nna, Self-styled Non-mathematical Chaostician
Disclaimer: The stuff here is what I was thinking some years ago. Maybe...I dunno, ten? Anyway, a long time ago. Feel free to join me for a visit to my past in this little wayback machine, but don't hold the current me responsible for anything you read here. Unless of course you agree with it.
entropy: a measure of a system's capacity to undergo spontaneous change; a measure of the disorder in a system
chaos: a state or place of total confusion or disorder, "A rough, unordered mass of things" (Ovid)
If you'll accept the label grace for that which allows a system to grow toward perfection, then entropy is its opposite, the force that moves a system away from perfection toward chaos. And the name Anna means grace. It would be hard to find a name less apt for me (unless there's a name that means "decisive"). Anyway, I've been named Anna all my life, perhaps in recognition that grace is as much a process as an accomplishment. So why did I choose the netname entropy? Dunno. Perhaps to acknowledge that a person can possess contradictory facets. Perhaps to show the meaninglessness of labels. Perhaps because it's a cool concept. Perhaps it was a coincidence . . . .
I've heard it argued that total order is not the only perfection. Perhaps total chaos is also perfect. Is it stretching the definition of grace too far to say that it is the process which allows a system to grow toward perfection whether chaotic or ordered? Dunno the answer, just playing.
Naturally, as the world's largest functioning anarchy, the Internet appeals to the type of person who would try to get away with calling herself entropy, but surely there's more to my addiction that that.
I saw it said once in the alt.callahans FAQ that getting to know someone through email is learning that person's "purest form." (By the way, about Callahan's, I haven't found it to remind me in the least of the famous Crosstime Saloon. So don't go there on my account. I won't be there.)
With reservations, I'd agree with the notion that our email personae can be our "purest form." The necessity to seek understanding of one another based solely on the information each chooses to offer, in the absence of physical beauty or ugliness, pheromones, body language, and all the other distractions, allows us to connect in a way we've never really experienced before. It also allows us to misunderstand one another much more dramatically . . .
I've been chewing on the concept of what I call the "like-me" syndrome. Here's the thesis: many, if not most, of us who live on the 'net are unusual people. We have grown accustomed in the past to finding very few people with whom we have much in common. And now, all of a sudden, our sphere of potential friends has widened to include the world! Cool! Now it's practically impossible NOT to find people with whom we "click." To quote C.S. Lewis, "Nothing, I suspect, is more astonishing in any man's life than the discovery that there do exist people very, very like himself."
But there are dangers inherent in this, and as weirdos, we've never learned how to deal with them. We've never learned to be wary of that startling and exciting sense of recognition. We take it to mean much more than it may actually mean, invest it with importance it isn't built to bear. It feels like, and often is, falling in love.
Dr Scott Peck (wildly paraphrased) says that falling in love is how people trick themselves into making commitments they would never in their right minds make. So many phrases for the condition show a sense of the uncontrolled, the irresistable: "falling in love," "crazy in love," "head over heels in love." People don't expect themselves to remain rational when in love. Of course not. And they often get hurt. Usually they survive, but how much more dangerous is it to step into this wild world with a person one has never actually met? It's like flying an airplane blind-it can be done, but it's easier and safer with your eyes open. Human interaction, in the absence of phermones and body language and so on, can lead a person can make some pretty serious mistakes. I see this happen everywhere around me, and it's happened to me more than once.
(I should clarify; I think that to some extent or other, most people are vulnerable to this--it can happen to anyone, even non-weirdos. At most, we oddballs are slightly more susceptible.)
And of course, I don't mean to say that none of those experiences are valid or good--many are. I've made some very close, very valuable friends here. People I have never clapped eyes on and would trust implicitly anyway. And I know I'm right about them. But I've made mistakes too, and I just want to find a way to teach myself caution, and then I want to find a way to show everyone else how to pick a safe path through the minefield. And, of course, I want to get rich doing it ;-)
Okay, enough of what I think about that. What do you think about that? Comments are welcome!
Responsibility. I think we have utterly lost track in this country (being the United States) of the correlation between rights and responsibilities. The Constitution and its amendments discuss rights to which a person is entitled as a member of our society. But with that membership comes obligations, which is a fact we appear to have forgotten. While I don't wish to slip into irremediable cheesiness here, JFK was (sorta) right. We spend far too much time asking what our country can do for us. What happened to doing something for our country? I'm not talking about strutting around with flags or trying to "fix" everyone we don't agree with. Countries are made up of people, and our ability as people to be good to one another is really about the only thing in our complete control. We have tried to turn our resources into institutions, and we blindly expect them to "help" the "needy." If I'm ever in need, I hope to turn to a friend, not to the state. And I hope any friend in need will turn to me (though if they're turning to me for money, they probably haven't given it enough thought--I never have any) before falling into the clutches of organized charity.
I don't question the honorable intentions of the people running charitable institutions (or at least, I don't question them in general), but if the community they're trying to help isn't trying to help them, rather than waiting for the state to do it, all we're going to end up with is people in need who aren't being helped and disgruntled taxpayers who aren't helping.
But I digress. Our Constitution and amendments protect our rights to behave as honorable and good people. Let's exercise those rights. Okay, enough cornball stuff.
Personality "testing": Meyers-Briggs and other personality profiles can be very valuable tools, and they can provide interesting revelations of self and others. No question there. But I have seen them abused, and it troubles me. To use a personality profile as a weapon to punish or devalue an employee is both dangerous and wasteful. If an employee isn't working out, a personality profile of everyone involved might help. But using that profile as an excuse to fire someone is neither ethical nor constructive. I'm sure there are people on both sides of the discussion who have far more information and wisdom to bring to the analysis than I do. I just wanted to gripe.
"Come to think of it, there already are a million monkeys on a million typewriters . . . and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare. . . " -- Blair Houghton
Both the glory and the futility of Usenet is the fact that anyone can get on it and say absolutely anything that pops into his or her mind. I found a Usenet group once which had a truly wonderful mix-clever people, humor, hugely differing opinions, civil disagreements, profound discussions leading to new understanding. You name it, it had it. Then gradually, it lost it. Why? Everybody who watched it crumble would give you a different answer (of course!), but I think it's because the majority of individuals somehow lost their ability to tolerate and cherish differences within the group, and destroyed the cohesion. Sure, there are always assholes anywhere-people who enjoy destroying admirable things. But they couldn't have done it without the (unintentional) collusion of the people who had previously made the group the good thing it was. By the time I finally gave up and left, at least 80% of the incredibly high rate of traffic was people arguing about trivialities and indulging in personal insults. "You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny" affords little ground for people to come to a meeting of the minds.
I'd heard about this happening to other groups, and casually deplored it, thinking it couldn't happen to "us." Probably most people who have frequented Usenet have seen a similar collapse. My group may have improved again; I haven't been back. Watching something I care about rot is not an experience I'm eager to repeat. The sole point of this rant is that I'm still sulking and I wanted to share. (Crowd: "Thank you for sharing!")
If you've found yourself similarly frustrated by Usenet, I highly recommend joining some lists. Probably not as many as I myself have joined, since they leave me almost no time for any other form of timewasting.
Some other areas of interest, for anyone who made past all my rambling:
The site I got this background from has many other wonderful ones. Check it out.
