I’ve written often about the many isomorphisms between society and thermodynamics (see, for example, here, here, and here). The subject came up again in the comment-thread to our previous post.
Our reader Robert, a.k.a. “Whitewall”, noted the ceaseless efforts of the political Left to “force change where no change is needed or even wanted.” He added that “a workable contentment among people is somehow intolerable to them.”
This is a belt-high meatball for the thermodynamic metaphor, if you will permit me a meta-metaphor (or, perhaps I should say, a meta-meataphor). In thermodynamic terms, the relentlessness of the Left’s assault on order and hierarchy is easily understood:
It’s a mechanical, entropic process, like water finding every crack and fissure as it seeks the lowest level.
It is entropic precisely in the sense that it levels and flattens everything, as order yields to disorder. In particular, it levels the gradients that are necessary, in any thermodynamic system, for the possibility of useful work. Ultimately, everything will be undifferentiated from everything else. (Is that not the obvious endpoint of our secular religion’s pathological mission?) It is this flattening, correctly understood as a thermodynamic exhaustion, that is why Leftism always reduces societies to economic and cultural rubble.
The action of the Left is always to reduce potential; it leaves everything it touches in a lower-energy state. It breaks mountains into scree; it dismantles cathedrals to build hovels.
4 Comments
Yes; the Left is the scourge of humanity and their entropic-like actions give the impression of inexorable doom for us all. One may be very tempted to give in to doom and gloom and simply cash in whatever chips one has.
Nevertheless, history is not predictable. It is a complex adaptive system like the stock market. History is a chaotic system that reacts to predictions about it. Hence, it can not be predicted accurately, let alone with certainty.
Most of history’s possibilities are never realized. Conversely, some low probability scenarios are. Maybe the FBI Director will do his duty. Maybe America’s voters will wake up and smell the Leftist stink. Maybe Steph Curry will recover in time for the Golden State Warriors to win the NBA Championship.
That being the case, I see no good reason to go off the deep end, unless your personal anguish becomes unbearable. Stay tuned and smell the coffee.
It is always normal for the Left to wear down devalue and destroy. It is also normal for the non Left to watch grumble and always give in and retreat to ground that can be defended come what may until that ground is challenged and vacated as a result of court action or physical violence in the streets. Taking ground is normal for them. Yielding ground has become too easy for the rest of us.
Something within this dynamic will have to break, to become contrary to its norm. In time, the Left will always turn on itself as factions battle for superiority in the name of “ideological purity”. At this point the abnormal might rear its head in the form of Rightist revolt. That would be against the norm. Something well beyond the Tea Party and well outside our comfort zone. On the list of what “can’t happen in America”….but already has in these last 7 years, the Right taking a chapter from the Left’s playbook just might happen. A major difference would be that we are armed to the teeth. Armed men don’t go looking for buildings to deface, tires to burn or cop cars to over turn or lawns to relieve themselves on. Can’t happen in America? I have warned my friends over the years that I have seen what some of this can look like. Political forces are always present and human nature always comes along with them. God help us if it happens.
Rebuilding requires that the rotten be disposed of to make way for a firm foundation from which to build.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/02/why-arent-we-having-a-national-conversation-about-leftist-violence/
Carthage must be destroyed.
pangur,
Don’t forget to toss some salt over your left shoulder.