The second law is immutable. As life creates order, elsewhere chaos intensifies. Life is a negative-sum game, in entropy terms. A certain degree of parochialism is required to root for life.
Human flourishing is the pursuit of beauty and interestingness---a fight against ugliness and monotony. What is considered beautiful and interesting is inherently subjective, parochial, too.
Morality calls for just the right amount of parochialism.
Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members is a paean to beauty---the beauty of saying things. The tragedy of the piece---should one be inclined to read it as a tragedy rather than a triumph of the word over matter---is in the English professor's lopsided emphasis on beauty over interestingness.
