Brain Food #426
Chaos and disorder
Daily Brain Food.
Thoughts of the day
A non-chaotic system allows you to see into the future, because it is more predictable. A chaotic system only allows you to see with certainty what is in front of you. The weather is chaotic. Despite decades of advancements, the more we progress into the future, the harder it becomes for meteorologists to make accurate predictions.
Life, similarly, is in a constant state of entropy, or disorder. If entropy is left undealt with, it increases. Entropy marks the passing of time, for it dictates that everything is in a constant mode of change, and it can never be changed back to what it was before. The universe changes, our bodies change, we change.
Tom Stoppard describes this in his play Arcadia.
“When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?”
That is what life eventually is: putting up a constant fight against things always changing, always falling apart. Time will pass, uncontrollably, and events will happen that are by nature entropic. Entropy is, in some sense, the cruel, indifferent passing of time, bringing with it unexpected, chaotic change. The mere thought of this might bring some comfort: it’s just the way things are. What matters is to carry on trying.