Grandmother Chaos
I call to thee
Bless us
With the Wisdom of Fools
And the Stupidity of Sages
Fill us with the Mercy of your Fury
And the Horror of your Embrace
Let all we learn stand as Testament
To your deep and apathetic Love
Let us bask in the beauty of your daughters
Eris of the Golden Apple
Kali of the Blade and Skull
And Science most beloved.
May they guide us
Or not
As is your whim and want
Grandmother Chaos
I call to thee.
I am not a creature of Order.
I mean I have a code I live by. I'm not maliciously destructive. Mostly. Well... sometimes. But I seem to have an entropic aura about me. Broken things last longer then they should. Things break in unexpected ways. I just that I am a force for Entropy in the universe.
So much so that the idea that I need to keep something orderly and organized causes me much more stress then I can easily explain. Because that's not the case for everyone else. Most of the people I know and interact with feel better about life when everything is neat and tidy. My mother for example has been known to have panic attacks when the clutter level reaches critical mass.
But for me... I like a chaotic environment. That's not to say that I don't know where everything is. I can generally tell you or find for you in moments whatever it is you need.
It's in the big pile.
I used to call it the Dragon's Lair Method of Organization. Which I'd trademark, but that would be stupid. Basically it's all sort of in a big pile. Which means that I know where everything is at all times. It's in the pile.
This drove many people who've lived with me nuts. And I sincerely wish that it was any other way, but it's not. It's that tie to Chaos. And the fact that Gremlins just think I am the coolest thing ever. But that's another bit of Madness.
When dealing with some of the more fanatical of Christians I will sometime joke that I "accepted Chaos as my personal savior". It's a simple way to express my Discordian values (something I only learned about recently). I believe that everybody's right. And that nobody is. Every lie is true. And every truth is a lie. I believe that simplicity is the most beautiful fallacy that can ever be experienced.
Everything is complicated.
Picture the most amazingly colossally stupid individual you possibly can. This moron you've conjured, he (or she girls can be just a impressively stupid as men you pig!) is made of particles created in the burning crucible of the stars. Through the tides of chaos these particles mashed together until after who knows how long or far they travelled they become that tree-hugging, gun-toting, bible thumping, gay marriage supporting jackass that you see in front of you.
They are a miracle.
And without entropy, without Grandmother Chaos, they wouldn't exist at all. All things can be boiled down to Energy and Entropy as far as I see it. (They're metaphors for things we're only beginning to understand, just to be clear)
Chaos and Void.
Two sides of the same thing.
And only in their glorious and beautiful battle does all of creation exist. All that we do is fight against entropy. It's a futile war. We'll never win. The universe will run out of energy and all that we know will be lost to the Cold.
And not the put on an extra jacket cold.
The capitol C Cold. The one that I'm sure Kevin saw in his nightmares.
But... we know this. Death is coming for us. Invariably. Nations and amoebas. Whenever two bits of quanta decided to hang out together they're destined to be torn apart.
And that's so gloriously beautiful.
Because it keeps happening. Over and over again. The systems build and strive. We turn our minds to combating the endless onslaught of entropy and by strive against we create anew. New systems. New life.
Thank you Grandmother Chaos
For battling the Void
For from your spilt Blood
And splintered Bone
have we made our homes
Our Loves
And our Lives
Thank you
The universe CANNOT run out of energy. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteThe universe can (and fairly certainly will) succumb to entropy, though. Second law of thermodynamics and all that.
DeleteThat depends on your stance on how one can 'succumb' to a state of vastly increased possibilities.
DeleteAlso, you just invoked the second law of thermodynamics at a physical chemist. Entropies and enthalpies (energy) are kind of our thing.
I would postulate that given a fixed amount of matter and energy in the universe (also defined by thermodynamic laws) there's also a FIXED upper limit to the amount of entropy that can be generated with these tools. I think this is a rational assumption as entropy is pretty well defined as the sum of different energy levels available to the matter within a given system. Then it becomes a matter of defining whether this level of entropy is sizeable enough to overwhelm the universe. Whatever that may mean.
Also, consider a human being who is able to live forever without aging (this condition might sound like I'm violating the second law postulate, but aging not the result of entropy, it is a result of imperfect transcription of DNA and literal corrosion of our organs by a slightly alkaline body environment. So no, I don't believe that I'm violating the second law by ascribing agelessness to the person in our thought experiment). Our person is still capable of bodily CHANGE, just doesn't experience the physiological effects of aging. If this person were to live from the dawn of time through to the 'end of the world', HOW would they 'succumb' to entropy? Provided that they had a proper diet, they could live indefinitely. With every bite and swallow, they're setting into motion a process that increases the entropy in their body in the short term and will increase the entropy of the universe in the long term. But WHAT about this will eventually lead to their downfall? It's not as though entropy is some force that can literally unravel the thread of matter, and extending the principles of thermodynamics to the human condition is a very tenuous leap, at best (some VERY intelligent fellows have gone utterly insane and destroyed their careers trying to pursue this topic from academic interest).
So I guess what I'm telling you here is that, yes, entropy can only increase or stay constant when you look at it on the universal scale (local decreases in entropy are possible and commonplace, but are counterbalanced by increases of equal or greater magnitude elsewhere), but that you should also strongly consider what an increase in entropy means. Because as a person who is professionally, academically, and personally interested and invested in entropy, I see it as far more than an irresistable drive of decay.
I was referring specifically to the heat death of the universe; that it will likely succumb to entropy (life won't be possible - of course, I'm speaking from an 'as far as we can tell' perspective), not something that will happen any time soon. Life does not have any special function to undo this - eventually it, too, will simply run out of movement.
DeleteIf the universe does die in this manner, then I agree that it means there is indeed an upper bound of entropy. As life-forms we could be considered to be dependent on it, which is part of why I say that life would eventually be unsustainable. Nothing, even the universe, is a perpetual motion machine.
...Maybe, that is. We do still have a lot to learn about it.
Mmmmm, heat death, okay. Yeah, given an upper bound on entropy, that will definitely happen. I don't know that this will theoretically speaking lead to the unsustainability of life, though from a practical perspective it undoubtedly will, as the heat death temperature is either going to be so near to 0 K that nothing can fluorish or so ridiculously high that nothing can survive.
DeleteI'm not following the connection that you're drawing between life and entropy though, especially the dependence of life on entropy. Could you explain a little more here what the connection is here?
Another interesting thing to consider is that there is a lot of evidence that the universe is rapidly expanding and might at some point cease and begin a rapid contraction in on itself. If the universe continues expanding unchecked for the rest of time, one might argue that the expansion of the universe is increasing the entropy threshold at a far greater rate than the universe is able to generate entropy, making it impossible to ever attain thermodynamic equilibrium (heat death). If the universe is eventually bound to contract in on itself, what are the implications of the decreasing entropy threshold? What would it mean when the universe contracts to the point that the entropy in the universe exceeds its entropy threshold?
Okay. Hot damn. This is way above my head and I'm kind of loving it. Please continue.
DeleteI think it's fair here to point out that I am not a physicist/chemist/biologist, so me being wrong here would be perfectly sensible.
DeleteThe connection I was drawing between life and entropy is that life increases the activity in a given system, which tends to increase entropy. Life is dependent on entropy insofar as that any given increase in entropy is essentially heat transfer. Life is sustained by outside sources increasing in entropy - that is, if an increase in entropy isn't possible somewhere in the system, life cannot exist. Your example of food was where I was drawing the connection; work is done that increases total entropy in the system to create food by which we can nourish ourselves, we consume said food and are able to expend calories because of it. Apologies for the simplification.
To answer your last question: Perhaps some sort of explosion/rapid expansion?
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