Entropy & Stability

In March 2019, I co-chaired a retreat through USC’s Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study centered around the theme of “Entropy & Stability”. Almost 18 months later, the questions underlying that wonderful weekend feel oddly prescient in the entropic world of COVID-19 and the accompanying search for stability in the form of a “new normal.”

“[S]tability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt…”

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“I don’t know just where I’m going / But I’m gonna try for the kingdom, if I can…”

— The Velvet Underground, “Heroin”

To be human is to search for stability in a world that tends toward entropy. In every facet of our lives, we are surrounded by narratives of instability and disorder — the financial systems poised for collapse; the political machine careening off course with the driver asleep at the wheel; the metallic arms of automation that lurk in plain sight, threatening enormous displacement of working-class laborers; the fires and storms and crashing surf that, year by year, erode away at our collective complacency. Entropy is so central to our lived experiences that we toe the line of romanticizing it: as Aldous Huxley notes, instability is “spectacular,” glamorous, having a certain “picturesqueness.” The same itching curiosity toward the appeal of the chaotic that prompted generations past to listen to Charlie Parker, read Slouching Towards Bethlehem, or visit R.D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall, drives today’s mass-marketed appeal for Kanye West’s Ye or for Fire and Fury, which depicts a pandemonious White House in its worst moments. Yet, as much as we romanticize entropy, we find ourselves fascinated by it only from a distance. We would rather ingest and examine the litany of chaos that is Lou Reed and Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain than live out those self-destructive impulses ourselves. Chaos is our favorite drug of fantasy; but stability is our favorite drug of reality.

Drawing upon voices from every end of the interdisciplinary spectrum, our retreat entered into conversation with the questions posed by stability and entropy and their coexistence. Why are we so fascinated by entropy? Why do we desire stability? Can stability become its own kind of chaos? Are stability and entropy necessarily opposed?

We explored the theme of stability and entropy in its relation to the fundamental and deeply personal questions of our time. What does religion have to say about stability and entropy? How do the two inform our personal and political philosophies? How does education, especially as a social and emotional process, explore the questions and tension of chaos and constancy? How do we explore and represent chaos and structure in art and literature? Is technology a force for stability or entropy — or both? How are the two concepts politically, sexually, and racially coded? How do the two inform our relationship with our environment?

It was, in hindsight, a weekend of insightful and foreknowing conversation, reflection, and connection as we explored those questions and tested the bounds of Heraclitus’ famed words: “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”