[trhway]

>I certainly see my life as a constant battle against entropy

lets consider an amount of non-live matter equal to your mass. That pile of non-live matter wouldn't be able to generate amount of entropy that you will generate during your lifetime. Your actions of "battle against entropy" is a more faster way to increase total entropy. That is the reason of live matter existence - it is a faster way to generate entropy, and thus it is direct result of the 2nd law which states that any system evolves among the entropy maximization gradient. And live matter organizes into more and more complex systems - bodies/colonies/organisms, smarter organisms, societies - because that generates even more entropy than the simple set of constituent parts would generate on their own. Compare entropy generated by a 10 strong tribe in Amazon and 10 regular Americans or Europeans (bonus point - consider that the civilization complexity allows for 100 "civilized" people all actively generating entropy where hardly 10 could barely survive without the civilization). One can notice that intelligence arises as the power multiplier of live matter entropy generation capability.