Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Chaos or order? You have the option of moving towards one or the other, and you’ll find that both coexist in perplexing harmony.
For about 45 years, I gravitated towards chaos. My perception of life leaned more towards disorder, which is called entropy. In simple terms, entropy is a measure of disorder or randomness in a system; the more disordered a system is, the higher its entropy. I trended towards disorderliness, although I’m not sure I contemplated life deeply enough to consider it. I vaguely felt, in an unconscious way, that the universe was a place of caprice, and life was a tossup. Some poor saps couldn’t win – bad luck, I guess.
Many of us superficially believe in entropy. In 2023, Americans spent 65 billion dollars in gambling. If gambling is an enjoyable form of entertainment, that’s one thing. But I venture to say that those who participate in gambling do so because they are hoping to hit it big. Their “faith” is in a dice, a slot machine, or a wheel.
Many gamblers are devoutly religious. Coming from South Louisiana, Catholicism and voodoo coalesced in strange ways. Trinkets, good-luck charms, and plastic figures of “protection” are everywhere. It’s as if God is in heaven saying, “I’m rooting for you!” “Come on baby, daddy needs a new pair of shoes!”
Then we have syntropy, which refers to a tendency towards greater order, organization, and complexity. It can be seen as a force that drives life and complex systems towards greater structure and harmony. Both entropy and syntropy are two sides of a strange coin, or singularity.
Did chaos arise out of order or did order arise out of chaos? Maybe together? Before the big bang, which was disorderly, there was an absolute indescribability that science deems “singularity.”
I’m not rooting for order any more. If it’s a tossup, there is only one coin. That settles it for me, and without a rabbit’s foot.