In Which the environment is considered

In all honesty, future-oriented thinking tends to scare me—in the way that I’m basically getting lost in one potential outcome and could lose track of myself in the present, et cetera. On a similar note, getting caught up in the past has this rewind-replay effect that I’d rather not delve into under normal circumstances.

But normal circumstances—their tendency is to deteriorate. If deterioration itself is normal, then hey, circumstances are forever normal. However, I would much rather think on how entropy is the eventuality, and counteracting that would be… very human.

It is, after all, very human to survive in one way or another. Whether or not resisting entropy is a factor in gauging humanity is largely debatable, but from what I intuitively understand, it’s pretty much built-in. Yet, our actions as a collective seem to resist the resistance of entropy.

Take for example, the environment; it’s deteriorating, and the human race as a whole contributes to the deterioration. By not helping the environment, the human race does not resist its own entropy. Such is counter-intuitive in my thinking, because resisting entropy is something we ought to instinctively do.

Yet the net impact of the human race on the environment is leaning towards the negative side of things, metaphorically speeding up the rate of entropy on systems depending on the environment—it must also be noted that the environment itself is of and furthers more systems.

At least, that’s one way to think of it. Having participated in a symposium last week, my views on the matter have broadened some, to the point that thinking about just a fragment of the issue triggers something. It’s not that I didn’t care before, but now I would think I’m more aware of what’s happening.

The thing is, I’m still thinking in very ideal terms, which I think is pretty normal given my general disposition, but most other people would talk about the problems and about how we ought to do something to remedy the situation; a small subset of them were actually coming up with solutions—practical or not.

This observation set something off in my head; people were talking about entropy, but weren’t really bringing up how to resist entropy. We all generally agreed; something was accelerating our rate of entropy, but few had the guts to share their ideas on what could actually be done.

At least, that’s my frustration talking. I myself was unsure about how to go about sharing my thoughts, so how could I expect anyone significantly older than I to speak up? Cultural etiquette is ingrained in time, and so I thought I was too raw to have a valid opinion.

If anything, my idealism gave me an edge, because solutions have to start somewhere, and raw ideas are a pretty good first step. Yet, the focus was on the problems; we ought to have taken one thing at a time so that we wouldn’t spread ourselves too thin on so many issues.

Overall though, it was a very informative experience, and I continue to process all the information shared. There’s no such thing as too young when it comes to coming up with solutions. My age should not deter my ability to help the systems resist entropy.

We claim to have tamed the environment, when really we are destroying it. Sustainability will eventually be within reach, but for now, I’d like to think I’m taking smaller steps first, before easing my ideas into reality.

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