Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Divine entropy, among other things.

Oh gee. Entropy, man. Entropy.

What is it? Why, its nature's relentless strife towards chaos and disorder, of course! Honestly, that didnt tell me much when I first learnt about in school, either. There are ample examples of it, though. E.g. the spreading of heat is entropic behaviour - 2 orderly clumps of different temperatures will in time merge into one big mess of unorderliness, and thats how it always is. Its order transitioning into a more chaotic state, where patterns and borders are harder to find.

Thats thermodynamic entropy. Im sure it plays different roles in different fields of science, but thats the only example I know of. Entropy in itself isnt all that interesting, after all.

What I actually wanted to write about was entropy in a symbolic perspective. You know, how it seems to affect our lives, in times of distress. It acts like erosion, nabs and nips at foundations weve built for ourselves, undermining the pedestals upon which habits, families, societies, nations. I think its interesting that I atleast dont know of any religions based upon it, if there are any. Godly forces dithering away at the craftsmanships of a distracted man. It would provide an answer to the question; "Why do bad things happen to good poeple?", and isnt that kind of stuff what religion is about, in its core? Safety.

Seeking inside ourselves, answers about the afterlife are distant. Having a priest tell you youre going to this utopic heaven-place, whoah, isnt that a relief? Its safety. Safety from all the potential bad things, Safety which allows you to take your mind off the bigger questions and focus on your own. Humans need it. The part about devoting oneself to a church is not so much a religious phenomenon, but one that is designed to create followers. Besides spiritual relief, Religion is a business. Its a for-profit concept. If I were a bolder man, I would claim its even marketing, in the right circumstances.

Entropy. It tears down love-relations that once seemed so stone-fast, it tears away at your health, destroying your mothers hard work, and it tears at all the results of all your toils, forcing you to go back and start again. Theres no blame to be cast, theres just Godly entropy. I could totally see that becoming a thing. Most religions tend seem naive in an objective perspective anyway. 


I have one notebook, and about half of it is notes, and the rest is art. Often on the same page.


Yeah. Im just letting my mind wander, there is no particular incident that triggered this entropy-text. But among other things, and relevant to you, my readers, my PC did break down the other day. That means I will have some difficulties making art for my entries, as most of my material goes via or is created on my PC before it reaches the internet and this blog. To further fuel that fire, my camera ran out of juice, and I cant find the battery charger. That means I cant post any pictures of traditional art, either. I took the above photo with my phone, and im writing on my older brothers PC. Cant do any digital art on this PC, and the phone camera sucks.

1 comment:

  1. In the stories and rituals of the indigenous peoples of Australia, Africa, and North and South America, there are times when participants experience a liminal state that can be understood as a return to the creative boundaries between chaos and order. Alongside the religious traditions that emphasize the defeat of chaos, there are those that challenge dualistic polarities and encourage an acceptance of chaos or elements associated with it, such as negativity, unknowing, and darkness. In ancient China, early Daoist texts (as opposed to the later Daoism) support mystical union with hun-tun (chaos) and identify hun-tun with the ultimate principle of Dao. Alongside the mainstream Vedic traditions of India there are forms of mysticism, both Upanishadic and Buddhist, that encourage union with "emptiness." Christian theology includes the tradition of apophatic theology, which finds expression in the works of Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335.395 C.E.) and Pseudo-Dionysius (c. fifth century C.E.), in the English medieval text The Cloud of Unknowing, in the John of the Cross's (1542591) symbol of the Dark Night, and in the twentieth century in Karl Rahner's (1904984) theology of God as Incomprehensible Mystery.

    In Jewish thought, a theology that can embrace negativity finds expression in various streams of thought, including those concerning God's Shekinah and sixteenth-century mystic Isaac Luria's concept of the divine withdrawal that makes space for creation (the zimsum). In philosophy since the Holocaust, there has been an attempt to embrace the chaotic strangeness and alterity of reality, particularly in the postmodern rejection of all "totalizing" attempts at comprehension and order and in philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's (1906995) insistence on the radical and irreducible otherness of one's neighbor.

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