Quintessence
All the laws of the universe can really be summed up in one law: the sharing economy. It's impossible for any system to exist without having some mechanism of taking in energy. At the same time, it is impossible for any system to take more than its share of energy without simultaneously undermining itself. 

All systems in the universe, therefore, strive for balance:

• in physical systems, this means that the amount of energy coming in equals the amount of energy going out. The solar energy received in a day equals the solar energy radiated out to space from the dark side of the planet during that day.

• in biological systems, this means that the amount of energy coming in equals the amount of energy going out. For any living species to increase in number of individuals, its food species must therefore decrease in number of individuals - which promptly decreases the number of individuals in the feeder species (due to lack of food).

in social systems, this means that the amount of energy coming in equals the amount of energy going out. Sustainable social systems are based on sharing economies in which an individual or an organization's wealth is measured not by it's material or financial accumulation, but by the number of favours it is owed. Thus, sustainable social systems are those in which there is a systemic thrust toward giving or leaving, not toward taking more and more into itself.