Toward Disorder
23.28
In a distant universe, mechanical aliens notice that clocks across their world appear to be running fast. These beings live by breathing in subterranean argon (pressurized air) through interchangeable lungs, but little else is known about their anatomy.
Faced with the puzzling clock incident, a mechanical scientist performs an auto-dissection to test a bleak hypothesis. While observing their own brain’s mechanical conduits and subassemblies, the scientist learns that their brain, like their lungs, also depends on the flow of pressurized air. The scientist deduces that it is not the clocks that are all running fast, but the argon flowing through their minds that is running slow. The mechanical race had begun to deplete their subterranean argon supply. “It will be the end of pressure, the end of motive power, the end of thought. The universe will have reached perfect equilibrium”, the scientist writes.
Life is a fight against entropy. This is the idea from the title story of Ted Chiang’s Exhalations that has been on my mind lately.
Since August, I’ve been putting an obsessive amount of attention toward journaling. I write about things I’m grateful for, moments, habits, and other scattered thoughts. I use physical and digital mediums, slowly accumulating stickie notes, index cards, and Notion pages until they create more clutter than they originally meant to organize. Getting started was hard, but not atypical for me. I’ve always been selectively organized about these types of hobbies; they help tether my stubborn side.
But, in this exacerbated-pandemic limbo, I realized my journaling habit is not just a symptom of my stubbornness but also my need for order. The average daily new cases in Philadelphia is up 700% from a few months ago. Our hyperawareness from March has turned into fatigue. My mother and sister, as healthcare workers, witness the fatigue firsthand, not just in the patients, but in their colleagues. I worry about them especially within this purgatory of anxiety.
So, I turn to more straightforward parts of my life—a filled journal page, tidy bed, and clean dishes—for predictability. But, entropy lives here too. It’s silly to think about how much energy we use each day simply to keep something as it is. The pages, bed, and dishes can become empty, untidy, and dirty again in seconds. Staying in shape, growing knowledge, and building relationships all require consistent energy and more of it than it takes to lose them. We are amorphous blobs maintaining perpetually, shaped by our battles and choices.
I am both disheartened and lifted by this idea. It feels natural to preoccupy ourselves with the elements we can control. But, entropy doesn’t discriminate on prudence, so I wonder if it’s better to accept entropy rather than fight it head-on. If I can understand how the destructive and beautiful sides of nature are sometimes one and the same—how autumn is both decay and simultaneously per Albert Camus, a second spring where every leaf is a flower—perhaps disorder is not so foreign. The promise that nothing stays as we leave it is itself, a form of optimism.
Back in the mechanical world, a portion of the mechanical society called Reversalists tries to build artificial air pressurizers to replenish the depleted argon. The scientist does not share their optimism, understanding that the machines require more argon to operate than they can produce. Yet, I can’t help but sympathize with the Reversalists. I imagine the Reversalists, like myself, have misunderstood agency sometime in their past. Wired to optimize for output, they cling to the notion that if they work smart and efficiently enough, that they can overcome anything, even time. But, agency doesn’t work this way. While the Reversalists try to manipulate their obstacle to themselves, the scientist chooses acceptance. In a closing message to whoever discovers their journal, the scientist writes not with despair, but deference:
Your lives will end just as ours did, just as everyone’s must. No matter how long it takes, eventually equilibrium will be reached. I hope you are not saddened by that awareness. I hope that your expedition was more than a search for other universes to use as reservoirs. I hope that you were motivated by a desire for knowledge, a yearning to see what can arise from a universe’s exhalation. Because even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not…Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.
Accepting entropy requires a tolerance for uncertainty. When days grow tenuous, dig for your resilience, but remain self-compassionate if you’re unable to find it. Lean on the simpler things. Whether that is a made bed, a filled journal, or the coziness and unconditional love of a companion, touchstones of familiarity can keep us abreast. Disorder may be inevitable, but the lives we lead never were so keep showing up for what you love. Create art and music; share laughs recklessly. Lean toward the tide of disorder, and when it inevitably crashes over, choose to create and laugh again.
