Take a ride inside my mind on an early Sunday morning - its stream of consciousness so it might be hard to follow...I tried to convey the gist in the summary...the fun is applying the themes of the summary and the implications to the variety of fields as in the high level example of economics. Epiphany: order vs. chaos as a universal principal guided by and applied to disparate themes. Guided by: Thermodynamics Fractals Chaos theory Applied to (examples): Rule of law Holiness & theology Life - evolution & survival Life - order & symmetry in biological systems Heroic epochs in literature Psychology and self-identity Sociology/group dynamics Art Sports & competition Economics Summary: the essence of our existence is the attempt, through great exertion of energy, to create order from chaos - exemplified in multiple (every?!) discipline; yet ultimately it is a futile battle against the unbreakable law of thermodynamics that the disorder of the universe is constantly increasing - a law that is ironically hastened by the very energy expelled in our attempt to create order...yet even chaos often (always?!) self-orders when left un-disturbed (fractals, self-ordered systems, biological symmetry, etc)...the essence of biology is organization through the consumption and distribution of energy resulting in generalized chaos in exchange for localized order. Implications and application: Are pockets of order the best we can hope for? Is it better to expend great energy for these pockets or to allow chaos to rule in the hope of self-ordered systems to become established at lower energy states? Example: economics It has been said that capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth while socialism is the equal distribution of poverty. Through expedition of energy, the successful in capitalist society enjoy their localized pockets of order at the expense of the chaos beyond the pockets. The chaos eventually overwhelms the order resulting in punctuated periods of gross disorder (depressions/recessions) from which new pockets of order arise...and the cycle repeats. Socialism has (in the case of communist/socialist regimes of the 20th century) been characterized by activist governments who tried to organize the economies through centralized planning - essentially always failing to create general order and, amidst the chaos, pockets of order emerged (ex Russian mob, the polit beureau) where the local order was maintained through the creation and exploitation of generalized chaos. In the modern capitalist system (ex USA), no such centralized planning truly exists and the ordered economy results spontaneously from the masses where each agent acts in his/her self interest allowing for spontaneous self-ordering through market dynamics. The natural consolidation of supply establishes the appearance if temporary order only to be disrupted in an apparently chaotic moments of market disruption. Extend the discussion to activist Fed, cash for clunkers, unions and dissolution of the Midwest manufacturing, government contracts, the concept of creative destruction, the great deal, the great society, etc.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:42:39 +0000
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