Entropy and Community – The Beautiful Paradox

Why is it that things tend to fall apart, but people tend to come together?

Entropy. Who’s not thought of it as an enemy from time to time? The nature of things, according to physics and experience too, is to tend toward disorder. You think you’ve got it set, and it falls apart. The library organization in my apartment, the garden flower plot out back, the wardrobe area, anything that is a collection of things just tends toward disorder. Even nature tends to go from order to disorder, it’s just the way the universe is set up and continues.

The beautiful exceptions are living things, which don’t tend to fall apart so easily, and communities, which tend to connect and grow and build.

Watching the video embedded here of film maker David Lynch (Mulholland Drive) speaking with thousands of children in Brazil, I am struck by how they fall silent and seem to come together. It is as if by sitting silently together they come together as a larger single lovely community. Have a look, and see what you think.