Welcome back, Fiends! If you look to the left, you’ll see that we are once more approaching the Liminal Waystation to refuel and collect ourselves for a moment in this space between worlds. It’s a little busier than usual today, isn’t it?
What? Yes, this is the engineer of Train 42…
What’s that, you say? There’s been a wreck? I didn’t think that was possible…
Understood. Over and out.
Excuse that little interruption, passengers. I trust you have a sense of things, but it seems there’s been a trainwreck. It’s the first of its kind in this realm, so it’s really quite an ordeal. I’m betting some less-seasoned operator tried to take a shortcut through Entropy Alley and all Hell broke loose.
At any rate, since we’re going to be here awhile, we might as well delve into a new liminal space. I’ve got the perfect thing, too.
Let’s explore the space…
Between Order and Chaos
You can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and that omelet is highly unlikely to revert back to uncooked eggs in a bowl. Order and chaos are interwoven in an intricate tapestry and life exists at its nexus.
This is where entropy comes in. It often gets a bad rap or oversimplified to the amount of disorder in a system. While not exactly wrong, this definition is less than precise. Entropy measures the spread of energy and has a direct bearing on its usability, with higher entropy systems having less energy available for productive use. And while the energy of the universe is constant, entropy is always increasing, which means that, over time, less and less energy is available to do work.
Something that is hot has more energy packets or units of thermal energy, meaning that there are more possibilities for how the system will be configured, and, as a result, higher entropy. Given that entropy tends to increase overall, certain outcomes are simply more probable and those outcomes are outcomes where entropy is high.
This increasing disorder gives order to our world. And it’s in this liminal space that life thrives.
Watch this cool video to learn more.
Entropy and the Arrow of Time
We can thank Ludwig Boltzmann for our understanding of the connection between entropy and time itself. The concept of the Arrow of Time, or time’s one-directional linearity, is an application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which focuses on the fact that entropy tends to increase in a closed system. Cooked food does not uncook itself because the increase in entropy deprives the food of the energy it would need to undergo the process. Much of the energy that went into the cooking process was lost to the environment, rendered unusable by the system.
In much the same way, time flows in one direction. Because entropy is always increasing, there must have been less entropy in the past. Less entropy means less disorder from our perspective. The future, as we perceive it, is a higher entropy state and so is filled with more possibilities and more randomness.
In his book, The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli sums it up beautifully:
“This is the disconcerting conclusion that emerges from Boltzmann’s work: the difference between the past and the future refers only to our own blurred vision of the world. It’s a conclusion that leaves us flabbergasted: is it really possible that a perception so vivid, basic, existential—my perception of the passage of time—depends on the fact that I cannot apprehend the world in all of its minute detail? On a kind of distortion that’s produced by myopia? Is it true that, if I could see exactly and take into consideration the actual dance of millions of molecules, then the future would be “just like” the past?”
To be present is to be caught between order and chaos.
But really, where else would you choose to be?
Book Recommendation
Tell me an Ending
by Jo Harkin
Tell me an Ending centers around a fascinating thought experiment – what if everyone in the world was notified that they had voluntarily chosen to relinquish a memory and now had the opportunity to have it back? Memory is precious, fragile, fallible, and the one link we have to the past. Its loss can create an uneasy kind of order and acceptance and its return the chaos that is at the heart of what it means to be human.
Description:
Across the world, thousands of people are shocked by a notification that they once chose to have a memory removed. Now they are being given an opportunity to get that memory back. Four individuals are filled with new doubts, grappling with the unexpected question of whether to remember unknown events, or to leave them buried forever.
Finn, an Irish architect living in the Arizona desert, begins to suspect his charming wife of having an affair. Mei, a troubled grad school dropout in Kuala Lumpur, wonders why she remembers a city she has never visited. William, a former police inspector in England, struggles with PTSD, the breakdown of his marriage, and his own secret family history. Oscar, a handsome young man with almost no memories at all, travels the world in a constant state of fear.
Into these characters’ lives comes Noor, a psychologist working at the Nepenthe memory removal clinic in London. The process of reinstating patients’ memories begins to shake the moral foundations of her world. As she delves deeper into how the program works, she will have to risk everything to uncover the cost of this miraculous technology.
Check it out today!
Writing Exercise
Are you a planner or a pantser? If you tend to write by the seat of your pants without much outline or idea of what lies in wait, try plotting out a tale and then writing it. If you are a planner, tried going a little crazy and not thinking before you set to work on your next project. Think about what you learned from the experience, and share if you’d like!
