Time, Entropy, and the Dissolution of the World

I may be taking IT's post about Children of Men and the whole thing with the fox too seriously. But, I've started noticing a pattern. The pattern is immediate, about my life. But I suspect that it fits other people's lives as well. And, I see it in global matters. The scary thing--I have an explanation for it, or pieces of one, not a full one (which would be impossible in terms of the theory, as you'll see if you keep reading). And, I might believe it.

The pattern: my lucky bamboo has started to die--but not from the roots or the stem, from the leaves. This has never happened to me before. I'm having problems with my skin--also a new thing. There were bugs in my son's hair. It's very, very windy and has been for at least 2 days. Plants are starting to grow into my basement.

More on the pattern: the lack of distinctions between fact and fiction, truth and lies; the encroaching ecological disaster; the way that the US is giving up on democracy and people stay isolated in their homes; the lies about Iraq (Bush says that the deaths there are exaggerated by the insurgents' sophisticated media operation and those who hate America); the horror of Darfur that persists and persists and persists...

Note: I am not saying that the bugs in my son's hair are equivalent to Darfur. What I'm saying is that the macro pattern reappears in small elements of everyday life.

Two ideas:
1. physicists can't explain why time runs in one direction.
2. entropy, stuff tends toward disintegration or dissolution

Conclusion from the details and the two theories: what if the world has already ended and we are
persisting in its degrading memory? This may seem to make more sense if we focus just on entropy. But I started to wonder about the time dimension, thinking that things might go backwards after the world ended and that backwards shouldn't be understood simplicistically, like rerunning a tape or something, but in larger chunks that let us glimpse the breakdown and dissolution back into nothingness. Also, I think that I need the first point in order to account for the persistence that is in the process of fading and dissolving. So we persist, but the distinctions are fading, and with it, the people we have been, the lives we have led. Perhaps our awareness of the end is why we keep typing, as if we want to send out or retain messages for the aliens from the distant future (like at the end of AI).

At any rate, the incompleteness of the theory, its failures, also indicate that it's right (in the grand tradition of Marxism and psychoanalysis, the disproof is the greatest proof): the failures indicate the process of dissolution in which we are caught. Clarity is lost, impossible now that the world has ended and we are but drifting components of its dwindling memory.

Comments

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Great! Post-apocalyptic piety!

Seriously, this is a great thought experiment. Almost a modern eternal return, if Deleuze is right to call it an ethical thought; a better categorical imperative.

[Jodi]

Thanks, Anthony. Where does piety come in (this is a serious question, I'm wondering if it has something to do with stuff that guy who wrote about capitalism and religion and piety said; I can't recall either his name or any of the details of his discussion of piety)?

A revision/version of eternal return is a neat thought--for one, it helps justify including the time stuff rather than just entropy. It also provides a justification/explanation for thinking about the dissolution/decay as a kind of reversal or going backwards, which provides the nice element of repetition, in a backtracking, dissolving sort of way, repetition not as reinscription or reinforcement but as echo, trace, fade to black...

It must be that there are good sci fi versions of the world going backward and sort of dissolving, the world as having already ended.

Maybe this is a secular version of the death of God--the death of the world: the world is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet, and the problem with knowing it is the hastening of the dissolution (which may explain why some want to keep people locked in myth, ignorance, games, and media, locked into a sense that everything proceeds apace, accordingly, as always, as before; it also explains why no one cares--why should they? they are ghosts, remnants in an already dead world).

Actually, there is a strange Stephen King story, I saw it as a pretty awful but still scary movie where a plane gets out of joint and returns to an airport where the the world has already ended.

[Jodi]

I also now know why all the stores put up Christmas decorations before Halloween--they don't want us to forget it. Dimly aware that the world has ended, they work overtime to avoid dissolution, trying ever so eagerly to speed things up so that we won't notice, so that we won't drift away...

[Anthony Paul Smith]

The piety comment was a kind of inside joke, as I thought you had finished Philip's book. Piety is a subjective synthesis of time dependent on attention. The third form is apocalyptic. Your post suggests a fourth form. I'm not sure how serious I'd take me saying that.

[Jodi]

Thanks, Anthony. I thought it was a reference to that book, but, I confess that I didn't finish it (I should have). Even if your comment isn't completely serious, it still is a nice push to me to return to the book.

[Adam Kotsko]

As I've said in comments here before, the form of this world is passing away.

You should watch the movie Last Night.

[Amish Lovelock]

I watched that movie last night! No seriously, I did!

[digitalice]

I just happened to stumble into your post about time and entropy and it's been haunting my thoughts this afternoon.

Have you read any of the following:

Martin Amis 'Times Arrow'
Philip K. Dick 'Counter Clock World'

Robert Charles Wilson's novel 'Darwinia' features a world--something like our present world that is actually a virtual construct.

You might also look at the philosopher Nick Bostrom's work--where he postulates the universe just might be a simulation.

[Former Student]

this IS pretty Goth, i must say...:)

one question - why are you so concerned about "clarity"? isn't "clarity" just as illusory as the dissolving world you're describing?