Entropy is a bitch

If you don’t do nothing, things will atrophy. A rant on inaction and indolence.

In the Philippines, “bahala na” is a popular phrase. It can be roughly translated to: “whatever happens, happens” as if a magical hand will see them through a conundrum. Interestingly, a quick Wikipedia scan shows that the word’s etymology comes from the Tagalog word, bathala, meaning God. Inferred from this information, bahala na, then, may have meant that the fate is now in the hands of God, and none can be done about it much to change God’s mind.

Few problems sprout from this fatalism.

Saying “bahala na” and putting everything up to chance leads to indolence. It renders you immobile and stagnant, because why put any effort in if no matter what you do, the outcome will always be the same?

But things do not work that way. In reality, when you give up, everything else will just fall apart. If you turn your back against life, it is a hundred percent that you have 0 percent of getting better.

I am lending a horrible research paper that was mentioned by one of my favorite youtube channels: it was the Seligman’s seminal research paper on learned helplessness. In it, dogs were electrocuted (told you, horrible) and in the interest of saving my breath (well, fingers) from restating it, just go online and try to search “Learned helplessness”

Done reading? Cool, let’s crack on.

In it, dogs in the 3rd group just fully gave up, drawing from experience that nothing can be done in their electrocution situation, and so they did not try to find a way to get out of their problem, even though there is a solution.

And I think it’s very similar to how things are today. We don’t give a shit on elections because “all politicians are the same, nothing will change regardless”, you don’t try to break the system and leave things as they are, however shit they are, because that is just life, right? Cest la vie.

You don’t try to save yourself and blame everything to fate and chance, and say to your self “it’s meant to be” for self-preservation. You don’t want to feel bad. You don’t want to blame yourself. So you stagnate away adrift and afloating, wishing for another day to pass, and then another, and another, hoping that something clicks; something changes, and you are out of your misery, and you will call it luck.

Except there is no luck. There is no miracle, people. In truth, if you want things to change and for things to happen, you have to get up and do something about it; to go out and act.

If you let yourself be only adrift, if you don’t do nothing, things will atrophy. Plates ain’t gonna be clean if you left your dishwasher overnight. Your house will be cluttered if you don’t pick a broom to clean everyday.

It’s entropy, just 8th grade science. Everything tends to go from an ordered state to an unordered state. While it is true that in the laws of physics, in the larger picture, it is very unlikely to undo entropy, in our daily lives, in our society, we can at least slow it down, but no, we choose to expedite it! And no one really seem to care enough to actually do something about it. Heck, even I am not doing anything about it (but in my defense, what’s one man gonna do? Hey, at least I’m writing this rant.)

Don’t let things go to chance. Don’t believe in fate. Actually do something. Don’t expect things to get magically fixed—they won’t be.

And as I tell you this, I am also telling this to my self: don’t lose hope. Don’t be like those dogs from the 3rd group, while it is understandable why they acted that way. There is hope, while there is life. Stand up and make things happen for yourself, not for anyone else. No, not your girlfriend. Not your children, Jesus. Not your mom or your auntie. You. Only if you find yourself, then can you extend help to someone else.

Entropy is a bitch, the government is a joke, and society’s broken, and it is logical to lose hope, but don’t. There is a famous story among activists, cherished by them as they fight a seemingly impregnable system, that goes like this,

A father and son lives in idiocy, but from their home, the sun is being blocked by the mountains. “Let’s take out our shovels and flatten the mountains” says the father, and the son complied. On they went flattening the mountains down, and at the end of the day, they barely made a scratch. The son asks, “father, we barely made a scratch, how are we to flatten the mountains down?” to which the father replied, “That is okay. We’ll come back tomorrow again.”

It may seem pointless, to take out your shovel and to flatten that mountain down, but if you’ll idle away, there is 0 zero percent chance that your dwelling will see the light of day. (Of course, you can change locations, but suppose this current location is a non-negotiable.)

If you place your shovels down, and choose to live forever in the dark, so will your posterity. So will every next generation of human beings to come, and you will not be so different from that 3rd group of dogs.