Entropy and Disorder
Richard McMaster
I have referred to entropy often in my writings. We live in a chaotic world held together and pulled apart through entropy, the physics law of thermodynamics that measures the disorder that affects all aspects of our daily lives. The law dictates that left on its own, without proper organizing forces, disorder increases over time, energy disperses, and systems dissolve into chaos.
Entropy. The world devolved into chaos in World War II and when it ended peace reigned temporarily, evil reorganized and the devil went to work on weak ambitious people.
In my book, Voyage of Life, I wrote, “When the war ended, his father returned home to an America on the move, jobs a-plenty, new homes, cars, appliances, and wealth beyond anything imagined. Making goods and babies seemed to be the business of the day, and the pace of life was easy and uncomplicated. The world had released a collective sigh, but for Sean’s parents, day smiles and night cuddles became nightmares that resulted in his father sleeping on the living room sofa. It was a period of starting a new life and the beginning of the end of their dreams.
After the war, evil paused, not defeated as much as shrinking into the darkness, blending in with goodness, regrouping. The lessons of peace were hard to learn. Hollywood played its part in keeping evil alive, glorifying the gore with tough guys as heroes who always got the girl. But, as Americans celebrated their superiority, the world perfected the art of killing as evil re-grouped. In 1947 a Russian tank sergeant created the AK47 machinegun. The Doomsday Clock was unveiled in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, marking man’s progress toward self-annihilation. And, the Russians began the blockade of Berlin.”
Entropy reminds me of so many other everyday examples. It explains why the ancient methods and ways are so quickly forgotten, lost, unused, and reinvented as the old drift into obscurity and chaos. The wisdom of the Stoics is lost and reimagined, and Aristotle’s honesty is shadowed over with modern-day recycled unimaginative truths. Even the wisdom of Emerson and the genius of Einstein hides in the shadows.
Maybe the world is spinning in a different direction, or turning upside down and the South Pole is becoming the North. Some scientists say it is time. Science claims the magnetic poles shift gradually to the south; the last time was over 700 years ago. Some scientists claim it is shifting now. There is already documented movement of the north magnetic poles 600 miles since last measured in 1831 about the distance between Denver and Phoenix. Is that just a metaphor, or shifting fields of energy that affect our lives? Quantum physicists study the effect of fields of energy on our lives.
What do we really know? I am cursed or blessed with disintegrated thoughts around the need to understand. As time passed I came to understand facts are sometimes convenient to the time and person, and are fleeting. Throughout history, scientists haven’t always abided by mandatory principles of dynamic not static, open to hypothesis, testing, debate, and criticism. Science still strays from these principles–money, standing and politics can hold sway. Scientists have been ostracized and persecuted for strictly adhering to those principles. Even today group think rules.
The world was once proven to be flat. Most famously Galileo Galilei’s proof the Earth evolved around the sun was shunned not just by the Church but also other scientists of the day. Scientists wouldn’t even look through the telescope to see the proof. He was tried by the Inquisition and forced to recant or face the gallows. Scientists today don’t face the gallows for their claims but the near corporal punishment of lack of funding, careers, censorship, and isolation from peers and journals serves a similar purpose.
Even though the Gutenberg press revolutionized printing in the fifth century (probably invented in the 5th century in China) it wasn’t allowed in Egypt until 1925 because printers feared hog’s hair brushes used to clean type might touch the word Allah.
