Entropy

There is a fundamental law of the Universe that entropy increases (at least while the Universe is expanding, which it is and will do for long enough so that we don't need to worry about anything else.  Entropy is a misunderstood term, and I shall probably misunderstand it for you, but is commonly "translated" as "disorder."  Of course, it is actually a technical term that doesn't quite mean disorder, there's maffs involved. 

Anyway, I think of entropy in terms of these examples;  if you put a pile of sand on the floor and don't do anything to keep it there, it will become pretty evenly spread across your floor, if you heat a bit of a the air in a room and then leave it alone, all of the room will become the same temperature, if you don't put energy into an animal it will die, rot, and fall apart.  Basically, things have a spread out evenly.

With entropy being a fundamental law, it means it effects everything.  The car you drive will fall apart.  Your Jenga tower will fall over.  Your painting will fade.  However, there is an enemy to entropy, and that is energy.  If you put energy into a system you can stop something falling apart.  You can keep sweeping the sand back into the pile, you can keep heating a bit of the room, you can keep feeding the animal.  However, there is another step to entropy, the mechanism that put the energy into the system are also subject to entropy.  The brush will fall apart, the heater will break, the things that make replacement cells in the animal will stop working.

What happens then, all over the place, is the following path shown by the graph I drew.  A new system starts off and then as energy is put into the system with fresh methods it grows at increasing speeds until at some point the energy put into the system and entropy cancel each other out and the system is flat for a while until entropy has its way with a vital system and the whole thing stops working.  It dies.

The amazing thing is that this graph is true for a vast array of things.  Not only that, but the rate of increase is about the same for a huge amount of things.  It is the same for all mammals.  It is the same for companies that do one thing.  It is true of social groups.  There is an amazing confluence here.

Creatures die, and small creatures die earlier than big ones.  Businesses start off small, struggle for a while, expand rapidly.  A big hive of ants gets a bigger area, increases that area rapidly until the logistics of feeding the replacement ants breaks down and the hive dies (which is why communal insects spawn off small communities to start the process again.)

Ah, but Mr. Muser, lots of things just don't even get started.  Most businesses fail in the first year.  Most animals die when young.  Most bands don't even get started.  Very astute of you, good point.  In those situations there isn't an effective system to combat entropy.  The small business doesn't get customers.  The infant doesn't have a working heart.  The band cannot agree on how the band will work.

Why am I bringing entropy up?  Well, I am noticing it all around me.  I notice it online, where not only does every new fad/social media opportunity expand rapidly, but the excitement fades, the customers flatten out, and then suddenly no-one is interested and it dies.  AOL, Myspace, etc..  I can see it starting with facebook, people are posting less, interested in being friends less, less captivated by a social network.  I see it in friendships, you become friends with someone over a common interest or as part of a group.  You do lots of things together.  Then you just do a thing together, they become your bowling friend or your playdate friend.  eventually that reason disappears and your friendship dies.  I see it in the bands I have been in, initial excitement, bursts of creativity and fun, repetition, reduced excitement, conflict, death.  With marriage either it ends suddenly, or one of you dies first.

However, we don't think like this.  We don't go into most situations thinking that it is doomed to failure.  We think of completion, finishing, done, success.  This is very sensible if you want to have the situation in the first place.  If you know something won't work in the end, why do it?  The area under the line is the good bit, without the start you never have anything under the line.  Furthermore, the more excited you are in the beginning the larger the starting point and the bigger the area under the line.  The problem comes when the line turns from going upwards, to going horizontally.  At that point your excitement dies.  You are in a rut.  You are just doing the same ole same ole.  It's still pretty decent to go bowling with your friends, but you know what you are going to get out of it.  A party is still fun when you are 40, but it isn't as much fun as when you were 20.  you used to think your husband was superhot and you couldn't wait to get him between the sheets.  Now he's a part of the furniture, and it's pleasant when you make time, but you don't walk around thinking about it.

We are programmed to love the curve.  Learning your first song on the guitar and playing it in front of ten people is awesome.  Being a professional musician playing your 500th show is better than sitting at a bus station, but not as fun as that first show, even though you are 100 times better.  When you are learning something you really, really want to be good at it.  When you are really good at it, it becomes not interesting.

How pessimistic is this?  Either something dies off immediately, or you are doomed to find something boring eventually until you just don't care, or hate it.  There is nothing for you in this life but disappointment,

Well, there are two solutions to this problem.  The first is the Buddhist method.  Mindfulness and freedom from desire.  First you notice everything in detail.  Your starting point is larger than the average, and so the curve is bigger.  Life is more beautiful than it is for others.  Then you free yourself from desire and so the horizontal line is not a disappointment.  Bliss for Buddhists is having a nice, high line and not being disappointed.  This is fantastic for things you must do, like going to work, eating, chores.

The second is the Western method.  There is a secret to making the curve continue, it is innovation.  To get the curve to go up at all, you must ave effective methods for defeating entropy.  These will wear out eventually, but if you can replace them with a different method then you can extend the curve.  The efficacy of the method determines the shape of the new curve.  As a result of innovation we live longer lives, don't get sick as much.  Our social organizations become bigger.  We defeat Malthusian economics.  We continually have more, and different things to entertain us.  Our comfort increases enough that we notice.

What can we learn from this?  We can learn that we should expect that how we live our lives right now is going to fail to interest us at some point, but that's OK because it interests us now.  We can learn to not be disappointed when things become habitual.  We get used to living in our house, but living in our house will always be better than not living in a house.  We can take it for granted that they say that they love is, but that's better than no-one saying it at all.  it is inevitable that things will get to that flat line if we always do the same things, but that flat line is better than no line at all.

We can also learn to invest less hope in things that aren't that great to begin with.  Those first few dates will probably tell you how good your relationship as a whole will be.  When you do something, if it doesn't grab your attention right away, it probably won't ever do that.  Don't invest your time and energy into things you have started unless you get rewarded pretty quickly.

We can also learn that the way to generate excitement and joy in our lives is to innovate.  A relationship that doesn't do new things, try different things, doesn't change is going to get to that flat line.  On the other hand, a relationship that throws out everything that worked in the first place runs the risk of killing itself almost immediately.  If they fell in love with you because you were fun at parties, and then once in a relationship you decide to change them into responsible, stay at home nurturers, that relationship will probably die.  if you want the second relationship, be that from the start, but look for new ways to nurture.  If you want them to keep loving you, still go to parties, and keep looking for new and different parties.

Pretty much everything in my life has either died, or flatlined.  This is probably true for you too.  That's OK.  It's to be expected.  This doesn't mean there isn't joy in my life or there is no hope.  Those flatlines are still much better than most of the alternate lines, and I don't really expect them to die soon.  There are also so many new and interesting things to experience, and I intend to never stop looking for them (on this I need to do better).  When I find a new thing I hope I throw myself into the experience.  the more I do, the better it will be.