Replying to LO29597 --
Behave like this: read, dear reader; Hello At,
You're question:
Is the "faster" entropy production in order also the "better"?
and answer:
Other Mental Models may inhibit change, but this Mental Model of change
itself is already doing humankind as well as the ecology of our planet
unprecedented harm. Who will put a stop to it?
So what do you expect from me? I will plead guilty, as i already have
life.
I'd sing: # let it be, let it be, let it be, oh let it be, speaking words
of wisdom, let it be... #. I might - and do - wish that we wouldn't do any
harm to each other and the world, but i doubt if it would make things
"better". Life sucks. Shit happens. Reality is out there and you better
not fight it. You seem to think that we could do with less, less hardship,
famine, sickness. Well, it doesn't change the fact that there is hardship,
famine, sickness. And it doesn't seem to convince too many people to do
something about it. Or isn't it?
The Mental Models are not about change, we cannot change change. The
Mental Models are about how we try to protect ourselves from the pains and
sufferings of change, how we inhibit the feelings of desperation when we
see change and decay. Out of this despair some of us were able to "shift
the burden" of pain to others. And some have managed to this for sometime.
That is not fair, it is "Success to the Successful", undeserved success.
It will also run into a limit, and then we'll have "fixes that backfire"
(like the impeding war in Iraq, or the Middle East Peace Process).
Deceleration - "your solution is my problem" - will only extend the time
period of pain, prolong the sufferings. If all the wars have learned us
something, it is that we do not learn from the sufferings of others.
Especially when the others are not humans: do you know how many horses
died in W.W.I? And that we're dazed and confused when our suffering seems
over.
We are at war with ourselves, and rightly so, as this world is very
confusing. We, i assume, are in an interesting time period, a transition
period, like the singing water that is ready to start boiling. Can the
water imagine the state of vapour? We're not unlike a caterpillar in his
cocoon: that is not a period of rest, it is a period of great - and
painful - change. Can the cocoon crawler imagine becoming a butterfly, a
"belle de jour"? Does it realize that it will be one step closer to death
then? Can it imagine being a a caterpillar? We have a dim recollection of
the Paradise - and we remember only the happy parts, not the hard parts.
Most of us have no recollection of the New Jerusalem ("it will be a state,
not a place") and we'll imagine the happiness and not the sufferings. And
those who would love to stay unchanged, untouched, unharmed might be in
for a surprise. Or not. For I tell you: "the here and now is the only
thing we have".
I do not know what is better and i bet nobody knows. The only message i
got from this universe seems to be: faster means more entropy production,
more becoming. So let's go with the flow for it.
Moreover, if you look carefully: much of the sufferings - or the increase
of suffering - has been a result of our well intended intervention into
the "steady state" of nature. Inventing agriculture might be a result of
very successful hunting and gathering: we were almost starved to death and
invented agriculture and cities. The yearly fasting - in some religions -
is an artefact of this long forgotten period. When we raised average life
expectations from 32 to 64 years, and more, the decrease of suffering was
- after a while - turned into more people living a worse life. The coming
energy crisis will result in some very interesting new types of
organizations, new technologies, perhaps even new life forms. Was Malthus
an optimist or a pessimist? He caused overpopulation, because he noticed
that fact, didn't he?. He was an idealist who has greatly contributed to
the speeding up of entropy production by trying to decrease it.
You cannot stop life, i cannot stop life. If we all pull together as a
team, we might bring it to almost a full stop. So lets learn - the most
inefficient process in the universe - and stop the suffering by decreasing
the grow rate of entropy production in order to speed it up even more. It
might be the best way to check it out as we can either love it or leave
it.
Best wishes and great care,
Jan Lelie
PS: we're having solar panels installed - here in Holland. They're made
from sand, SiO2. They come with inverters to transform the dc into ac.
I'd like to give a tip: a dc current is ideal for splitting water into H2
and O2. H2 can be stored and used in all kinds of processes. If I had a
large desert not very far from a coast at my disposal .... .
You wrote kindly:
>With this explanation above i may perhaps be the one with the serious,
>skewed Mental Model (MM). But it took me 34 years (since 1968 in soil
>science research) to piece this MM together. I am very happy that i did
>because it gave me a fruitful viewpoint on reality.
>
>Jan, after so much verbalage, i can now get to your important
>"...[entropy] it can produce ... itself "better", "faster" by creating
>order. The "entropy production" can definitely be faster in order because
>there are much more diverse entropic force-flux pairs possible to do it
>with. But the question which we have to answer is the following:- is the
>"faster" entropy production in order also the "better"?
>
>You seem to had this question tacitly in mind because you write:
>
>
>There is also a third possibility besides (1) accelerating or (2) fixing
>"entropy production" and that is (3) decelerating it. As for myself, i
>have studied enough natural systems and creative humans to become
>convinced that that there is a harmonius relationship between the
>accelerating and accelerating phases of "entropy production" in them. The
>accelerating phase is needed to procure a bifurcation far from equilibrium
>and the decelerating phase is needed to mature by way of digestion close
>to equilibrium.
>
>
>Other Mental Models may inhibit change, but this Mental Model of change
>itself is already doing humankind as well as the ecology of our planet
>unprecedented harm. Who will put a stop to it?
--Drs J.C. Lelie (Jan, MSc MBA) facilitator mind@work
mind@work VOF - ondersteuning besluitvorming van groepen LOGISENS - bedrijfsverbetering
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