Philosophy Now Forum

if we look at history in terms of entropy and the flow of
history, we can see the pendulum of history... flowing from
order to disorder/chaos back to order and flowing back to disorder/chaos....
the various conquest by entities like Rome and individuals like
Alexander, bring out this flow of order to disorder and back again,
quite clear...

both Rome and Greece brought about order from chaos/disorder....
and when they ran out of energy, disorder/chaos returned..
the rise and fall of any empire comes from this flow of energy into
order into, over time, chaos/disorder...

The entire Medieval period is a period of disorder/chaos.. where
there was not enough energy to bring about the empires of the past..
as Empires require a great deal of energy to bring about...
and there wasn't enough energy to change the disorder/chaos into
the order of empire...the rise of the west, in historical terms,
is the rise of energy that can bring the change that is turning
disorder/chaos into order....every century since the Middle Ages,
has been converting disorder/chaos into order/structure...
we are now in the rising disorder/chaos time period...
and we have been since the "unity'' of ST. Aquinas... that
time period around 1250 has been considered to be the
highlight of unified thought and belief in the west....
and that is the raison d'etre of conservatives... not in
multiplicity of beliefs, but in unified belief that all share....
part of the liberal mantra is diversity, in beliefs and values,
and part of the conservative mantra is to deny/forbid diversity
in both values and beliefs.... or might I point out who is
attacking gays, trans and anyone who holds "different"
values and beliefs? It ain't the liberals....
a look at Nazi Germany points out this attempt to force
everyone to march in lockstep with certain values and beliefs,
an attempt being match in Modern day Florida....

I would point out that although diversity seems, seems to
be disorder/chaos and not order/structure... I would
point out that in nature, that no life form or mechanical
structure is even close to being 100% efficient... we human beings
are, at best, only 25% efficient in our use of energy...
and cars/automobiles are also around 25% efficient in their energy
usage...this suggests that nature itself is not very efficient,
that to maintain order one need not be very efficient...
it does require us to be mindful, aware of, woke as it were,
to our energy consumption vs our needs and wants....
that is why war is not desirable because it is not a very efficient
method of achieving one's goal...look at Athens during the
the "Peloponnesian War", the goal to dominate the locals
and be "top dog" in the Aegean Sea, was a failure because
the amount of energy and time required to achieve that goal,
wasn't worth the attempt.. and in the end, all Athens accomplished
was the end of the Athenian empire...
and more recently, our misguided, at best, wars in the Middle east...
the energy and time put into these failed wars, is in part, why we
are struggling today.... future historians will be able to point out
the beginning of the end of the American empire being the failed
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.. it drained so much energy from
what we needed to do from idiotic attempts to bring about "order"
and "structure" into the world, that we have begun to bring about
the end of America as we know it.... when the history of America is
written the name of Bush lite, will be prominent in the tale of
our end...

the question of our lives in not about being gay or trans or liberal,
but in what did we spend our energy on and was that a wise use
of the limited energy we have, as American's? Morality, ethics isn't
what drives us, but what is a better use of our energy instead of
fighting human nature, in which gays and trans people are
simply existing within human nature...

so part of the human condition is this question of our energy use
and what is a wise and useful expenditure of what energy we have?
a prominent aspect of being human is this question of order vs disorder
and how much energy are we going to use to maintain order, vs
allowing disorder/chaos?... what is the energy cost of maintaining
order vs the energy cost of allowing a certain amount of disorder/chaos?

Kropotkin

so we can look at our own individual history or
focus on our own entropy....

we human beings are biological beings with a multiplicity of
properties and what is "multiplicity of properties?"

that is a fancy name for what is possible for us... a cat or a dog
can only be a cat or a dog, a dog cannot be an Einstein or
a Newton or a Picasso or a Kant.... it simple can't do that,
those possibilities are not inherent within a dog...
but those possibilities are inherent within a human being...
within me and within you....given my age, 64, I no longer
have the energy left to go out and break the world record in
the mile... I can't climb mountains like Everest and I can't
rock climb like I used to... my energy level has limited what
is possible for me... when I was young, I at least had the possibility
of breaking the mile record or climbing Everest or climbing
El Cap... not today...the loss of energy in my life is the presence
of entropy.. or the movement from order/structure to disorder/chaos...
but I still have possibilities that are not inherent in a dog or a cat,
I can still engage in philosophy and history and science...
or said another way, a man gotta know his limits...
and running a marathon is no longer possible for me...
and so I must focus on what is possible for me, or what possibilities
can I reach with the available energy I have today...

given entropy, I have a limited number of possibilities before me....
and with each passing day, those possibilities grow more limited...
going from order/structure to disorder/chaos....
and with enough disorder/entropy, I will die...I no longer
have enough energy to maintain my life.. disorder wins,
as disorder/entropy will always win in the end...
that is why there is a renewal of beings, which is a renewal of
energy in the universe.. we are born, we live and we die,
from disorder to order and then back to disorder...
and then the next generation takes that exact same journey,
the amount of energy is unchanged in the universe, but
within that, we can move energy around from object to object...
and with every new birth of another human being, we renew
the amount of energy in the world... it can't change the amount,
but it can be move about...the renewal of generations is
the renewal of energy from one generation to the next....
that is why the young have children and the old do not..
I no longer have the energy to bring children into order/structure,
but the young, they still have the energy to bring about
the next generation...

and this is why the conservatives cannot accomplish anything
they are spending their energy on hate and anger and violence...
they have no energy to spend on building positive values and
beliefs... they are too busy hating for that....hate takes
a great deal of energy... it is, frankly, quite exhausting to
hate.... but what does build energy? love, hope, peace...
in falling in love, one has the energy to climb mountains
and overcome all obstacles, no matter what the cost....
that is the power/energy in love....
and that is what we see in any positive use of energy,
not hate or fear or anger, but love, hope, forgiveness,
charity... all of these values, and they are values,
build into energy... witness the energy of the 60's...
the energy to overcome the values of a stagnant
America... we had energy to burn in those days....
and why? Because we engaged in positive values,
not negative values like hate...in the end, the hippies
won... and today, we need to renew our possibilities
and thus renewing our energy by liberal, positive values like
justice and love and hope, among other values....

can or are conservatives able to build anything of value
giving how much energy hate, fear and anger takes their
energy? No, not at all... think about the energy of the Clinton,
Obama, Biden years oppose to the negativity of feeling and
energy that was in the Bush and IQ45 years...
nothing of value was done or created during the bush/IQ45 years,
whereas we created great energy during the Clinton, Obama, Biden
years and in that energy creation, see the job growth, see the increased
possibilities, see how we moved our country forward in ways not seen
during the Bush/IQ45 years... that creation of energy was created
in the positive values of liberalism... as was the energy of
the 60's was created in the positive values of liberalism...

what is possible? what is our energy for that task?
that is the question....

Kropotkin

We all say we want order but what we actually want is disorder. Sic vita est.