Entropy & America: A Reflection of This Nation's Great Sacrifices

Introduction

Celebrating America's 250th anniversary of independence has me feeling immense gratitude for the founding fathers, the framers of the Constitution, and all who have contributed to the defense of our principles of liberty. In this article, I wanted to relate an interesting physical phenomenon under the umbrella of thermodynamics called entropy to the great sacrifices of American patriots, and accordingly conclude what our generation must do to preserve our liberties. 

Entropy

Many agree that entropy is one of the most misunderstood topics in science, which to me makes it all the more mysterious and intriguing. The most common and maybe superficial ways of describing entropy are "the measure of disorder within a system" and "the tendency of things to spread out, or be random, over time". According to our understanding of the universe, the second law of thermodynamics famously states that the total entropy in an isolated system (like the universe) must always increase with time. 

Let's unpack the meaning of these things through some examples. An easy way to visualize entropy and the second law is to picture your bedroom completely clean and organized, with everything in its usual place. Now pretend that if you snapped your fingers, everything in your room would move to a completely random location and random orientation. What would your room look like now? More than likely, your bed wouldn't be resting on its feet anymore. Clothes would be all over the floor. I doubt that any hangers would be on the rack in your closet. In short, your room would look like a complete disaster, and "organized" would be the last word you would use to describe it. This is because there are fundamentally more possibilities for your room to be disorganized than your room to be organized. Thus, entropy must always increase with time. 

A very applicable case to thermodynamics is the fact that heat does not flow from cold to hot. Heat is really just vibrations at a very small scale. If you put hot chocolate in your fridge, you would not expect it to gather heat from the surrounding air and become hotter, because it is statistically much more likely that the high-heat (or high-vibrations) of the hot chocolate to expand out to the cold (low-vibration) air. You also wouldn't expect all of the air molecules in your living room to suddenly migrate to your kitchen; it simply is an impossible likelihood. 

As a final example, I'll digress from my point a little, but I find this thought experiment particularly interesting: you would not expect to jump off a diving board, hit the water, and have all the kinetic energy you just expelled reverse and throw you back up onto the diving board. No—your energy would spread out and create very disorganized heat and waves in the water. But imagine if it did. If you were thrown back up onto the diving board, it would appear as though time were moving backwards. This idea suggests that entropy either drives or is at least strongly correlated with the speed and direction of time. If this interests you, I recommend looking into the idea of "entropic time". Anyway, let's get back on track. 

Fallen Nations and Disorder on a Social Scale

Intuitively, entropy is also an effect studied in sociology and anthropology. If it is likely or even inevitable for things to lose their structure over time, then it is no wonder we have the records of so many fallen empires. The Romans, Mongols, Ottomans, and countless others rose to power and yet greatly fell, confined to the ash heap of history. 

This tendency to disorder also explains why the historical nature of humankind is anarchy and immorality. We must not understate the reality that tragic, chaotic actions such as genocide, slavery, and debauchery were abundant in almost every early civilization on earth, and even continue to threaten many societies today. These aren't just matters of enmity; it is a matter of literal human destruction and oppression. Left to its own nature, humanity does not gravitate to any kind of lasting harmony. 

While reading my description of entropy, you may have wondered within yourself why it must always increase if we see evidence of its decrease around us. Of course, anybody can clean a messy room and thereby decrease entropy, right? Doesn't air conditioning also decrease entropy by rejecting a building's heat to the warm environment? So, what gives? As it turns out, entropy absolutely can be decreased on two conditions: work must be applied to the system, and the total global entropy must be increased if local entropy decreases. Don't worry too much about the latter requirement, but suffice it to say that organization cannot happen without work.

To be rescued from the stains of this default iniquitous behavior requires immense work, and is almost impossible to practically sustain. Historically, many evil governments and powers did not go quietly. Indeed, they had to be dragged out of existence, kicking and screaming, through intense and intentional retaliation. As a religious man, I believe it takes the hand of the almighty God Himself.

The Revolution and Constitution 

While it is true that historians and modern politicians debate what really motivated the colonists to secede from Britain, we should not take the results of the revolution for granted. In the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers stated "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." What a beautiful sentence! This defied the reigning oppressive philosophies. And this was not just a statement: this defiance cost lives, comfort, fortunes, and honor. It meant opposing the most powerful empire ever in their history. In effect, it meant reversing entropy itself. 

When the war was won, the bedroom was cleared and an attempt made to organize it via the Articles of Confederation. With the trust of its citizens failing, infant America seemed doomed to join the rest of the empires in the ash heap. But the miracle of the constitutional convention defied those odds and changed the history of the world forever. 

The convention was no tea party. The state delegates were often at each other's throats in fierce animosity, and initially unyielding in their own opinions for how the government should be formed. But the result of the efforts from these men was glorious. Rising above their differences, they formed a government that grants power to the people and a system that checks its own powers. 

Later, it included a document that guaranteed the freedom of speech, religion, and press. How unprecedented! Remember, all past societies had their own religious, racial, and stratified intolerances. It was truly revolutionary to allow the citizens of a country such freedoms. Truly humility, honesty, and a fear of the divine were the only ways that they were able to compromise. As Benjamin Franklin wisely stated during the convention, "God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?".

What We As Americans Must Do

Accordingly, the first and most important step to defending the freedoms of our nation is to humbly uphold the morality upon which it was founded. John Adams wrote the following insight:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other"

As we've seen again and again throughout history, nothing increases social entropy faster than a disregard for morality. Even in today's society where crime in the United States is at an all-time low, sex trafficking is very alive. Drugs are mortally abused. Indulgent individualism reigns as the guiding philosophy for many. Both ends of the conservative and liberal spectrums relentlessly attack one another. What we desperately need to preserve our liberties is a heart of peace founded on divine principle. If you are not religious, this requirement remains unchanged: it demands a steadfast commitment to universal ethics, civic responsibility, and the humility to subordinate personal interest to the common good. 

Additionally, we need to remember the sacrifices of our fathers, as well as our brothers and sisters today. Abigail Adams wrote "posterity who are to reap the blessings, will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors." Freedom has never been free. Freedom has always cost the best blood of American soldiers, activists, ordinary citizens who refused to let vigilance sleep. Last of all, we need to exercise our righteous God-endowed liberties as defined in the Constitution and stand up for the freedoms of others. 

I am running out of time, so I'll wrap things up here. Two hundred and fifty years later, the choice remains the same as it was in 1776 and in 1787. We can yield to the effortless pull of social entropy, or we can choose the hard, beautiful work of remaining a free, moral, and self-governing people. It has never been an easy task to fight entropy, but our children's lives, liberties, and happiness hinges on this decision. 

Thank you for reading this article! I was inspired to write this after watching the film A More Perfect Union: America Becomes a Nation. I highly recommend it!