Entropy

Physical law of nature--in a given system, molecules tend to decrease in the degree of "order" or entropy in the system. It takes a net input of energy into the system to maintain or increase the order of the system.

For example, if you put a carving (highly ordered object) in a sealed jar, give it enough time and that jar will just have dirt (much less ordering of molecules) in it.

On Saturday I hiked up Lion's Head, a small hill/mountain in Cape Town. It was a gorgeous hike, beautiful weather, great day. On the hike however, you can't help but notice all the boulders and rocks that have rolled off the top of the mountain and lie at the base and all along the way to the top. The other thing I noticed is that the trail is really well built, and someone has hauled these wire baskets or cages filled with rocks (their are kinda like portable brick walls) up the trail and placed them in different places on the trail to prevent erosion. They support and hold the dirt and other rocks on the mountain. If they weren't there the trail would have washed out long ago.

It is the law of entropy in action. The mountain tends toward disorder. It's tendency is to end up as a little pile of sand blown around by the wind as those huge boulders crumble and get smaller and smaller. Here is the deal though. Someone has put in energy into this system. Someone carried those rock baskets all the way up the mountain. You can't drive up there. There is no lift or anything. Someone carried them up or built them on the trial. Someone put a heck of a lot of energy into that system. I could hardly carry myself up there, much less a couple hundred pounds of rocks. And the whole deal, energy input deal, is simply to keep the mountain like it is, to prevent it from eroding, not even to make it bigger or better or something.

There is another place I have seen the idea of entropy at work, AIDS. The whole deal with HIV/AIDS is just a way that society demonstrates it's tendency toward disorder. You leave society alone and don't put any energy into keeping it going and it breaks down. If you don't treat and educate and work and think and love and care and pour into a community it will become increasingly disordered. It is costing 48 billion dollars and thousands of working hours on the part of tons of people just to keep the HIV prevalence at 12%. Take away all that "energy" and it is going to 50%.

Application: let's step it up and put in energy into the system, not suck the system dry to make our lives fluffier. There is only so long a system, a society, can handle its inhabitants living like parasites, using people and situations, and resources for whatever they can get out of them. We can live in a way that gives people confidence and value and courage and knowledge instead of mining people for those things and keeping it to ourselves. We can increase the order in people and in the system instead of destroying the order.

Sorry for rambling. Just some recent thoughts. More to come.