EDITOR of paranoiaisfact.com
Igor Yopsvoyomatsky,
answers readers’ questions
Dear Igor,
My son recently dropped out of Harvard, broke up with his girlfriend and moved back home with me. He sits in his room all day with the lights off listening to whale sounds and only emerging for meals. He says he is embracing entropy to save humanity. I say he is a lazy sponger, who wants to go on living off me until I die. He says I’m being paranoid. Who is right?
Perplexed,
Anomia, Pa.
Dear Perplexed,
You are both right.
But remember that Einstein’s mother also called him a “lazy sponger,” and he didn’t get her a seat for his Nobel Prize.
The “entropy” your son refers to is the theory that the more energy you expend the less efficient work you do and the more chaos and disorder you create.
It was defined by Buckminster Fuller as: “A tendency toward disorder as more energy is spent, causing the physical Universe’s macrocosmic proclivities to become locally more disynchronous, assymetric and diffuse.”
His mother called him a “lazy sponger,” too.
A simple illustration of the entropy theory is global warming. Globalization has led to a much greater energy expenditure in the generation of electricity, consumption of fossil fuels and mass production of frivolous items to satisfy the billions of new consumers in the developing world. This has led to a chaotic rise in global temperature, which is destroying ecosystems and hastening the ultimate destruction of the planet.
Corporate entropy, which your son avoided by destroying his career prospects, occurs when more energy is expended in the form of meetings, memos and meaningless retreats, which create infighting, absenteeism, sexual harassment and embezzlement of petty cash, and lead to the inevitable dissolution of the company and indictment of its executive officers.
Social entropy is caused by the proliferation of networking sites like match.com, eHarmony and the ever popular J-date. The energy expended in screening, chatting with and vetting a potential partner causes disorder in the mate-selection system, which leads to more weekends spent with You Tube and Chunky Monkey and the eventual slide into negative population growth.
The “anti-entropy” theory, popular among manual laborers and Communications majors, states that the less energy expended the more peaceful and orderly the universe becomes.
The anti-entropists believe in doing nothing, thus conserving the planet’s supply of energy in its potential form.
A positive illustration of anti-entropy is found in a study done by the New York Department of Traffic. It found that the price of gas had caused people to drive less, which lead to a 6.3% decrease in congestion at bridges and tunnels and quicker commute times. This eliminated the need to levy an 8 dollar “congestion” tax on all drivers entering the city, thus conserving money (financial energy).
A similar study in Los Angeles showed that a simple decrease in automotive energy led to fewer accidents, fewer incidents of road rage, decreased air pollution, fewer asthmatic attacks, fewer admissions to emergency rooms, more use of public transportation, greater social contact and fewer hate crimes.
A suspension of July 4th. fireworks shows conserved energy, reduced police overtime, led to 57% reduction in brawls, shootings and psychotic episodes.
The anti-entropic state of Utah put all its agencies on a four day work week. This caused a $3 million annual energy savings in state buildings, a $300,000 savings in gasoline consumed by state vehicles and CO2 reductions of 3000 metric tons. The free Friday also gave polygamist public servants more time to spend with their extended families.
Your son has pioneered a form of “human entropy.” By allowing his personal matter and energy to degrade he has achieved a state of inertia. He may look like he is doing nothing, but if everyone in the world followed his example we would extend the life of the earth indefinitely.
Of course your son may be referring to “Entropy,” which is the title of the 18th. episode of the 6th season of the television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” in which case I would tell him to get off his ass and get a job or you’ll padlock the fridge and he’ll have to pay for his own Pop Tarts.
