Social Entropy

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14 years 2 months ago #29185 by
Social Entropy was created by
I just had a really kinda novel thought about the way that the universe works being reflected in the way that our society works. In a vague nutshell (and please forgive the large vocabulary):

The universe operates through a process called entropy. This means that things tend to travel from a state of more orderly to more chaotic. The \"Big Bang\" theory is a great example of this: everything went from high organization and more compact (low entropy) to lower organization and more spread out (high entropy). It's the nature of the universe to accept that an egg won't un-break. There are checks and balances, and forces which push back from a highly entropic state, but the norm seems to be that the natural progression is from states of lower entropy to higher.

What if this was true of social organization as well? Rather than having a homogeneous unit of people which separated as time goes along, we've become more separated and individual because of our perception of a universe which proceeds to higher entropy. Therefore, the Jedi path makes more sense in that it permits a high degree of individual belief and expression within the construct of a larger group, thereby allowing greater social entropy and controlling individual ideals far less than, say, Catholicism (I picked a religion at random, I'm not meaning to pick on any Catholics).

If this holds true, then we are naturally gravitating toward a more open society with greater tolerance for differences, but less cohesion as a centralized group (less cohesion, but at least equal connection with regard to comparison to other groups). It would make the way we tend to practice Jedi philosophy (a highly individualized path with each person being able to address their own spiritual needs) the next logical step in the evolution of human belief.

That's the idea in brief, I'd love to hear what other people think, and I'll answer any questions anyone has without issue (and if you PM me a question because you don't want to post it, I'll respect your privacy).

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14 years 2 months ago #29187 by RyuJin
Replied by RyuJin on topic Re:Social Entropy
organized chaos...i like that expression and use it alot...

it's a good point and something that i've noticed over the years....if you look into history you can witness(in a manner of speaking) the gradual natural progression towards the organized chaos....there was a time when church word was law, dictating how people lived, thought, and felt...and not just in the christian religions...no one ever questioned the church no matter what....then as time went on people began asking questions that the church couldn't answer, which of course led people to individual searches for the answers...

now there are many paths by many people...evolution pushes forward...considering life moves in a great circle and all things are cyclical it makes me wonder if at some point in the future the individual quests will all merge back into one all controlling path...

Warning: Spoiler!

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Warning: Spoiler!

J.L.Lawson,Master Knight, M.div, Eastern Studies S.I.G. Advisor (Formerly Known as the Buddhist Rite)
Former Masters: GM Kana Seiko Haruki , Br.John
Current Apprentices: Baru
Former Apprentices:Adhara(knight), Zenchi (knight)

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14 years 2 months ago #29197 by
Replied by on topic Re:Social Entropy
I'm not sure if this is cyclic in nature... a raw egg which is dropped onto the sidewalk isn't going to return to being the same egg. But it may be processed by the environment, the atoms scattered into a billion trillion different incarnations as they're reused in that environment... and wind up as a different part of a different egg at some point.

The concept of entropy is that it scatters and doesn't return. It's a material idea, rather than one based in energy, but I noticed that people tend to disagree and break apart from a main group rather frequently. I've seen this in politics, in religion, in families... any group you can think of which can be observed has undergone this kind of a transformation.

But the \"cyclic\" part of the social structure is that the more diverse we get, the more tolerant we have to become in order to survive. And the more we become both diverse and tolerant, the more we tend to unify under a single heading (what I'm saying, RyuJin, is that you're partly correct, but the way you put it might be confusing because it's a slight oversimplification). Thus, we become a \"nothing\" sort of heading because everyone is on their own path, doing their own thing, and in that we are homogeneous as a singular unit.

At least, this is the theory, I think.

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