The Blog That Ate Mind Chatter » Threshold of the Mind

Have I gone off the deep end in writing about social mood and some of what has been going on in the world? Does any of this have any connection to the rest of my writings about personal and spiritual growth? Some of you have criticized me for not writing “strictly” about what you see as personal or spiritual growth. My contention, however, is that everything I’ve written IS about personal and spiritual growth. (If you’re new here, welcome—and, please consider reading the entire archive of posts from the beginning—I know, it’s a lot. You’ll be glad you did.) If you’ve read my three most recent posts, you know that I’ve suggested that social mood swings from positive to negative and back again in definable waves. (Google “socionomy” for more info, or read my posts.) Around 2000, one of the largest waves of positive social mood in recorded history peaked. Since then we have entered a time of increasingly negative social mood. This negative social mood will be (and already has been) interrupted by shorter periods of temporarily more positive mood just as the positive social mood that began around the time of the American Revolution was interrupted by intervals of negative social mood. The American Civil War and depression and war of the 1930s and 1940s were such times, as was the strife and chaos of the 1970s. During times of negative social mood certain unfortunate/unpleasant things tend to happen. These include: Financial crisis. Polarization between every social, racial, ethnic, political, gender, and national group. Radicalization of political thought and action. A decline in civilized behavior; an increase in rudeness, demonization, blaming, violence, and cruelty. Less order, more chaos. Increased fear, anger, confusion, discord, and destructiveness. Avoidance of effort; a decline in motivation. Increasing pessimism; a decline in optimism. Less trust; more suspicion of others. Increased belief in magic, lowered trust in science and rationality. Increased authoritarianism and centralized control (including public requests for more of it). A decrease in personal freedom. Popularity of conspiracy theories. Public demonstrations against almost everything—and an outcry for the authorities to “do something”. Health epidemics. Strange and destructive weather phenomena. Increasing negativity in movies, art, music, and other expressions of pop culture. A proliferation of scandals. Demonization of those who were previously societal heroes (the successful, for instance). Hero worshiping of outlaws, pirates, and gangsters in popular culture. And a lot more. Unless you live in a cave, you have to have noticed that these things are, indeed, already happening. Eventually, of course, things will turn positive again. The studies I follow indicate, however, that the overall trend will be negative for quite some time, especially given that the previous wave of positive mood lasted more than 200 years. Major times of negative social mood (and this looks to be the biggest so far since the 13th century) almost always end in major wars. For instance, the Panic of 1837 led to the American Civil War. The depression of the 1930s led to World War II. I could give many other examples, but a full discussion of social mood is not my intention in this post. For more information, read my last three posts. So let me get to my point. Many have asked (often in a less-than polite way) why I’ve written about social mood and its many socio-political-economic consequences. It isn’t “spiritual”. It isn’t about “personal growth.” It seems “too political.” It’s “too negative”. Is there a connection between this information about social mood and my usual topics of personal and spiritual growth? Do I have a political agenda? Am I being negative or increasing the negative mood by bringing up all of this? Unfortunately, many people have what I think is a narrow view of spiritual and personal growth. I would conte[...]

Have you ever felt frustrated by your spiritual practice? Where are those results you expected? Here is a letter I received from a student in my Life Principles Integration Process Online courses with that very frustration, along with my answer. First, his letter to me: Dear Bill,  My question is: Why can’t I experience anything spiritual inside that validates, in a positive way, any practice or technique I have ever tried?  Just wanted to show you there is a question to all that follows (because there is a background story that must be told. I’ll keep it as brief as I can though.) Part of this will be a bit of writing therapy for me as (at 63) my life, both inside and outside, lies in ruins all around me, I’m feeling suicidal, and I feel a need to yell at God.(Sorry, letting whatever happens be OK has run out of steam.) So…Beginners mind:  In the early seventies I read Zen Flesh Zen bones which blew my socks off and changed me from an atheist who was profoundly disillusioned with life on earth to a rather naive seeker. After reading that book I knew that I had to find a teacher who could guide me to the Self, the God within (my favorite image is simply ‘freedom’ though.) Tried everything I had access to over the next seven or eight years. No dice; nothing moved me or resonated anywhere but inside my intellect. God didn’t want to know me. Each time something didn’t work I returned to sex, drugs and rock’n’ roll… which did work. But not good for the body.  Went to the States in 78’ and tried to do a Jack Kerouac…indulge myself into a sort of wandering, quasi spiritual, substance abusing suicide, inspired by my profound disillusion with worldly life and my failed attempts at a spiritual life.  Almost succeeded but under the most weird and extraordinary circumstances Baba Muktananda reached out into the byways of America and into my abject despair and hauled my sorry ass into Siddha Yoga… where, for the second time in my life, my sox were blown off. With a return of the enthusiasm of beginners mind I did an Intensive at the end of 79’ and had my first real transcendent encounter with the Self. On the strength of that I was graced with a year of profound personal power where I could — and did – do anything I wanted… with great love and respect. Glowing with “success” I went to India in 81’ (just to cross the ‘T’s and dot the ‘I’s on my enlightenment process.)  There, the mat of my honeymoon period was slapped from under my feet and I discovered that (to put it mildly) there was still much work to do on my sadhana. I did not run away though, such was the power of my experience of Kundalini awakening — and the year of ‘home trial’ that followed it — that I was filled with determination to stay the course and do battle with my ignorant demons. This despite a slowly dawning realization that all the practices (meditation, chanting, selfless service, scriptural study etc.) seemed to be falling on deaf, internal ears. I felt nothing for them. Not quite true…I felt a steadily rising frustration.  I also realized that a great part of the spiritual journey was about burning up the inner obstacles. This fire, at least, validated that I was moving along the path. Though I tried, however, I failed to find any ‘juice’ in the desert of my inner landscape. Thirty one years later it’s the same: all fire no joy, no happiness, no freedom… no inner benefits or validation after all my efforts. And on the outside… all of the indications of the failure of what I choose to do with my life… no home, no money, health in decline and a (Siddha Yoga) partner who I love dearly and am completely devoted to, but is worse off than me.   Ironically Bill, it is spirituality that has made me excruciatingly aware that ‘nothing works for me’. My last hope has failed me. (No, of course that is not true, I have failed it.) That’s why I added Holosync to my Siddha Yo[...]

What I’m going to share today starts with something posted by Brian in response to Part 3 of my Going To Hell in a Handbasket series. My response contains some important information, but is buried so deeply among hundreds of other comments that I thought I should create an entire post around it. Here’s how it started: Bill, I really liked the live video chat on facebook. I think it is a much better way for you to communicate information than through writing on this blog (though I still really like this blog). It’s just easier to tell what someone means when you see how they are saying something instead of just the words they are saying. Definitely do more video chats! I have an economics question for you if you feel like taking the time. Harry Browne brings up an example in his book about the more expensive cost of using recycled paper vs. new paper. Browne explains this means that the resources consumed in recycling paper are more valuable to the market than the resources consumed in making new paper (aka trees). So basically the market should go with new paper since trees are less valuable than all the things that go into recycling paper. What I struggle to understand is how you can judge the value of trees solely by their price in the market. Say we discovered that cutting down trees significantly affected oxygen levels that were unhealthy for people. How would the free market naturally account for this to make trees more valuable? To me it seems regulations making trees more expensive would be the only way, yet I know this undermines the whole concept of the free market. Sorry for the long question, but I had to ask it because this has been burning on my mind, as I’m really interested in understanding the libertarian viewpoint. FROM BILL: First of all, you are assuming that what the green people say is true, that trees are disappearing. This is far from true. I don’t have the stats right in front of me, but (and this is a result of the market, too, as a matter of fact) timber companies plant more trees than they cut, and have for a long time. It’s in their interest to do so. The only place this isn’t true is in the Amazon, where socialists and other central planners are in control. This is the real reason why the trees in the Amazon are disappearing. It was BEFORE capitalism (or, as I said, in places where resources are controlled by central planners) that people—including tribal people like the Mayans, Aztecs, etc., but also including Europeans, Asians, etc—would cut down all the trees in a certain place for one reason or another, until they were all gone, and then move on to another spot and do it again. Modern people in a capitalist society have a vested interest in maintaining and husbanding resources, and they do. So, first of all, we are not running out of trees. Not by a longshot. The question about how the value of something is determined is an important one. Here is the answer: people determine the value of each commodity, service, item, or whatever, by their willingness to part with resources to have it. When you have resources of some kind, and you want something else, you do what everyone else does: you decide if you want to hang onto your current resources (which is often money, but could be other things, or even time) or trade it for something else. In other words, what is the item in question worth to you? How much of your resources are you willing to part with to have it? If you don’t think something is valuable enough to trade resources for, it must not be that valuable–to you. Billions of collective decisions about what is valuable, and how valuable, determine the value of items–at least in a market economy. In a command economy, with central planning, someone else decides for you what you should want, and how much you should want it and therefore pay for it (whether in money, other resources, time, or something else). This is highly inefficient and a huge waste to a soci[...]

First, I apologize for taking so long to post this. I have been unusually busy this past several weeks, and getting this to you fell down several notches in my to-do list. Hopefully it will be worth the wait. *** Well, we’ve all been through a lot as we’ve discussed and argued about social mood. This topic has obviously struck a chord. You’ve sensed that something is wrong, and I presented one possible explanation of why you’ve felt that way. Of course, some of you were already quite aware of all of this.  And, some of you think I’m full of it. I wish you luck. Hopefully your refusal to see what seems obvious to a great many people won’t come back to bite you. Those of you who have magical solutions, good luck to you, too. Let me know how that works out. I’ve found some of the more bizarre ideas highly entertaining. And though I didn’t set out to make this a political discussion, a lot of politics ended up coming out. To those of you who think it’s just great that the people in charge want to continue the process of centrally controlling and regulating everything under the sun, redistributing wealth, getting rid of fossil fuels, and so forth will, I suspect you won’t be so supportive once the consequences of these things begin to affect you personally, as these changes will affect you in ways you will not like.  Over the last year (and before I ever brought up the idea of social mood) I’ve been discussing something that is basic to the human experience, but often denied: that we have little or no control over many aspects of the human condition. (If you’re new, consider reading these posts: The Human Condition, Don’t Know Where It Came From, my series on Seeing Things the Way They Really Are—there are others.) This lack of control was perhaps less obvious during the recent period of extremely positive social mood (which topped in about 2000), and also because in wealthy countries many human problems are less severe. Now that social mood is turning negative, this lack of control will become more obvious.  Many have asked me what to do to be more prepared. Unfortunately, there is no way to be totally prepared for everything that could happen. Asking me for solutions is a bit like asking, “What do we do now?” when your car has already driven off the cliff. There certainly are ways to be more prepared for what is to come, but many situations in life have no magic solution, and this is certainly one of them.  So, take my ideas for what they are: the best I can come up with in a difficult situation based on limited information. I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers, or even the best answers. I’m just someone with his ear to the ground, and who is reasonably intelligent and pretty good at synthesizing information—and, who happens to care what happens to you. Ultimately, though, you need to be self-reliant enough to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.  Unless you’re over 70, you’ve probably never experienced society-wide hard times. Because of the good times we’ve lived in, we’ve come to expect that all problems have a solution and that everything generally ends well. The truth is that sometimes things end well and sometimes they don’t. Ask those who lived in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.  And, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that all is lost. You DO have some influence over how things turn out for you. Some people, when they realize what I’ve said about the human condition is accurate (that there are many things over which we have no control, and that everything is impermanent) become depressed or disheartened. Society dresses up much of human experience so as to mask those things that are difficult to acknowledge. If we discover that these fairy tales are untrue, it can be quite a shock. All is not lost, however. There are four things you do have a choice about—IF you are aware enough to see how yo[...]

“Humans are prone to herd because it is always warmer and safer in the middle of the herd. Indeed, our brains are wired to make us social animals. We feel the pain of social exclusion in the same parts of the brain where we feel real physical pain.” –James Montier “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” –Charles Mackay in Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds Wow. Worms everywhere. A sea of worms. A huge can of them. What have I gotten myself into? Before I get into the main topic of what was to be this final chapter of this series (but isn’t), I want to make a few comments about what has transpired with the first two parts. My description of social mood turning negative, and what kinds of things are likely to happen (and, historically have happened) obviously really struck a nerve. Though we’ve had a certain amount of acrimony on this blog from time to time from a certain few people, these posts really amped things up. This has happened, I think, because this topic really hits home–and because we’re in a time of declining social mood, which is affecting you, too. There’s nothing theoretical about it. It would be difficult to not notice the negativity, chaos, anger, fear, and uncertainty in the air. Some are living right in the middle of it. In the space of a very short time we have had a shooting of a Congresswoman and a Federal judge (and several others) in Arizona; union protests in Wisconsin (and several neighboring states); the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear problems; the Egyptian situation, the Libyan situation, similar problems in other Middle Eastern countries, a gruesome killing of a family (including small children) by terrorists in the Gaza Strip; just to name a few. We also have economic/debt problems all over the world, rising prices, unemployment, record gold and silver prices…and all the various examples of political acrimony, most of it rather ugly and contentious. In fact, I could go on and on reporting various grim news items (but won’t). I found the different types of responses my description of social mood elicited quite interesting. Some of you are in denial. It’s not happening. The Age of Aquarius is coming. More and more people are becoming enlightened. We’re on the verge of a New World. It’s going to be fantastic. All our needs will be met and everyone will get along. Utopia is nigh. Several of you wanted to nitpicking the details, as if doing that would mean all of this isn’t happening. Well, there may be several “wrong” details in the socionomic hypothesis, especially when you look at the most minor details. Does that invalidate the main point I was making, though? My main point went zooming over the heads of some of you. There are several logical fallacies people use when faced with something they don’t like but don’t have data or information to refute it. One is the Ad homimem attack. Ad hominem means “against the man” or “against the person.” In this fallacy an argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant and generally negative charge (whether true or not) about the person making the argument. Ad hominem attacks are fallacious because the character, circumstances, or actions of a person rarely have any bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made. (However, “You don’t know anything about this subject” is not an Ad hominem attack, if true.) Another fallacy is “setting up straw men and knocking them down.” In the Straw Man fallacy the actual argument is ignored and instead the person argues against a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version. Distorting and then attacking the distorted version of a position, however, does nothing to refute the actual argument. Dozens of responses utilized this form of attack. Many p[...]

In Part 1 I shared an exchange with my friend Santiago about my observation that we are entering into a period of negative social mood, and that in the past similar periods have had some dark consequences for humanity. This has stirred things up quite a bit, don’t you think? (If you haven’t read Part 1, I suggest that you do, including the comments people have posted, and my answers to those comments, which contain a lot of important information.) By the way, I haven’t shared any of the math involved in wave theory, or the details about the fractal nature of these waves because, though interesting, it would probably put everyone to sleep, and it’s rather complicated. If you really want to go into this more deeply, buy Robert Prechter’s books, or go to socionomics.net. At any rate, Santiago wasn’t convinced by what I said in my first communication with him (though he seems to be more convinced now that he actually went and read up on the subject). Here is his reply to my original post, and my answer (Santiago, I’m making you famous—I hope you’re happy): FROM SANTIAGO: The Socionomic theory is great and Bob Prechter’s predictions have a lot of ground. And of course, whenever we find a theory that makes sense for us we tend to cling to it as THE THING. We all live in bubbles and as usual we always see others bubbles before we see our own. This happens a lot in my experience with the people in the US, they are so focused in their own history that is very hard for them to see a more wordily perspective without comparing it with what has happened there. Although they tend to think they do. What you suggest is something that CAN happen, – it would be nice to see some numbers on the probability of it happening – And everybody should research about it, just like everybody should research about the new waves of consciousness that are arising and their impact on society (please don’t confuse this with new age magical thinking). This among many other things creates a new context for the world in which history CAN BUT NOT NECESARILY WILL happen again. To say “just look at history” can be pretty blind sighted. We haven’t yet developed a unified theory that can completely predict what will happen in the future. To say that we are moving towards a utopia is as deluded as to say that the end is near. There are people who say “follow me to utopia” this is very dangerous, there’s also people who say “the end is near” very dangerous as well. But probably the most dangerous are the ones that say “I KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN BEYOND THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT and the rest of you are just plain stupid for not seeing it.” Like I said, everyone should do their own research and draw their own conclusions, but I think is unhealthy (and naive) to remove all doubt and not leave some space for the possibility of those conclusions being (at least partially) wrong.   FROM BILL: I’ll be willing to bet you ANYTHING that some version of what I’m describing IS going to happen. It’s ALREADY happening. Multiple things happen every day, and have been happening for quite a few years, that are predicted by Socionomy, and which (based on what I know about social mood) I predicted would happen–to my wife, my employees, and my friends. Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t say to me, “You said this would happen three (or whatever) years ago” (regarding something in the news at the time: the debt crisis, the crises in Egypt, Libya, Tunesia, and other Middle Eastern countries, the situation with the public employee unions in Wisconsin, etc.) This is not a “thing” I’m clinging to. It’s a pattern some very intelligent people have noticed, and which has been studied extensively and backed up with a massive amount of data. Understanding the wave-like nature of changes in social mood has great predictive ability. I’m watching before my eyes, day after day, the unfolding of what this pattern predicts, and [...]

“Going to Hell in a handbasket”: to be rapidly deteriorating; on course for disaster. This phrase may have originated from the use of handbaskets to catch the decapitated heads of guillotined criminals during the French Revolution. (phrases.org.uk) It all started from a simple question on my blog (from someone I know quite well)… But what started as a simple question, buried in the comments after one of my recent posts, where many people would never see it, turned into a lengthy description of my take on what’s going on in the world, from an “as viewed from outer space” big-picture perspective. Though a lot of this falls into the “not at all what you wanted to hear” category, I decided that I should share it with everyone—which I will do over the next several days in a series of posts. It started this way: A question for you. After the years you have lived, the work you’ve done and the things you’ve seen, if I’d ask you what do you expect out of life, of your days remaining here, what would you say? What’s your view? Love, Santiago My answer: I get up, I eat, I come to work, I do my best to help people, I go home, I spend time with my wife, I play the saxophone, I see my kids and grandkids, I read, I pay close attention to the financial markets and the world situation, I go to bed. *** Thanks Bill, From Santiago: Very zenny – chop wood, carry water, I don’t care much – answer. You speak a lot about dark times coming. Do you have any guesses on what will come out of that ? (I know it’s a lengthy topic). In my own view there is a clear tendency towards integration in the world, which comes with more and more people having experiences of unity (an evolutionary process). Like the world is realizing that is one body breathing and one mind thinking, one process evolving. From a hindu perspective we could be moving as humanity from a 3rd chakra (look for power) center to the 4rth one (non dual love). Of course this is (like most processes in nature) not smooth and easy, like the birth of a child, doesn’t come without tears and blood, so is not like we’re gonna start loving each other just like that, but it could be an intelligence emerging. Because otherwise individual inexhaustible egoistic appetites will clearly end with humanity as species. Any thoughts on this ? Thanks as usual for the blog and for sharing all this wisdom. *** My answer: I don’t think we’re moving into the Age of Aquarius, or some period of collective love. In fact, just the opposite. And, I doubt that more people are having experiences of unity now than at any other period in history, other than perhaps because there are more people in the world than ever before in history. Those of us who’ve spent enough time meditating or doing other spiritual practices in order to have some sort of transcendent experience are a tiny fraction of the population of the world. Most such experiences are spontaneous and the person having the experience may or may not have any idea whether it is significant or not. Most would just think, “Wow. That was a cool and weird experience.” Positive and negative social mood moves in waves governed by certain mathematical relationships that are built into the universe. If you look carefully at history, going back, say, 10,000 years, and look at the archeological evidence in pre-history times, and the much greater evidence as we get closer to modern times, you can clearly see the times when social mood was negative. I do see us entering such a time of increasingly negative social mood–in fact, a BIG one. And though things are obviously much more contentious and negative now than they were ten years ago (or even five), I don’t think the REAL dark times are here yet. When such times come, human beings can do such savage things that it’s almost unbelievable. The 1930s and 1940s provide the most recent relatively big example. These two decades included: * The Nazis * A viciou[...]

I’ve written a lot about impermanence and cause and effect over the last year. I’ve said that there is no escape from these two aspects of the human condition–an idea many of you have resisted (and, I might add, I’m not surprised–resisting these two conditions seems to be what human beings do). Over the New Year’s holiday someone posted the following comment about how he had personally responded to my remarks about this topic. Rather than just post my answer under his post, as I often do, I’ve decided that this is important enough to warrant a separate post. Though this is quite short, I think it will really give you something to think about. THE COMMENT: I think I may have taken some of your advice too closely, or used it in the wrong way. I took what you said about impermanence and said, ‘If I’m happy I can’t enjoy being happy because it’s impermanent and will go away’… which keeps me from being happy when I notice it. It’s quite strange, and like I’m waiting for something to let me go ‘full happy’. Except if I ever noticed that I was on ‘full happy’ I might say, ‘hey stop that’. –James MY ANSWER: You’re experiencing your own resistance to the fact that everything is impermanent–which, unfortunately, is what quite a bit of the human response to life ends up being about. If you go back and read the posts where I talk about impermanence (“News Flash: There’s No Escape”, “Where are You Going–And Why”, “Seeing Things the Way They Really Are, Parts 1-3″–and several others) you’ll notice that I’ve outlined many of the human activities, philosophies, and ideas that are are derived from our attempts to put off, defeat, or deny impermanence (these include magical thinking, including beliefs in some sort of afterlife, attempts to defeat aging by following certain health regimens (wacky or otherwise), trying to accumulate a lot of money, trying to become more powerful, attempts to develop various “powers”, etc). Impermanence freaks people out, and our own impermanence freaks us out even more than the impermanence of the people and things we’re attached to. Particularly up until a certain developmental stage people have a lot of trouble acknowledging their own impermanence (see my series of posts on human developmental levels starting at the beginning of this blog). This is why humans have created so many explanations for what supposedly happens after death–it somehow makes it easier if we pretend that the end of our separate self isn’t really an end. One sign of spiritual maturity is the ability to acknowledge and deal with our own impermanence–plus an acknowledgement of something else humans don’t want to admit: that no one really knows what’s really going on, why we’re here, what it’s all about, how it started, where it’s going, etc. In terms of our own death, we’re talking about the impermanence of the separate self created by our brain/mind–our IDEA of who we are. I’ve extensively written about the fact that the separate self is just an idea, and that there are no separate things or events except in the mind. Separate things and events are merely ideas about reality–handy ideas, to be sure, but still, they are just ideas. There is really just one thing-event (for want of a better word): the entire interconnected going on of it all. The mind chops this one thing-event into many, and then assumes that if many things and many events exist in the mind they must also exist “out there.” This is what some call “mistaking the map for the territory.” When the brain/mind that creates these ideas comes to an end, so do the ideas–including the idea (and consciousness) of “me.[...]

(This is part 3 of a 3 part series, so if you haven’t read or listened to parts 1 &2, please do that before you read or listen to this one–unless you really don’t care whether any of this makes sense to you.) When we left our story of chaos and reorganization a few days ago, I’d just revealed the exciting answer to this question: Why, in a universe that is irrevocably falling apart, do some things (including you) become more complex, more ordered? How, in such a universe, could something as complex as life develop? Then I told you all about dissipative structures–open systems that grow and evolve in response to their environement. This was so fascinating to everyone in the blogosphere that thousands of blogs instantly linked to this one. (And then I woke up.) At any rate, let’s continue our story because I want to explain something closer to home: How all of this affects your life, at the most practical level.  Here, then, is the second Big Question: Why do we fight this process of chaos and reorganization (you do, you know)? Why is this fight unnecessary–and, does it really cause most of your suffering ? (Yes, it does.) Finally, is there a solution? What can you do instead of resisting this process? Here’s why I became interested in dissipative structures in the first place. I noticed that Holosync users often experienced periods of chaos, followed by significant shifts of perspective where everything seemed new and different. After these shifts people can handle what previously had triggered or overwhelmed them. In other words, Holosync increases one’s mental and emotional threshold. Prigogine’s theory of dissipative structures was a revelation to me. It described exactly what happened with Holosync. First, things generally make sense. Then, they feel chaotic–they don’t make sense anymore. Finally, a shift in perspective takes place where you see yourself, other people, and your life, in a new way. Your perspective about life reorganizes at a higher level. Things make sense again, but in a whole new way that you never would have imagined before. Since chaos ultimately leads to positive change, you’d think we’d welcome it. Instead, we usually freak out. We resist chaos. We fight to save the old system from breaking down, despite the fact that it’s very limitations are the source of our problems. I noticed that we do this in three ways. Imagine that you’re in a boat and it starts to fill up with water. What would you do? Some people would grab a bucket and bail. When chaos starts to build, bailers frantically try to push energy out of the system. They get angry. They cry. They yell. They exercise. They have sex. They do something, anything, to get rid of the entropy. Others say, “Find the hole and plug it.” These people try to block more input to the system. They isolate themselves. They shut down. They get depressed. (In depression, we isolate ourselves, we breathe less, we constrict our pupils so as to take in less light, and we often lose our appetite.) Hole-pluggers do whatever it takes to reduce the amount of energy coming in. Either method can work, after a fashion. Especially if input slows, the system’s exporting of entropy to the environment catches up. The pressure diminishes, and you feel better–until next time. A third method is to distract yourself, by getting high, by zoning out in front of the TV, by getting absorbed in something that takes your mind off the fact that you’re overwhelmed with too much input, that you’re over your threshold. This obviously does nothing about the real problem. Here’s the problem with all of these methods. Once the system returns to equilibrium, it’s still the same system, with the same threshold. The next time it’s stimulated in the same way, it becomes overwhelmed all over again. Most people repeat the same cycle [...]

Last time, in Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Part 1 (please read or listen to Part 1 first, before reading or listening to this post), after describing how everything in the universe is in the process of falling apart, I ended by posing what I called The Big Question: How, in a universe irrevocably moving toward increased disorder, did something as complex and organized as life develop? Why do some things become more ordered? How, indeed. This is an incredibly important question. You wouldn’t be here if SOMETHING had not happened to counteract all that entropy. Despite the evil Mr. Entropy, here’s what happened, beginning eons ago: Atoms became molecules, which became amino acids, which became proteins, which became single celled organisms, which became more complex organisms, then plants, animals, and eventually human beings–who then created social systems and even more complex ways of ordering things, such as art and creativity and cities. How could this happen if entropy is always increasing? Scientists swept this question under the rug for over a hundred years after the laws of thermodynamics were formulated. They just didn’t have the mathematical and scientific ability to deal with the infinite number of variables involved in complex systems. But Ilya Prigogine and other scientists, using probability theory and the new field of chaos theory, finally answered this intriguing question.  And, the answer turned out to be a real stunner! Prigogine’s “Ah-ha!” was that order arises because of chaos, not in spite of it. Let’s look more closely. Prigogine realized that the Second Law applies only to closed systems. Closed systems are self-contained, already at equilibrium. They can’t exchange energy or matter with their environment. Examples would include a brick, a pile of sand, a piece of plastic.  Living systems, however, are open systems. Open systems freely exchange energy and matter with their environment. For instance, we take in heat, light, food, air, information, and other things, and give off carbon dioxide, waste, heat, art, taxes, and so on. Open systems are far from equilibrium. They are constantly in motion, adapting, changing, adjusting to unpredictable stimuli. They grow and change in unexpected ways. They reproduce, fix themselves, and adapt if part of the system is lost or altered. An open system is a flow of energy and matter–like a whirlpool. Water is constantly entering the top of a whirlpool and constantly exiting at the bottom. In fact, the whirlpool is the water coming in and going out. In the same way, you are like a whirlpool, though your whirlpool is moving more slowly. Matter and energy enter and exit, constantly. And, like the whirlpool, you aren’t just a container with something flowing through it—you are the flow itself. Open systems adapt. Every day you deal with different sights, sounds, people, happenings. The weather changes, you eat different foods, you’re confronted with new information. Most of the time you “go with the flow” and easily deal with what happens. Once in a while, though, it’s just too much. You feel the chaos. And, sometimes, if conditions are right, you’re transformed by it. We’ll see why in just a moment. Prigogine was studying a chemical process called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, where four chemicals in a shallow dish at a specific temperature amazingly self-organize into concentric, spiraling waves, spreading and pulsing with clock-like regularity and changing colors at precise intervals. This seemed to contradict the Second Law–it decreased entropy and increased order. Ultimately, though, the second law WAS obeyed, though in a surprising way: this reaction became more ordered by actually exporting entropy to the surrounding environment! In other words, open systems can become more ordered by increasing their ability to export entropy to the environment.[...]