Entropy Defined & Unmitigated Growth
The Same Cycle, Different Ecosystems. An Iterative Alarm system.
I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.
Entropy Defined
I am not going to start this with a citation from a dictionary with the definition. Every second rate speech in existence starts with "Websters defines whatever as..." and then continues on predictably from there.
If it isn't predictable, it's a horror show of awkward comments and offensive jokes. Personally, I love awkward comments and offensive jokes, but they certainly don't add anything but humor and burnt bridges. So I will abstain for now.
However, it is important to understand what entropy is, and why I have chosen it as an important topic to focus on. Entropy, simply put, is a "gradual decline into disorder".
Normally it is more of a physics term or other prominent fields of math (math measures things, so that makes sense) but it applies everywhere. Entropy is an unavoidable law of life.
Akin to laundry or Dad being moody when he has to be around people for too long. It's important to keep this in the back of your mind at all times, if not the forefront.
We also suffer from entropy in every possible form. It happens to our knowledge, our social interactions and skills, our physical well being, our spiritual well being, our relationships, and many more aspects of what makes us a person.
Only entropy comes easy.
Anton Chekhov
That in and of itself is annoying enough. The kicker is that while we are dealing with entropy time keeps marching on and life moves forward. So anytime you are sedentary or idle, not only is everything else leaving you behind, you are regressing.
What this all means is fairly straightforward. If you are not moving forwards, you are moving backwards. If there is no progression in your life, there is regression. If you don't move ahead, you get pushed back.
That is why I define failure as refusing to move. Movement is your guard against entropy. Do something, do anything, just avoid stagnation.
The most basic human impulse is toward entropy and laziness. The less we have to do to grow spiritually, the more likely we are to do it.
Alexandra Fuller
Unmitigated Growth
When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor E. Frankl
We cannot change the reality that is, we can only change how we face it. Will it be willingly and with courage, or kicking and screaming as it is thrust upon us by an unforgiving world?
The slow yet constant descent into chaos. This is what we are faced with, what everything is faced with. Even from a physics and biological standpoint, there is entropy.
They have their differences but the concept is the same. It is something that is constant and struggled against. Including the cells that make up our body.
So let's use that as a crude example for our psychological and spiritual selves. What do we know about unmitigated growth?
Well, it leads to ruin. In finance, that generally indicates corruption, greed, or foul play in gaming the system as it stands. In our bodies it's cancer. In politics, it's a coup.
Unmitigated growth is a disaster. It sounds nice. Who wouldn't want to have everything they want? In reality it's cancer. In our cells, it's cancer. So what is the cause when it does happen in our body?
Well, an error in a cell that doesn't get taken care of. A cell containing an error in the code it uses to propagate forward that isn't eradicated. This becomes growth that wasn't mitigated by routine death. So it's only constant birth.
But our bodies have mechanisms of control. The death of the cell. The corrupted cell and the exhausted cell die. Each cell is replaced by a new one, a fresh one, one that is new and works as it should.
It is how we cope with entropy at the biological level and how we deal with the potential for unmitigated growth. There are laws in place in finance and audits and investigators. There are checks and balances in politics to guard against a silent coup.
Do these always work? No. But when implemented properly they do a pretty damn good job. Should we be vigilant of the possibility of those safeguards failing? Absolutely yes.
We have safeguards against the entropy we face in life too. That's where faith and meaning come into play. You can attempt to go through life without that faith, you can try to find or provide meaning without it, but you'll be far more secure with it and you'll find meaning far easier.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche
When we have our "Why?", as Nietzsche wrote, we can handle almost any "How?".
That "Why?" is the meaning we draw and discover, made easier to do and more solid with faith. The "How?" is handled by our driving force, our higher power, the "Why?". The answer to all of it is a constant pursuit of "Forward". A diligence and fortitude we put into ensuring we keep moving. Moving is the safeguard against entropy. Meaning and faith give us the "Why?" we need to keep moving.
To be is to do.
Immanuel Kant
Why is "Forward" the answer to entropy? We don't know what forward holds. Chaos is behind us, in the form of absolute order. There is no room to move, only to be stagnant and to wither away. That's what happens when we stay in the past.
Why does moving towards chaos mitigate the effects of the slow descent into chaos? Well, that's growth. When we learn, we experience a death and a rebirth. Much like when we grow, our cells die and are replaced.
When we encounter new understanding, it requires the unlearning of what we thought was true and for that to be replaced with what we now understand is true. That new understanding can always be replaced in the future with a new and more comprehensive understanding.
For instance, when we are young and have no concept of the geography around us, our little town can seem like the whole world. That little town is our world. But as we grow older and we are shown maps and globes and we're taught our states, our world starts to expand.
We have to unlearn that the town is the entire world. We then replace it with a new understanding that it's a little bigger than we thought. Then we learn it's bigger, and we have to remove and replace that second understanding. And so on.
That's why learning can be difficult. It requires the discomfort of removing our old world and installing a new one. It is facing the death and rebirth of our reality.
This is also why, when one's life has been lived, planned, and executed under one reality, and if that reality turns out to have been a grift, a lie, or an honestly arrived upon mistake, it is very difficult to convince them they have been misled. And when it does happen, they will have a hard time making that adjustment.
Change is difficult, but change is growth. Change for the sake of change, however, is unmitigated growth. Know the distinction between the two. One is necessary and healthy.
The other is cancer.
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