Suppose Bob wants to complete a puzzle. He takes a box of puzzle pieces and dumps them on the table. In theory, it is possible for each piece to fall perfectly into place and form the complete puzzle on it’s own but in reality, that can never happen. There is only one out of an infinite chance of that happening simply because- the odds are against it.
There is always a higher chance of disorder than order. That's just the fact of life.
This is entropy in a layman language. It’s not only present in thermodynamics but in everyday life as well. We see things around us slowly decay, deteriorate, lose their shape. Even if we try to ignore it, there is always a collapse of some sort. If you don’t put work into a relationship, it’ll end, if you don't actively take care of your house, it’ll fall apart. We can’t prevent entropy but there are ways to control it. This hidden force can have a positive or negative impact on your life depending on how you look at it.
I don’t think any of us are actually conscious about how entropy affects our daily life. One day, everything around us is not going to exist anymore and there’s nothing we can do to stop that. We’re all collectively marching towards disorder. It’s not going to happen all of sudden but instead, will be this slow gradual process we won’t even realize is taking place. From the smallest things like your coffee getting cold in a few hours to ancient monuments collapsing. We often fail to recognize the small signs of life getting more and more complicated. Contrary to popular belief, if most of us were consciously aware of the disorder around us, it would not lead to more chaos. Truly understanding entropy leads to a radical change in the way we see the world. Ignorance is responsible for many of our biggest mistakes and failures. We cannot expect anything to stay the same. It can’t. To maintain our health, relationships, careers, skills, knowledge, societies, and possessions requires never-ending effort and vigilance because
“Disorder is not a mistake; it is our default.”
However, a world without entropy isn’t as perfect as it seems. Imagine your life if everything around you remained the same. Nothing ages, fails, or breaks. You leave things and five, ten, even fifteen years later, they remain the same. We would have no innovation, no progress, and the monotonous constant will live with us, forever. The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of creativity. No art, literature, music, poetry. There would be nothing to take inspiration from. No need for change. No sense of urgency. Even the things we have right now wouldn’t exist.
Take the Renaissance for example-one of the main reasons for the emergence of this age of enlightenment was the rediscovery of ancient texts and different artistic and technological innovations. If entropy did not exist, we wouldn’t even feel the need to have a new cultural outlook. Why? Because we would have always been satisfied with what we have.
Once we understand the concept of entropy and accept the fact that things fall apart, we can use it to our advantage. When we know there’s always a disorder over time, we can consciously aim for stability. There are two types of stability: active and passive. Consider a ship, which, if designed well, can sail through a storm without intervention. This is passive stability. A fighter jet, in contrast, requires active stability. The plane can’t fly for more than a few seconds without having to adjust its wings. There is no inherent stability here: if you cut the power, lose control, the plane crashes.
We have a problem when we confuse the two types of stabilities. Relationships, for example, require constant attention and care. If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you’ll expect it to sail through the storm without any effort which never works. You need to nurture it. Your house is also not passively stable. If not cleaned regularly, it will continue to get messier and messier. The one untidy corner will become an untidy room and eventually an untidy house. With active stability, you’re applying energy to a system to make it work. When you pay attention to something and constantly care for it, it’ll stay alive for longer. You can’t prevent the disorder but at least you slow it down.
“Everything that comes together falls apart. Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, and so it will fall apart. I’m going to fall apart, probably before this chair. And you’re going to fall apart. The cells and organs and systems that make you—they came together, grew together, and so must fall apart. The Buddha knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia after his death: Entropy increases. Things fall apart.”
This quote by John Green perfectly explains entropy. ‘They come together, they grow together and so they must fall apart.’ The entire idea of entropy is beautiful. Our body has so many different atoms which could have been arranged in any possible way, but they made us. There could have been disorder, there could have been chaos, but it’s just you. There are a million possible ways to arrange those atoms. You, here, reading this, are defying the very law of entropy. Of course, with age, you’ll also slowly lose shape, degenerate but the odds were compellingly against your favour in the first place.
So give life your life, go give meaning to your existence. Have a purpose. Remember that there is always a higher chance of disorder than order. Sometimes even the most minute problems in life are not because of bad luck or personal shortcomings but simply because entropy exists. When you apply more energy than what is extracted by the system, you can play an Uno reverse on the universe because as James Clear has said,
"It is nobody's fault that life has problems. It is simply a law of probability. There are many disordered states and few ordered ones. Given the odds against us, what is remarkable is not that life has problems, but that we can solve them at all.”
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