#3 Entropy & the Psyche
In our consensual world-reality, never has there ever been a system intentionally built to be inefficient and useless. From theorized concept to design prototype to productive application, all systems are intended with an optimal expectation of operational work and production. It is the design forecast of peak efficiency.
And time-n-time again, history has shown that human ingenuity will engage technology to improve upon an existing system design, create the next generation to displace what was, or follow previously unknown signposts and possibly pioneer previously uncharted realms. Whether that happens because of mechanical necessity, personal desire, or even societal and/or cultural influences is rendered immaterial since they are all part of the wondrous results of human creativity.
Briefly, the intended usefulness of all systems is to maximize available energy to do some work to produce a resultant product of value. However, whether we like it or not, and regardless of how assured one may be of the precision delegated to the implemented system design, the phenomenal universe has demonstrated that all systems waste energy to some degree; it’s unavoidable. Peak efficiency is an ideal, something not necessarily actualized in the phenomenal universe.
Psychologically, the assessment of value is typical of those qualitative, sticky research variables that are undeniably subjective. However, consider that even quantitative results from multiple quality assurance tests regarding structural materials’ reliability under various stress trials are yet further value-assessed within human consciousness as cognition will effect decision before action.
Generally speaking, the evaluative process occurs within the mental domain where cognition and emotional input, along with perhaps intuitive and physical stimuli, provide a rationale of assessment to the self. Notice how that composite thought, that rationale, instantaneously transforms into a seemingly tangible utility that idiosyncratically integrates effortlessly into the input data by and for the self.
There, somewhere within one’s awareness, a rationale assumes itself to be an entity; a retainer of energy and, like a crypto coin, waiting for transactional release. A rationale’s energy is released during cognition when decisions are decided.
Many in cognitive science regard this process of ideational creation as memory engram formation. Beyond physiological and chemical traces, the details of memory formation and recollection are still mostly a mystery that remains active in research. Psychologically, the processes of memory are not so much a formation of something, but rather it is a connecting or plugging into something already there.
An individual’s moment-by-moment evolving life process is constantly refocusing one’s awareness. The acceptance of a rationale as a composite construct of personal value locked in a time capsule definitely has psychological merit. Mechanically speaking, it is the end product of work done by a personality system whose initial energy was provided from human consciousness. The seminal spark creating a rationale undergoes an instantaneous expansion (a Big Bang in relative terms) incorporating self-permissiveness to action that is influenced by thermal events from within the psyche.
The work done by the psyche’s inherent thermal activity incorporates input data primarily from the mental domain (which subsumes emotional and physical elements). This is a self-directed, idiosyncratic surge of information that instantaneously plugs into one’s moment-by-moment, evolving life process either positively or negatively…that being determined by the thermal interactivity of dharma and entropy within the psyche. The result of this plugging into is a miraculous thermal feedback mechanism to the self that bypasses ego intervention and accounts for why we immediately like some things and dislike others, and to what degree.
The psychological dynamics of human creativity remain beyond any direct technical monitoring and observation. Nonetheless, there are certain esoteric meditative techniques that emphasize the act of focused cognition. This can be toward a single object or to a contiguous theme. These intentional altered states of consciousness have been recorded and measured with EEG printouts for decades.
The mental discipline is intended to stimulate a very particular thermal dynamic within the self. Ultimately, the technique opens the self to directly engage with the interplay of dharma and entropy within the psyche. The dynamic is representative of Otto’s mysterium tremendum and described by some as a relinquishment of the self, a state of egolessness that is fully experiential within waking-state awareness.
Psychologically, dharma and entropy characterize as two distinct complementary thermal dynamics that are eternally active and bonded together within the human psyche. One is infinitely operative measuring events wrapped in space and time…an individualized world-reality replete with distinctive sensations and perceptions of both tangible and ethereal things. The other is psychologically ubiquitous…a self-known, private, idiosyncratic universe that inherently functions to benefit personal well-being, prosperity and behavioral propriety. Together they define the sense of our personal well-being and a symmetry for finding order, meaning and purpose throughout the life process.
Qualitative & quantitative, objective & subjective, yin & yang are among the multitude of binary pairs forming the bedrock of all psychological phenomena. Unabashedly, dharma joins the pack and arrives with its thermal partner, entropy. Ostensibly, whether mechanical or psychological, any discussion of energy activity in a system would be incomplete without some respectful and diligent commentary regarding this 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Consider first that physics considers entropy to be a law of the universe. It is not a theory, a hypothesis, or some conceptualized mathematical abstraction. Everything in the phenomenal universe trends toward entropy and why some quaintly refer to it as time’s arrow. This is why it is so very important to have some rudimentary understanding of entropy as it applies to human consciousness and personality development since everything throughout the life process undeniably proceeds through time.
A simple Google query provides that entropy is “the measure of a system's thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness of a system.” (Google’s italics and boldface)
There are some who choose to substitute the term chaos for “molecular disorder, or randomness”, while still others refer to entropy as a principle of uncertainty. For good or ill, selective descriptions of entropy remain varied and subjective when applied across the transdisciplinary environment of cognitive science.
Dharma Dynamics recognizes the universal tendencies of entropy and dharma to be eternally yoked together throughout an individual’s life process. Within the psyche, the inescapable thermal tendency toward disorder (entropy) is perennially confronted by a thermal principle of order (dharma). Their interactivity can function to serve as one’s enhanced common sense and becomes bound to ideas of personal value.
Spiritual or mystical unity in consciousness, although a fascinating, never-ending philosophic topic of discussion, is not the objective here. For most folks, seeking some paranormal, transcendent experience is not part of a daily routine.
However, the initial psychic dynamic remains the same and within reach for everyone even in the absence of a rigorous meditative regimen. Accounts of spontaneous supernal events across cultures and throughout history are not at all uncommon. Yet, for most of us, the thermal dynamic simply goes unnoticed. Any intuitive impact upon the self is most often immediately countermanded instead by stimuli interfacing with thought and/or emotional intent by ego intervention. It is the ego that administers all personalized motivation to eventual behavioral action.
This is not to imply that for most everyone behavioral consequences manifest only within one’s world-reality. For each of us our thoughts are personal, unique, and idiosyncratic. They are the intangible mental storage bins of psychic energy and ego attachments. In this capacity, thoughts become personal variables which may produce individual behavioral outcomes realized only by and for the self, and therefore remain antecedent to any potential observable behavior. The results, and we’ve all experienced them, are that some thoughts are deemed personally beneficial while others are easily discarded before any motivation or intent toward manifest action is awarded them.
Those thoughts we retain are regarded to be of personal value; they make the most sense because they find practical benefit in one’s evolving life process. Of course, we can always choose to disregard our better judgment. People do it all of the time; and by so doing intentionally inhibit dharma’s effectual intensity (waste energy) as thermally delivered from the psyche. This will increase the degree of psychic entropy and its potential influence upon behavioral action.
It should therefore be obvious that egoistic attachment to thoughts that don’t make sense, that do not align with our individual prosperity, retain little or no personal value. Persistent attachment to such counterproductive thoughts is not normal and can be perceived as neurotic, or more alarmingly as irrational, and may presage dysfunctional and/or possible chaotic behavioral consequences.
* * *
