Entropy Is Not Our Anomie

Escape apathy and bear the burden of an existence which requires change, allowing us to live as an aesthetic who takes art as life, and purpose as life’s effect.

Background:

(Neutrality)

Religion and other forms of blind faith are evaporating. Beliefs that once filled all minds in a frighteningly beautiful harmony, like that of marching boots or monotone chants, have begun to lose value. This loss of old religion has been the natural effect of the sciences and a growing knowledge; we have dissected faith and found only simple mechanics. Born are the mentalities of nihilism and existentialism, which are built upon the non-existence of truths outside of human conception. For nihilism moral constructs are a will to power and a simple solution to the unknown. The Judeo-Christian moral order and good/bad dichotomy was born as a “slave revolt in morality”, where the ressentiment of the lower class towards aristocrats, or subject towards master, is comforted by a religious scheme. Where despite class pure souls hold eternal bliss and the sinister, regardless of power, are condemned (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality). Less ascribed to the philosophy of will to power, existentialism holds to the belief that existence precedes essence, that during our existence we build a valuation (Sartre). What is over looked with these philosophies is the new faith they provide. A new harmony of different shape and color. To avoid the blanket of apathy that now seems too common during this transition from god given purpose to a complete responsibility of actions the importance of, humanism, and beauty of our godless circumstance must take religions place. It is a weightless freedom to recognize we have not been resting against the given purpose ascribed to us by religion but rather have been clinging to, preventing each individual from rising.

|S|

In an isolated system (the Universe being an example) entropy, change, and spontaneity will increase. For thermodynamics this is seen as the increase of thermal energy. The inevitable increase of entropy for any closed systems has come to be known as Heat Death. Statistical entropy is defined in terms of the micro-states composing a macro-state. The micro-state is the microscopic configuration of the total macro system. The increase of entropy from this perspective means an increase in micro-states. A closed system growing in entropy therefore grows in micro-states, in constituent variation. In nature, this is seen as a loss of organization, movement towards the chaotic, and a lessening of order with time. Take for example a puzzle: The micro-states are each piece and whether or not they’re connected to any other piece, the macro-state is the total configuration. Zero entropy would be the completed image, but a puzzle will not spontaneously build itself, work is required. Entropy’s natural progression towards change is the cause of our understanding of time. Time is the physical culmination of entropy, where time’s arrow is in the direction of entropic increase.

(Being in Time)

To be self aware is the ability to relate the self as belonging to multiple events, to exist as a single persona, as a constant state, through different times. The changing time implies a change of states and situations. The spanning self is a projection of consistency within the growing entropy of our environments. We paint the self as a solid image, a completed puzzles, which travels alongside a universe in constant change. This tendency becomes our identity. The ego is the house left standing during a war. This self-definition as a solidarity having existed within past and current environments is the first aspect in the construction of an ego. The second defining feature comes from the mind’s understanding of inevitable entropic progression, change, and an arrowed time. This faith in change forces the self to question future states, and as a result how we may affect these states. We are forced to act as an entropic affect, making man as affect the second aspect of ego. We are forced not only to exist in constant change, but we must also contribute to that change. To do nothing is impossible, entropy will increase, and our hand, be it still, is an affecting force. How then we dissipate entropy becomes a feature of the ego. Are you to build pyramids bound to crumple or bombs to hasten the process? But what is most unique in humanity, is a common desire to decrease entropy. A desire to delay decay through organization, construction, and art. To summarize: the ego is an illusionary projection of solidarity within a state of decay which recognizes that, subject to change, we hold chaos within ourselves, and it is chaos which reshapes environments.

(Primum Movens?)

Is man able to choose in which direction to propagate entropy? Is man free? We are not the originating cause any more than a rock is; which when dropped into a pond produces a wave. With respect to only the rock and pond, the rock is the protagonist, but by expanding the system the cause which dropped the rock becomes the originator. By continually expanding perspectives in this way we find additional sources. Say there is a tree that fell on a mountain that freed a rock to roll into a pond to produce a wave. The tree becomes the causing force. Can this process of expansion continue infinitely? Or could there be a single, predictable event, say a calculable big bang? In either case, man is still no originating cause. Human action is the response of environment and history. Our actions are biologically and genetically induced, and our actions shape our environments which we later choose from. Like the wave source, we are the culminating cause of other effects. We are born as the effect of past events. The effect of other recursive causes. Man is no cause, but rather has cause flow through him.

(Relatively Free)

Unlike the rock/pond scenario, however, our system is more complex, composed of countably infinite affecting agents. The complexity of our situation would be like dropping two rocks, each producing waves of constructive and destructive interference. Or, more realistically, when dropping the rock it is raining, and with each droplet of rain comes a new ripple to interfere. Each effect on our timeline is a single thread. Take the numerable threads and braid a single rope: the rope becomes the individual. The complexity of the human situation is the reason why man has until recently been seen as a free agent. However, our freedom is an accurate approximation. Because of the near-infinite causes, the complex intertwining of many events, we are able to continue viewing ourselves as free. Similar to the birth of Einstein’s relativity, Newtonian mechanics no longer could be seen as a natural law, but an accurate approximation at low speeds. Where low speed includes any speed you will encounter during your life. Our freedom, though non-existent, is relatively true. The relative complexity of entropic growth with respect to our ability to understand cause and effect allows man to be approximated as free-willed. Man can be approximated as a source despite being the intersection of various paths of spontaneous change.

Implications:

(Forfeit of will, our single freedom.)

One freedom does exist in itself and not as an approximation. To be free we must escape the drives and causes that induce our “choices”. Even though all actions are produced by systems of cause and effect, an exception exists: randomization. Random can have no originating cause. It is an event void of precursor, and comes into existence in itself. Our freedom then is to give up our choice and act at complete random. To make a choice, for example, and to have that choice be random, you could number your options then use a random number generator to determine which one you will act on. For example when confronted with a choice you have even numbers mean yes, odd mean no, or: if odd take the path right of the mountain, even the path left, and if prime go over the mountain. Though we are the hand of cause and effect, we are able to choose to act in random and escape our innate driving forces. Choosing to act random is our free choice, though its outcome is uncontrollable by us. A seeming paradox arises: Our single freedom, allowing us to escape our mechanization of having our actions/choices be the effect of other causes, relies in our ability to choose to forfeit our will and act independent from other causes, meaning, to act randomly. To be free we must choose to make no choices.

(Unnamable)

All forms exist in a continually changing state due to entropy (time) and are constantly reshaping, gaining new attributes, or becoming new objects. Assigning names becomes impossible. To identify an object in few words requires talking of an object as it was, ignoring how it has changed and what it has become  A temporary solution is to redefine what the name represents. An example is the ego. We hold an identity to ourselves throughout life despite our innumerable changes in personality and beliefs. I have a consistent idea of my ego by considering my younger self to be the same person as I am now. However it would be impossible to have an accurate description of my identity if I had stopped defining my identity at age twelve. The ego is an example of a constantly changing form always described by the same name. The “it” or “I” must undergo entropic change after being named and this image we impose when naming does not last, but fades, and looses solidarity. With this comes a loss of unitization and a falsity in titles. Names are then only imaginative lingual tools, generalities and not actualities. There does not exist a distinct divide between an object and its environment; all objects evolve with their environments. Objects are all changing, graying the separation between “it” and all else. Universal entropy illuminates the fiction of language and identities. In truth, no item can be generalized, but rather each item at a very specific time is unique and will immediately change. No general form of an item exists and no single unit can remain constant to its self. Entropy is corrosive to language and things become unstuck to their names. As a result the atomistic projection of language cannot be taken as truth but as a beneficial tool. Names serve to generalize and identify common attributes between objects, but the objects themselves are directly tied to time, since their entropic state must change, and their environment, since during evolution they interact with the external world. The entire system is then not composed of units such as man, earth, star, and galaxy, but as a totality, a continually reshaping form in time where all objects we name are directly tied and inseparable from their surroundings. The universe without language (a separatist atomitozation) takes the form of an All State which is a single continuous and reshaping form containing all things which are naturally inseparable.

(Mans Reaction)

Progression and alteration is forced upon us. If we are to remain conscious, we will always be subject to a changing environment and a changing self. Two forms of man come from this entropic state. One sees only disparity and apathy, the other opportunity. The former are overwhelmed by the burden of change. The despondent see their situation as an aimless descent. They are rag dolled by the elements, where chaotic winds constantly change their path, and they land only where exterior forces have brought them. Unable to take rein, the apathetic allow the universe to improvise in their place. The latter of the two acknowledges their condition, accept themselves as another means for entropy to propagate, and as a result are able to choose the focal points to direct this change. Pregnant with the future, the opportunistic look on our entropic circumstance as a gift.

(Thou Art God)

Man is forced to act as change when viewed as a self-defining node through which entropy transgresses. To be a cause for change is to create. Some are overburdened by this responsibility and use destruction as their only form of creation. These are the apathetic and despondent. Others develop the changing self, focusing their wave fronts. The self affirming individuals understand themselves to be a creator, granting the perspective of life as art. Is not art ones own creationism? Man’s identity is then an aesthetic projection, for our existence is an act of perpetual artistry. In truth little choice is involved. Our creationism, our art, is forced. Our art is the effect of culminating threads. We then form a fictional projection of self, wound from these threads, and this self is inevitably an aesthetic phenomenon. More practically however, being relatively free willed, we may use our freedom to build the aesthetic individual. The despondent forget life-purpose out of spite, feeling wronged that value and morality is not the third element after space and time. They claim each day is their purpose. For only in the suns passing can you jump over the earthly burden of your shadow. The artists know the shadow to be a template; a form which they can give character and color. The artists work to become these shadows, praising noon, the time when they are nearest to it. As creators we may create ourselves and master our artistry, where artistry becomes a synonym for life.

(The Aesthetic Experience)

Life as art means to understand that art and aesthetics serve to illuminate the human condition. The aesthetic experience comes without effort or consent. What’s more, the spectator is exposed to an element, realistically neutral in existence (the movement of air at varied frequency, a drop of oil with dye, a urinal) and unavoidably experiences it in a very non neutral manner. The aesthetic experience is as unavoidable as laughing when being tickled, and equally as forced. It comes as a will-less knowing. We cannot approach art looking to exhibit authority over it, rather, the temperament with which art appeals is one of receptivity. As aesthetic phenomena we are subjugated by art, and this subjugation is the aesthetic experience. The aesthetic experience acts as a window onto our aesthetic existence, a mirror reflecting the human condition. Forced into an aesthetic experience through art we are shown how creationism and artistry is the human response to existence.

(On Evolution)

Life as art, but to what ends? A short lived aesthetic insight or a simple satisfaction? But what matters my happiness? What matters my epiphany? My anger, or my tranquility? Is not all a neutral change? Our life is our responsibility. A burden to be taken as a light and playful jest or as a weight to drag each action. No longer is there “thou shalt” but rather: “and so I make it.” Responsible for the value our actions hold, becoming apathetic is all too easy. Too feasible is it for man to become stagnant water. But remember, no man is an end in himself. To live for one’s self is to act onto the environment that effects all. Remain aware your artistry uses existence as its canvas. What’s more, the child of our changing universe is evolution. All change is inevitable. Our adaption is inevitable. We change the environment that changes us allowing us to use our creationism, our artistry, to make man our masterpiece.