Sanity Is Impossibility by Santosh Jha (books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

What does this mean? It seems, we are halfway through our entire life period on this earth! Is that a period enough to be termed as ‘Long-Run’ of time? It seems, looks like a possibility. Even if we consider the entire life-period of universe, we are past one quarter of it. So, can we assume, we, humanity as a whole, have passed Long Enough time on earth to make the hypothesis true that – Everything tends to become less organized and less orderly over time. Do we need to align ourselves to this possibility that as we are halfway through, we must all understand and accept that we live in times when our mechanisms of order and construction has spewed out reasonably high amounts of ‘Disorder and Destruction’. This is a systemic trouble; a procedural predicament that we humans cannot wish away. Can we?

What this causal philosophizing on the thermodynamics realism means for humanity in general and in particular? It is not that this hypothesis about ‘Long Run’ and ‘Entropy’ is what we need to feel scared about. The only insinuation is that somehow, in our zeal to maximize joys and comforts, this probability of causality about systemic entropy is not even being accepted in sidelines. We at least need to bring this issue to debate and discussion at the center of all talks about development. Thinking of development is always good but being oblivious of entropy that the enterprise of energy for development is unleashing fast in the milieus is call to calamity. It seems so.

Stephen Hawking said, ‘A frightening possibility is that intelligent life is not only common, but that it destroys itself when it reaches a stage of advanced technology. That’s why we have not met aliens as yet…’

Yes, this is disorder and entropic energy at its best. What Hawking is probably hinting at is the systemic causality of development and entropy, which all humans need to understand and accept. The intuitive mechanism of energy, in and around us must be accepted by all; at least our decision-makers.

We always see a lot of chaos, confusion, conflict, catastrophe around us and more often, these destructive energies are so potent and omnipresent that we feel frustrated and often start believing that our systems have gone so much wrong and humanity is doomed. Somehow, as human brain/mind is only 15 percent genetic and majorly 85 percent milieu-driven, major part of this chaos, confusion, conflict percolates to individual consciousness and collective unconscious.

In all nations, be it developed or developing, the systemic entropies make a larger population feel frustrated and in anger of the system. May be, the human system and milieus have become so large and their working has become so complex in long march of humanity that level or content of entropy has risen very high, unleashing loads of conflicts and confusions. We all think, our leaders or those in control of resources and authority have misused their briefs to create such a chaos and conflict. We almost always fail to see the larger picture. The entropy is systemic. We all contribute to it. It is there because it has to be there. There is no wishing away. And as time passes, every next day brings about more entropic energy into play in the system. We think and believe that they are people-specific troubles, unleashed by politicians or others but the fact seems like it is all systemic entropy.

This is cardinal principle of physical realism of the universe. More we grow in time and space, larger becomes our systems and mechanisms for excellence and order and more and more grows the disorder and entropy in the system. We need to accept, we have come halfway mark. Too much we have constructed for the destructive energy to be under control and within comfort zone. Scientists warn, the forces of nature and evolution has ceased to be and human intervention has come a long way. The entropy somehow also balances developmental energies but as natural entropy is non-operative, it is human entropy into the system, which has gone out of limits and is set to go berserk.

We have become a complex living conundrum. We all see it around. We all have ourselves discovered the rules of physicality. Still, we do not wish to accept it. It is interesting how we all rather prefer the energy of entropy in our lives and the life-enterprises. See, for example, we say it to ourselves and everyone, ‘If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got. Stretch it out, leave the comfort zone and dabble into the pond of uncertainty to catch a larger and better fish…’. This ‘maximization’ motto of life-living attainments and wellness is sure invite to more entropic energies in the system. Everyone is adding loads of it in the milieus and system. The sanity of survival is pumping in loads of pollution of elements of entropic insanity into the human system.

We all add entropy into the system. Intelligence and all good societal benchmarks of goodness add a hell lot of entropic energy into the system and it is only natural that systemic health is hitting abysmal low. This is what Hawking says when he predicts, intelligent races are suicidal in tendencies… Why only living beings, our dear Sun is also becoming more intelligent as it is burning more fuel and getting hotter by the day. And around 2.5 billion years from now, it shall become so intelligent and ‘good’, would warm up so much that it would end all lives and things on earth, finally burning itself in 4.5 billion years. Brilliance beyond limits of ‘utility’ is not only a ‘futility’ rather it is calamitous and catastrophic.

Now, coming back to where we started, ‘Disorder and entropic chaos is far more creative energy. You are better off only when you land in the probabilistic multiplicity of uncertainty and completely taken to randomization of eventualities by the typhoon of disorder and chaos…’ Yes, this is what fuels ‘intelligence’. Being intelligent, of course in contemporary established benchmarks of millions of years; is riding the entropic energy and fueling all such constructive probabilities and options for human consumption which would result into more and more entropic eventualities.

John Stevenson said it in his ‘one life’ discourse, ‘Evolution is a chain of accidents’, call it ‘probabilistic multiplicity of uncertainty, completely taken to randomization of eventualities’…

Loren Eiseley said very rightly, ‘It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes. This is the final paradox, which men call evolution.” That’s why, John says, evolution is a stupid engineer…’

The randomization of eventualities of the entropic energy established through ages of evolution, happily benchmarked by humanity as ‘successes’ is what we all know as entropic mechanism of intuitive physicality but fail to see and accept. This has to be understood, accepted and remedial measures taken. This paradox and hypocrisy about what humanity considers and places sky high as ‘intelligence’ having equitable elements of stark stupidities need to be understood and accepted. Many awakened and evolved people are already distancing them away from such intelligence and moving back to simplicity of life-living goals. There are small bunch of people all over the globe who have understood this dualism of Reality that a coin never comes only with Heads or tails. Both sides of the coin have their energies of causalities and they shall unleash in simultaneous expressions. Entropy cannot be wished away as thermodynamic equilibrium is primary ‘Rule of Causality’. Mortality, complete annihilation and inevitable extinction is what we all are heading towards and we all are actually augmenting the speed of arriving at the finality of eventuality by being more ‘intelligent’. As we have talked earlier, mortality is the inevitability of finality of all energy enterprises that cosmic causalities are engaging in. Human body-mind media and its own media of consciousness is naturally auto-designed and auto-oriented for this finality. That is why collectively, sanity is never a possibility. There are enough indicators already in contemporary world, which show us brazenly how we are hastening our own finality of mortality. We shall talk about it.

Stephen Hawking calls for this remedial step and terms it as humanity needing to enter into a new phase of ‘self designed evolution’, rather than random and accident-designed evolution, in which we the intelligent humans will be able to change and improve our DNA. This shall enable us to take humanity even to other planet, long after our Sun dies…’

This is however still a bit far away. It shall take time before humanity comes with a technology to create ‘super-humans’ who shall then write a different history of humanity. But till then, we all poor normal humans have to survive and sustain in this chaos and conundrum. So, we have to understand this entropic energy and also the ‘success-benchmarks’ that we all follow without scant understanding of what and how they are and what randomization of further entropic eventualities they lead us to.

There are huge entropic footprints of what has been labeled as human success and it is big time perceptible and impacting the overall sanity, system and order of the human world and life-living. There is even some sort of acceptance too of their debilitating impact on our world but in our madness for more success and more attainments, humanity is happily ignoring them. The biggest example of this happy ignorance and even wishful denial is the crisis of environmental degradation. On one hand, there is a section of humanity who takes it as biggest looming threat on survival of humanity, even while majority of population, especially the nexus of politician-corporate are consciously downplaying the threat. Same is the situation with nuclear weapons, the way global hotspots are handled and also the very casual way nuclear threat is put in global political discourse.

Consider a small but very powerful entropy that humanity handles very casually. Globally, around 1.4 million people are killed in road traffic mishaps every year. This is around 3800 people every day are dead in road accidents involving different vehicles. Moreover it is estimated that 20-50 million people are injured, huge many of them disabled every year in road mishaps. This is global trouble and yet neither the public nor government agencies take this seriously. People happily drive irresponsibly and authorities have little inclination to design and implement road safety and driving sanity. On the other hand, globally, automobile sales are considered the most crucial indicator of growth in an economy. The vehicle manufacturers globally are vying madly for technological edge in their vehicle manufacturing to launch new state of the art vehicles on the road. Huge number of new vehicles land on road every year as even governments are pushing for auto sales to show off their growth figures and health. However, very little, almost negligible is done on the front of road infrastructure, road safety, traffic regulation, driving sanity and course correction to minimize accidents. The technology is used even at rising vehicle cost to augment look of the vehicle, power and other comfort features but even when technology is possible, no investment and care is assigned to those technological and other features in vehicle that could ensure road infrastructure, road safety, traffic regulation, driving sanity and course correction to minimize accidents.

There are so many areas of human life-living where this partial perspective of acceptance of reality is so accentuated that they are destroying sanity. The growing dependence of average human on technology even in daily lives, the ever increasing complexities in relationships, the growing levels of stress in life-living and as small as food and other lifestyle choices, etc are glaring examples of how humanity has always cared for only the ‘Heads’ of a reality and seldom bothered to accept and accommodate the flip