Entropy social- a measure of deviation of a social system or its individual link from the state accepted as a reference (normal, expected) state, which (deviation) manifests itself in a decrease in the level of organization, functioning efficiency, and the pace of development of the system. Social entropy is associated with the presence of objective uncertainty in the state of the environment, human activity, management and planning errors, lack or underuse of knowledge (information) in the process of organizing (setting up) the system in question - an enterprise, institution, sector of the national economy, society as a whole. Social entropy is not just a measure of disorder and disorder of social systems, but also a measure of the relevance (inconsistency) of their state with accepted goal settings. Through its prism, one can see that even with an ideal external (formal) order, the system can function ineffectively, and management and other employees included in it, with all their external workload, clarity and diligence, can be busy, in essence, of little use and even destructive , from the point of view of the ultimate goal of the system, activity (“anti-work”). The whole point is not in formal discipline (order), although it is, of course, necessary, but in the correspondence of the internal state of the system and each of its elements to the set integral goals. It follows that in the field of rationalization of the management of social processes, fundamentally new reserves are opened up if the basis for this rationalization is the task of reducing the entropy of the system.
The introduction of the category of entropy into physics made it possible to estimate the coefficient of performance (efficiency) of thermodynamic systems, which turned out to be very low (2-4%). By analogy with this, the entropy approach to management systems of a social nature makes it possible to detect their surprisingly low efficiency, that is, efficiency, which is associated with a large deviation of their real state from the optimum. Social entropy, unlike entropy in physics, is not a formal mathematical, but a substantive category. This is a value that allows us to assess the functioning of a social system: how much it does not reach or deviates from the reference level. Such an assessment is carried out sociologically - primarily by methods of expert analysis, historical and sociological research, structural-functional approach, etc.
Other methods, for example, mathematical modeling based on solving scalar equations, are less suitable here, since they allow us to characterize only the external aspects of the functioning of social systems, their formal ordering. In this case, it is important to reveal the internal state of the systems, which requires a meaningful analysis of the goals and functions of their individual elements (and this can be done, for example, by expert means). The concept of social entropy is associated with a new approach to labor processes and to the time budget of workers, which requires distinguishing between the concepts of “work” and “useful output” of workers and work collectives. This seems trivial, but when organizing work processes, one concept is often replaced by another. From the standpoint of the entropy approach, the well-known call “Increase your work!” requires analytical consideration. Rather, we need to increase in useful output, and not in work as such, because we hardly work less than other nations, but we have too large a share of useless labor and useless products (with an increasing shortage of useful services and products). Surveys show that up to 60-70% of the working time of management and up to 50-60% of the labor costs of scientific and engineering workers are spent on performing unhelpful and sometimes simply meaningless procedures, unnecessary regulations, etc.
The entropy of social systems has many faces; it manifests itself in the swelling of management structures, the growth of bureaucracy, avalanche-like document flows, cumbersome approvals, endless and meaningless meetings, sessions, inspections, interdepartmental “inconsistencies,” mismanagement, and spontaneity. Anti-entropy measures largely come down not only to the elimination of these negative manifestations, but also to increasing the information culture of the population, developing in all workers modern thinking, an analytical approach to life, the ability to distinguish between useful and useless work, as well as more informative and “empty” ( “noise”) messages and documents, intolerance to misinformation, etc. The implementation of measures to informatize society is of primary importance in reducing social entropy.
Arming sociology with an entropy approach to social processes will allow it to sensitively capture the manifestation of deformations in society. However, the application of this approach requires the development of its methodology and methodology, conceptual apparatus, which is served by social cognitive science - a science that studies the principles and mechanisms of accumulation and use of knowledge in social systems.
Social entropy or “increasing social entropy” in all the statements I have encountered sounds like a negative characteristic. Is this the correct understanding of entropy?
We need to look at the formula of information entropy-negentropy and analyze it from the standpoint of the “information approach”. The formula contains the “number of events” - n. When applied to social entropy, this number denotes all events generated by human activity. (Another, more common name for social entropy is culture). The formula contains a factor logpi. This means that any event in entropy should be perceived as new and bipolar, that is, any social event should be perceived by “pure consciousness” (tabula rasa) as EVIL and as GOOD with equal probability. This is what happens when something “new” appears in the arsenal of human means to control a person or the external environment. Social "will" - pi log pi in entropy it is also, naturally, bipolar. Therefore, people are equally ready in relation to the “new” - both to accept this new thing and to reject it.
But there is already something that society uses constantly (regularly) and throughout “its” space. This means that from the many ways of man’s control over man and the environment - existing, existing and imagined ahead in time and in another space - only those that a given society considers acceptable for itself are selected from the many of these methods (from culture). They are acceptable because they “work” with a satisfactory probability of the method model matching the real result. The set of such (mandatory) ways of man controlling man and the environment should be called negentropy (civilization).
Social negentropy in modern developed society is such a “dense” layer that modern man barely comes into contact with social or natural entropy. For him, the social environment is represented by a multitude of things (objects, institutions) with corresponding models for their management. Then the formula of negentropy (civilization) unfolds differently than the formula of entropy. Firstly, negentropy has strictly defined boundaries of space-time. These are the boundaries of the “here and now” at the chosen scale. Secondly, many “events” - n- in the formula for the amount of information, it represents a set of information acts of the form “model - reality - answer YES (NO)”. In other words, “event” in negentropy means: “knowledge about the control of a thing (object) and its application - the action of a thing (object).” Thirdly, the multiplier logpi“feelings” (time) also have the meaning, only its action with the expected result of the event - satisfaction, pleasure or boredom (time is “quantized” by the duration of the informational act). Fourthly, the action of “will” p i log p i manifests itself as the automaticity of the process - control-action.
Social entropy and social negentropy are connected by a dialectical connection. What does it mean? Of all the many civilized ways of managing people, a huge set of things (objects), each person at a given moment in time and space of action is occupied with some specific and final control-action. And this is negentropy with the expected result. All the rest of the space-time of society, even the closest one, but by which a person Now does not control, there is social entropy like opportunity. At the same time, it is indifferent to the circumstance: whether a person has knowledge about some thing from this multiple set and the ability to manage this thing or not. In ordinary life, we are deeply confident that all the things that surround us and which we control in everyday or industrial automation constitute us - they extend our essence in space (and this is private or public property). However, in analysis it is necessary to draw a line between one “here-now” action and the next. This is the moment of transition of social entropy into social negentropy.
It is quite easy to trace this moment of transition. It is enough to record each information act in consciousness, starting, for example, with awakening. Already washing in the appropriate place with the help of those means of water supply that operate in a given place makes it possible to reveal the discreteness of information acts of this process. At the same time, our knowledge that water flows into the tap after it is opened is a model of our action, which is realized after the corresponding movement of our hands. Further, if the working day begins, then information entropy implicitly exists in the mind - a mental image of the entire working day, which will (we are sure) take place in real conditions. This image is the closest part of a more voluminous image - a working month, season, year, etc., right up to old age. If the closest image has a fairly clear description of the sequence of events and the occurrence of these events, then the further in time, the more unclear the picture of both future events and the state of space of these events. Thus, from the most general ideas about the space-time of our life, connected with the life of the society in which we live - from information entropy with uncertain space-time boundaries - originally highlighted information negentropy models of “usual” actions. They consist of those actions that we usually perform every day. When these models (information negentropy) are realized in reality, that is, what always happens, then this is the moment of transition entropy of life V negentropy of life. And if, for example, when leaving home for work it turns out that the path was dug up overnight, and the hole cannot be overcome by using “extra effort,” then this means that the negentropy of “ordinary” life was inverted in this separate information act - turned V negative negentropy life for someone whose goal was to get to work as quickly as possible through the usual route. But the one who dug this hole dug it for some good purpose, for example, to fix the water supply. Therefore, for the one who successfully dug it, the digging model was realized, creating positive negentropy for him his life.
So. For a person living in a civilized society, the external environment, that is, social entropy is the whole set of things, connections and relationships that in a given civilization determine human life. This set is so large that an individual has a very rough idea of this entire set - a certain fragment of a “hologram”. This social entropy is entropy not only because this entire set exists only opportunity use it under certain conditions, but also because social entropy is constantly in its two states - in the states of GOOD and EVIL. Every moment a child is born and every moment a person dies; every moment a new car rolls off the assembly line and every moment an old car goes under the press; Every moment a new enterprise (business) appears and every moment a bankrupt one closes; every moment a person finds a job and loses it; every moment money “comes” to a person and every moment he spends his last ruble; Every moment a new article or book appears and every moment old articles or books are put “on the shelf”; etc.
In addition, civilization is filled with “purely” informational (entropy) structures in the form of institutional implementation of beliefs, philosophical ideas, social theories, etc.
How, in this case, should we understand the expression: “growth of social entropy,” which clearly carries a negative meaning? After all, any addition a new type of knowledge, things, connections and relationships leads to an increase in social entropy. Is it so bad if new knowledge is replenished; store shelves are filled with a variety of goods; there are many enterprises; there is an abundance of cars on the streets; the house is warm; there is a shower, a bathroom with hot and cold water; fridge; food processor; Dishwasher; and money rustles in your wallet or pocket - you can watch movies or news on TV at home, or you can go to a restaurant for a gourmet dinner? The growth of social entropy in this sense (in the sense of addition) can be perceived negatively when there is neither place nor time for this new addition. But this is a different question - this is a question of controlling the flow of entropy, such as, for example, the question of “how to protect yourself from spam?” Then, when a negative meaning is revealed in various statements about the “growth of social entropy,” its foundations seem different.
All the diversity of types and forms of social disorder goes back to the ontological universal of chaos. Chaos is the absence of the slightest signs of order, that is, a state of scattered structures, fragmentation of elements, the absence of any forms, subordination, or hierarchies.
In ancient mythology, chaos was the name given to the indistinguishable, undifferentiated, amorphous origin of existence. According to the same ancient myths (Greek), in space, nature, society, and man, from time to time certain crazy forces play out, local or universal Dionysianism reigns, and existence finds itself in the grip of chaos, which knows no forms, no norms, no boundaries.
Chaos either precedes order or arises as a result of the destruction of existing order. It carries enormous potential energy, which, under certain conditions, can take shape into specific structures.
The category of chaos includes such concepts as entropy, anomie, catastrophe, cataclysm, social explosion, denoting various facets and aspects of the collapse of social structures, when in an atmosphere of total destruction the obvious logic of ongoing events disappears, when in the cataclysms of an uprising world everything begins to collide with everything, and people begin to imagine that the very substance of civilization is being destroyed and the “end of the world” is coming.
Chaos is not an anomalous, but a completely natural, natural state, typical of all social systems. It periodically overtakes the system. And this inevitability makes it the rule rather than the exception in the social life of individuals and communities.
N. Machiavelli in his “History of Florence” wrote that the logic of continuous transformations forces the state to periodically move from a state of order to disorder, and then back. In this case, a limit of ascent is always revealed, above which it is impossible to rise, and a limit of decline-disorder, below which there is nowhere to go. At these critical points, the movement of the state and society radically changes its direction to the opposite and rushes either upward to good and good, or downward to evil.
Social entropy
According to the second law of thermodynamics or the law of increasing entropy, all spontaneous processes in the Universe are unidirectional and are accompanied by the destruction of ordered structures and the dissipation of energy in space.
Entropy, as the dynamics of increasing disorder, is a universal process that affects all systems, from the smallest to the most gigantic, which is the entire Universe. “We,” wrote the founder of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, “are immersed in a life where everything as a whole obeys the second law of thermodynamics: disorder increases and order decreases... In a world where entropy as a whole tends to increase, there are local and temporary islands of decreasing entropy, and the presence of these islands allows some of us to prove the existence of progress."
The inorganic, inert substance of the planet is subject to the law of increasing entropy. Living matter has anti-entropic properties. Despite the fact that entropy constantly accumulates in autonomous systems, the body gets rid of it through constant rhythmic efforts, exchanging with the environment, matter and energy.
At the heart of any change that occurs lies decay and chaos, which have neither causes nor goals, providing only continuous movement. In this movement, various directions are possible, the choice of which is dictated by chance.
Social entropy is the dynamics of the disintegration of objective and subjective normative value structures, accompanied by a weakening or complete atrophy of their socializing and regulatory functions.
Entropy as a possibility is always present in any social system. But active, purposeful civilizing efforts of individuals, communities, society and its institutions do not allow this possibility to become reality in full. Only at certain historical moments, with the confluence of a number of special circumstances, can the entropy process cover the entire social system.
Thus, when a social system is in a historically specific “bifurcation zone,” any small signal, the most insignificant accident, can lead the entire system to a completely new state.
In such conditions, a landslide, avalanche-like destruction of existing socio-cultural structures begins - religious and educational institutions, family ties, moral and legal norms. The practical and spiritual “ties” that have bound people together for centuries into diverse communities are disintegrating. Legal imperatives are weakening and losing their normative and regulatory force, and the number of people falling outside the scope of their action is growing. Reluctance to comply with moral and legal norms leaves individuals without internal guarantees against the danger of dehumanization. As a result, they find themselves defenseless both against the forces of external social evil and against the evil inherent in their own nature.
Against the background of the entropy of key civilizational structures, a characteristic phenomenon of redistribution of the practical energy of the masses arises, which can rush into the mainstream of negativist-oriented political activity. Under such conditions, the lumpen layers turn out to be the most adapted to this kind of activity. Their hands commit the most monstrous destruction and bloodshed.
The main instrument for the implementation of social entropy is the principle of total negation, which reigns in most crisis-ridden spheres of practical and spiritual life. Under its influence, there is a change in ideological dominants in the public consciousness, as a result of which more and more people appear who see destruction as an overture to future creation.
The use of the concept of entropy as applied to social phenomena has been known for a long time, probably since the time when this concept was introduced into thermodynamics. Many years have passed since then, and gradually humanity has come to understand the dominant role of information processes in nature and society.
Humanity began to develop based on the “paradigm of strength.” Her symbol: F = ma. But rapid development took place using the “energy paradigm.” Her symbol: E = mc 2. The energy paradigm already contained in an explicit form the “information paradigm” - With– the speed of light, but the change from the energy paradigm to the information paradigm has not yet occurred. In 1948, Claude Shannon proposed the formula for information entropy to the world:
The concept of information entropy-negentropy in their unity is, in my opinion, fundamental in the worldview. However, there is no clarity in the definition of this concept in general, and in its application to social phenomena in particular. An attempt to apply an information approach to philosophical problems is given on the website: http://negentropy.narod.ru/
With its help, this article provides a definition of the concept of “social entropy”.
Social entropy.
Social entropy or “increasing social entropy” in all the statements I have encountered sounds like a negative characteristic. Is this the correct understanding of entropy?
We need to look at the formula of information entropy-negentropy and analyze it from the standpoint of the “information approach”. The formula contains the “number of events” – n. When applied to social entropy, this number denotes all events generated by human activity. (Another, more common name for social entropy is culture). The formula contains a factor logpi. This means that any event in entropy should be perceived as new and bipolar, that is, any social event should be perceived by “pure consciousness” (tabula rasa) as EVIL and as GOOD with equal probability. This is what happens when something “new” appears in the arsenal of human means to control a person or the external environment. Social “will” – pi log pi in entropy it is also, naturally, bipolar. Therefore, people are equally ready in relation to the “new” - both to accept this new thing and to reject it.
But there is already something that society uses constantly (regularly) and throughout “its” space. This means that from the many ways of man’s control over man and the environment – existing, existing and imagined ahead in time and in another space – only those that a given society considers acceptable for itself are selected from the many of these methods (from culture). They are acceptable because they “work” with a satisfactory probability of the method model matching the real result. The set of such (mandatory) ways of man controlling man and the environment should be called negentropy (civilization).
Social negentropy in modern developed society is such a “dense” layer that modern man barely comes into contact with social or natural entropy. For him, the social environment is represented by a multitude of things (objects, institutions) with corresponding models for their management. Then the formula of negentropy (civilization) unfolds differently than the formula of entropy. Firstly, negentropy has strictly defined boundaries of space-time. These are the boundaries of the “here and now” on the selected scale. Secondly, many “events” - n– in the formula for the amount of information, it represents a set of information acts of the form “model – reality – answer YES (NO)”. In other words, “event” in negentropy means: “knowledge about the control of a thing (object) and its application - the action of a thing (object).” Thirdly, the multiplier logpi“feelings” (time) also have the meaning, only its action with the expected result of the event - satisfaction, pleasure or boredom (time is “quantized” by the duration of the informational act). Fourthly, the action of “will” p i log p i manifests itself as the automaticity of the process – control-action.
Social entropy and social negentropy are connected by a dialectical connection. What does it mean? Of all the many civilized ways of managing people, a huge set of things (objects), each person at a given moment in time and space of action is occupied with some specific and final control-action. And this is negentropy with the expected result. All the rest of the space-time of society, even the closest one, but by which a person Now does not control, there is social entropy like opportunity. At the same time, it is indifferent to the circumstance: whether a person has knowledge about some thing from this multiple set and the ability to manage this thing or not. In ordinary life, we are deeply confident that all the things that surround us and which we control in everyday or industrial automation constitute us - they extend our essence in space (and this is private or public property). However, in analysis it is necessary to draw a line between one “here-now” action and the next. This is the moment of transition of social entropy into social negentropy.
It is quite easy to trace this moment of transition. It is enough to record each information act in consciousness, starting, for example, with awakening. Already washing in the appropriate place with the help of those means of water supply that operate in a given place makes it possible to reveal the discreteness of information acts of this process. At the same time, our knowledge that water flows into the tap after it is opened is a model of our action, which is realized after the corresponding movement of our hands. Further, if the working day begins, then information entropy implicitly exists in the mind - a mental image of the entire working day, which will (we are sure) take place in real conditions. This image is the closest part of a more voluminous image - a working month, season, year, etc., right up to old age. If the closest image has a fairly clear description of the sequence of events and the occurrence of these events, then the further in time, the more unclear the picture of both future events and the state of space of these events. Thus, from the most general ideas about the space-time of our life, connected with the life of the society in which we live - from information entropy with uncertain spatio-temporal boundaries - initially highlighted information negentropy models of “usual” actions. They consist of those actions that we usually perform every day. When these models (information negentropy) are realized in reality, that is, what always happens, then this is the moment of transition entropy of life V negentropy of life. And if, for example, when leaving home for work it turns out that the path was dug up overnight, and the hole cannot be overcome by using “extra effort,” then this means that the negentropy of “ordinary” life was inverted in this separate information act - turned V negative negentropy life for someone whose goal was to get to work as quickly as possible through the usual route. But the one who dug this hole dug it for some good purpose, for example, to fix the water supply. Therefore, for the one who successfully dug it, the digging model was realized, creating positive negentropy for him his life.
So. For a person living in a civilized society, the external environment, that is, social entropy is the whole set of things, connections and relationships that in a given civilization determine human life. This set is so large that an individual has a very rough idea of this entire set - a certain fragment of a “hologram”. This social entropy is entropy not only because this entire set exists only opportunity use it under certain conditions, but also because social entropy is constantly in its two states - in the states of GOOD and EVIL. Every moment a child is born and every moment a person dies; every moment a new car rolls off the assembly line and every moment an old car goes under the press; Every moment a new enterprise (business) appears and every moment a bankrupt one closes; every moment a person finds a job and loses it; every moment money “comes” to a person and every moment he spends his last ruble; Every moment a new article or book appears and every moment old articles or books are put “on the shelf”; etc.
How, in this case, should we understand the expression: “growth of social entropy,” which clearly carries a negative meaning? After all, any addition a new type of things, connections and relationships leads to an increase in social entropy. Is it so bad if store shelves are filled with a variety of goods; there are many enterprises; there is an abundance of cars on the streets; the house is warm; there is a shower, a bathroom with hot and cold water; fridge; food processor; Dishwasher; and money is rustling in your wallet or pocket - you can watch movies or news on TV at home, or you can go to a restaurant for a gourmet dinner? The growth of social entropy in this sense (in the sense of addition) can be perceived negatively when there is neither place nor time for this new addition. But this is a different question - this is a question of controlling the flow of entropy, such as, for example, the question of “how to protect yourself from spam?” Then, when a negative meaning is revealed in various statements about the “growth of social entropy,” its foundations seem different.
Social entropy according to Berdyaev.
For example, what did N. Berdyaev mean when he spoke “about the death of spiritual culture - sacred and symbolic - in a soulless technical civilization,” which he understood as “social entropy” - “dispersion of the creative energy of culture”?
Another philosopher of the same time can clarify that Berdyaev had in mind the thermodynamic meaning of the concept of entropy. N. Lossky wrote “about the law entropy, from which it follows that in material nature there is a tendency towards equalization of differences in the intensity of energy and, consequently, an increasing depreciation of energy.” These statements imply some general knowledge of what “energy” is. In fact, the concept of energy was not defined both in the times of Berdyaev and Lossky and at the present time. Therefore, it is not possible to find out what people wanted to say and want to say when using the thermodynamic concepts of “energy” and “entropy” until these concepts, which are fundamental entities, are explained.
It’s a different matter if we try to consider social problems from the perspective of information concepts of entropy-negentropy. Then we can say that Berdyaev understood culture as a very specific component of the huge sphere of culture. First of all, he understood culture as philosophical constructions and works of art that, again, carried a philosophical “charge.” There is no objection - philosophy, no matter what they say, is a very important area of culture. It forms the information “field” of human goals. And from this point of view, German philosophy, represented by the names that Berdyaev lists in his article “The Will to Life and the Will to Culture,” created a very powerful information field that influenced not only philosophers, but also “pragmatists.” It is not surprising, therefore, that from such a powerful information field of philosophy arose an equally powerful “will to live.” The fact that people do not always understand and do not even always feel the role of philosophy in society does not in the least diminish the organic significance of this role, independent of human understanding or sensation of it. “Philosophy of life” or “philosophy of values”, firstly, is born from the need of society to look into the distant future through the tendencies of the present in relations to other societies, and secondly, philosophy constitutes the information field that covers every person, illuminating his horizon actions.
Modern Russia is characterized by processes that have always distinguished it from the “correct” West. When Tyutchev said that “Russia cannot be understood with the mind...”, he stated the fact of its “inverted” state in relation to the balance of negentropy-entropy. So in Russia there has never been “its own”, original philosophy. Consequently, in Russia there has never been an information field capable of illuminating the horizon in the activities of many individual spontaneous “wills to live.” Orthodoxy could not solve aesthetic and ethical problems associated with the “thirst for life”, since it attributed this “thirst for life” to sinfulness, that is, it unequivocally denied it.
The official ideology of communism in the space of the former USSR is the information negentropy of dogma, which has not rightfully taken the place of the information entropy of philosophy. Therefore, the official ideology did not shape the field possibilities, but cut off any other possibility other than the one that was dogmatically proclaimed and which was clearly unrealizable. Since the official ideology of “Marxism” (Soviet style) has not been replaced by any philosophy in Russia, the individual spontaneous “will to live” does not have an ordering information field capable of turning many individual “wills to live” from enemies into collaborators .
For example, how do we understand “fairness” or “public benefit”?
If we accept that the formula is true: “he who does not work, does not eat,” then a society that accepts such “justice” will very soon eat itself. At least in modern Russia, about 30% of the adult population will be subjected to genocide.
If we accept that in the interests of “public benefit” it is necessary to pay employees as little as possible and pay taxes as little as possible, then how will an economy develop in this case, the consumer sector of which is not able to absorb what is produced; How will the state governance structure develop in such cases?
The subject of reflection of all and every philosophical movement was reflection on the relationship between society and the state. How are these relationships built: from entropy or from negentropy? In other words: what comes first – the citizen or the state?
If the state is primary, then this is an entropic pattern of relations, when the state is the source of random events that are perceived by a person with a bipolar sense of EVIL-GOOD. Naturally, in this case the state acts as an active principle in relation to its “subjects”, and the “subjects” expect the state to take care of their needs.
If the citizen is primary, then this is a negentropic pattern of relations, based on which the event is “the application of an adequate model with the expected answer YES.” In this case, the active behavior of a citizen who has formed his own models of social relations is natural. In this case, citizens expect the state to effectively perform the functions that they have entrusted to it. The number of these functions is limited and concentrated around a basic requirement: the protection of private property. Then the “will to live” (Berdyaev) is understood as the desire to implement social models of consumption and social models of the production of negentropy.
If entropy relations are realized in society and the state, then they are realized in every cell of society - both in the family and in production - on the basis of “imperious subordination of one side to the other.” The scheme of these relations is “vertical” with the polarization of GOOD-EVIL from top to bottom, when the source of social models is the “top”. Then “all the people around us, except ours, that is, those on the “vertical” are enemies.”
If negentropic relations are implemented in society and the state according to the scheme: “model – reality – answer YES,” then all people are employees, since such relations are based on an agreement, that is, on models that provide for the common benefit of cooperation. In this case, an “equal-spatial” scheme of relations operates, in which the source of social models is everyone in relation to everyone.
In any society, regardless of whether it has a developed philosophical consciousness that has developed key universal concepts or not, these concepts themselves exist in the form of implicit models of human relationships. Then, when people’s actions affect the interests of other people, when some people force other people to act in the interests of these “forcers,” then every person who is being manipulated feels injustice. And this is a contradiction between the implicit model of fair human relationships and the real fact of individual oppression. And this is, therefore, negative negentropy, albeit of an entropic property. The fact is that feeling is, by definition, entropy. And then, when the injustice committed in relation to other people cannot be analyzed logically as a violation of the provisions of the contract, then the feeling is in no way restrained by the arguments of reason. One, two, three facts of violation of justice, both society and the state are placed in the “enemy” information field. There is simply no other field if there is no philosophy that unites society.
“All people are born equal in their opportunities and rights” is a declaration. The feeling of each person in its depths, sometimes in secret depths, stores this position, not expressed in words. But life somehow changes everything. Some find themselves at an unattainable height of wealth and power, others find themselves at the very bottom of life under the enormous pressure of poverty and lawlessness. Obviously, such a situation is in no way in the interests of “public benefit,” since a huge number of members of society are squeezed out of the productive, and, consequently, from the consumer process.
Thus, according to Berdyaev, “social entropy - dissipation of cultural energy” represents the transformation of the information field of “philosophy of life”, “philosophy of values” into concrete actions of the “will to live”. The negative meaning of such a dissipation of cultural energy is that with the rapid manifestation of the “will to live,” the harmony of interhuman relations and the relationship between man and nature is disrupted, which leads to a loss of vision of the goal and its replacement by means. There is a violation of the harmony that, it would seem, the “philosophy of life” and the “philosophy of values” have already defined as necessary.
But in modern Russia this is not the case. The “will to live” in Russia was born not from a pre-created information field of purpose, but from the destroyed structure of Soviet ideology. Therefore, Berdyaev’s formula has nothing to do with the Russian version of post-Soviet development.
Social entropy (the growth of social entropy) in post-Soviet Russia should most likely be considered as an increase in negative negentropy.
If we do not go into historical details when studying the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, we can name one “simple reason” for the destruction. The Soviet Union was destroyed by a total lie.
This statement hides the entire multiplicity of inversions of information acts that constitute the actual process of social life. We can safely say that not a single one of the regulations that completely determined the life of Soviet society was ever implemented with a probability equal to one. This happened both at the philosophical (more precisely, at the ideological level) and at the specific level of job responsibilities of workers and employees.
Take, for example, the classic formula: “you can become a communist only when you enrich your memory with the wealth of all the knowledge that humanity has developed.” There is a double lie here. Firstly, the information model itself is false, since human knowledge is limitless, therefore, its development is unattainable. Secondly, knowledge itself, which has increased relative to the “background” knowledge of practitioners of Soviet life, is a negative factor for career growth.
The same thing was observed among specialists who turned out to be “very literate.”
Thus, the growth of social entropy, which led to the collapse of the USSR, can and should be understood as the growth of negative negentropy, or more precisely as the transformation of the positive negentropy (structure) of society into its opposite.
As for modern Russia, assessing the entire state of the structure of society in one article or even in a multi-page book is an overwhelming task. But we can dwell on one of the aspects of the existence of society - property. And when considering property, one cannot ignore the right.
In all philosophical schools, the question of property occupies a very important place. It is assumed that property arises from “nothingness”. Then it is formally secured and protected. The state within which property is formed directs its main efforts to preserving the ownership of the property by its owner, regardless of the size of this property and the class affiliation of its owner. The property of an individual is his life, therefore the state is obliged to protect this property in the same way as multimillion-dollar fortunes. If the state not only does not protect property of different sizes, but also directly encroaches on it, then it destroys the substrate of its own existence.
When the interests of owners conflict with the interests of other owners, a legal conflict arises. It is based on the entropy of the expectations of those owners whose interests converge on this or that property. For example, the interest of the product manufacturer and the interest of the buyer converge in the market with the entropy of expectations for each of its own prices. A legal conflict is resolved through an agreement that takes into account the interests of each party. In this case there is an agreement information negentropy, each section and even each word in which is the beginning of an information act of the form “model - reality - answer YES”. Then, when the contract is fulfilled in its entirety at the designated time, the model and reality coincide, and this is actual negentropy of life. But the agreement may not be fulfilled in part or in its entirety. Then an inversion of negentropy occurs - instead of the expected answer YES, the answer NO is received. According to the law of mathematical reversal of signs negative negentropy goes into entropy life. And in this sense, we can conditionally talk about the growth of social entropy. But such an understanding leads consciousness away from direct perception to indirect perception. Since the entropy of life is “positive” (conditionally), generally speaking, it is possible to change the contractual partner to a more conscientious partner. If it turns out that all partners are unscrupulous, then talking about entropy as a possibility is generally pointless. In this case, we must talk about total negative negentropy, that is, about the “enemy”.
The state, by its very nature, must be structured so that its citizens do not feel themselves in a hostile environment. Therefore, the most important institution of the state should be the system of law and law enforcement as an “equal-spatial” information structure designed to resolve “equal-spatial” contradictions. The state legal system is based on the natural feeling of each person’s rights. And this is the entropy of subjective feeling. Like any entropy, it can contain both the possibility of a wise and “balanced” act in response to a violated right, and it can also contain the arbitrariness of a “malicious” plan under the guise of a violated right. Historically, every state develops its own legal negentropy - law, application of law and its protection in order to remove the arbitrariness of individual wills. The purpose of the law is to protect property, including the property of an individual over his life.
In the West they have known about this for a long time. For example, at the beginning of the nineteenth century Hegel wrote: “The egoistic goal, thus conditioned in its implementation by universality, grounds a system of all-round dependence, so that the means of subsistence and the good of the individual and its legal existence are intertwined with the means of subsistence, the good and the right of all, are based on this and only in this connection are they valid and secured. This system can be most closely regarded as an external state, as a state of need and reason.”(“Philosophy of Law”).
Any person who knows how to do something is an owner. In one case, this is the ability to manage huge fortunes, in the other, these are the simplest work skills. But in any case, the owners in society are in mutual dependence, which is determined by agreement, since without an agreement only power relations are determined between those who are the owners and those who are not. And who in a state free from slavery can not have property, which at the lowest level of the social ladder is simple labor skill?
This question is not as simple as it might seem. The Chairman of the Supreme Court of one of the Russian republics wrote in his ruling; “Civil legislation does not apply to labor relations, since labor relations are based on the authoritative subordination of one party to the other”. This fact suggests not only that slavery has not yet been abolished in the minds of Russians, but also that the entropy of law (as an elemental natural feeling inherent in every person on earth) in Russia is not structured by philosophy.
The Constitution of the Russian Federation is built eclectically on norms that in the West were earned with “blood.” Therefore, many constitutional norms in Russia (just like in the former USSR) are initially negative negentropy, since the likelihood of their implementation for an ordinary citizen is very low, if not zero. This is explained by the fact that a high degree of probability of the implementation of a legal model depends on the total amount of information that provides this probability. Accordingly, the low amount of information embedded in the lower levels of management leads to a low probability of implementing the entire legal model. Thus, the implementation of constitutional norms depends on the perfection of the law, material resources and professionalism of the trial judge. If we judge only by the materials of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which publishes decisions of the Constitutional Court of Russia, then this professionalism is very low. The situation is aggravated by the fact that courts of cassation and supervisory instances, as a rule, approve unjust decisions of courts of first instance.
But will a definition of social entropy be complete if it is calculated only from official sources?
Social entropy is by definition saturated with feeling. It is saturation with feeling that makes entropy an irrational source of social tension and then destructive actions. Therefore, official reports on the number of appealed decisions of lower courts, even if reliable, do not give an idea of the amount of social entropy associated with the activities of the courts, since they do not contain feelings.
In turn, the magnitude of the feeling (the magnitude of the multiplier log pi ) depends on surprises court decision. The point is that each party to a lawsuit has an idea of how must the process and what it's like must be a court decision if it is made in accordance with the law. This idea may be based on a vague sense of justice or on a complete knowledge of the law. As a rule, the feeling of justice during analysis is confirmed in law in general, if not in private law, then in constitutional or international law. Therefore, regardless of whether it was issued or not expectation court decision, it always turns out to be unexpected if it is not made in accordance with one or another law. This is what is postulated in the “information approach” as the “difference of information potentials” between the information model and reality, giving rise to mental movement as “suffering”.
The magnitude of the feelings of an individual participant in a trial is transmitted to society in one way or another, forming a public field of social entropy.
And thus, the implementation of constitutional norms also depends on the amount of information that an individual has in the form of the opportunity and need to protect their formalized interests in court.
In the public field of social entropy, ethical and aesthetic categories operate. Then the “mentality” influences the decision: to go to court to protect your rights or not to go to court. Traditionally in Russia, going to court is an “unethical” act. This mental psychological field could be changed if the trial were also aesthetic. But, unfortunately, we have to admit that going to a Russian court is associated with a pronounced lack of aesthetics. One of the defining features of aesthetics is efficiency. Or, moving to economic language, the “input-output” relationship. The costs (of time, mental energy and money) that have to be spent when going to court, and the court decision, which damages the restoration of the violated right, are incommensurable. Thus, it turns out that a priori, prior to personal experience, a person decides not to go to court, unless he has enough money to have the lawyers hired or in his service carry out this painful procedure for him. A person comes to such a decision on the basis of social experience. But, without going to court, leaving the violated and unrestored right “hanging” in his infringed consciousness, a person leaves within himself a “detonator” that can “work” under certain conditions. No official statistics, which are not (yet) based on informational ideas about social entropy, can give an “objective” picture of the increase in social tensions. (Here the word “objective” picture is put in quotation marks because usually “objective” is considered to be something that is cleared of feeling. The “information approach”, on the contrary, considers as an objective picture that which contains feeling when it comes to entropy or negative negentropy).
The growth of social entropy according to G. Satarov.
As is known, G. Satarov associates the growth of social entropy with the growth of corruption in all echelons of the current government. How should this be understood using the “information approach”? Let us turn again to Hegel: “Civil society contains the following three points: A) the mediation of needs and the satisfaction of the individual through his labor and through the labor and satisfaction of the needs of everyone else, a system of needs; C) the reality of the universal freedom contained in this, the protection of property through justice; C) concern for the prevention of contingency remaining in these systems and attention to the special interest as to the general, with the help of the police and corporations.” (“Philosophy of Law”). It is obvious that, considering the first “moment,” Hegel means the market as a system of production and consumption connected by exchange. With the second “moment”, Hegel draws the reader’s attention to the fact that the market provides a broad opportunity for “universal freedom”, subject to the protection of the interests of owners (including the owners of labor “force”), and to the fact that the protection of property is ensured by justice. Using the terminology of modern economists, we can say that the broad possibility of freedom is ensured by the presence of “rules of the game”, and by ensuring, through justice, the protection of the “rules of the game” from their arbitrary change. In the third “moment” Hegel recognizes the presence of entropy, which necessarily arises within and around any negentropic system as an “accident”. It is this third “moment” that is of interest when considering the issue of the growth of social entropy (according to Satarov). It is only necessary to remember that by “police” Hegel understood what is now commonly called “executive power”, giving it those broad functions that society entrusts to the state. By “corporation” we should understand the presence of various public organizations united by a common interest, acting as a “special” interest, for example, the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, trade unions, the Union of Lawyers or the Judicial Qualification Board. Accident in the general sense is something that does not correspond to “yesterday’s” state, that is, the model of civilization that was accepted by society as the norm just yesterday. In this sense, the emergence of a new type of business, the merger or division of companies, the bankruptcy of a company is accidental; the emergence of a new product, service, information; An accident, a catastrophe, a violation of the terms of a contract, price jumps, etc. are accidental. Going to court or going to a doctor is accidental. Thus, randomness is what the “Information Approach” refers to as entropy. Any randomness is perceived by people according to the entropy scheme. Since the functions of the state aimed at preventing accidents are performed by people, the perception of any accident by the state body occurs according to the entropy scheme. As is known (from the “information approach”), the entropy scheme of relations is: “random event” - “excitation” - “inf. field EVIL-GOOD.” As a rule, the primary psychological reaction is aimed at denying randomness, prompting flight or aggression. Therefore, those elements of the social system that are functionally designed to work with chance undergo special training. During training, these elements acquire models that reflect the nature of possible accidents, models of the procedure for “meeting” accidents and models of bringing accidents to a state where they turn into the positive side of GOOD for society, that is, the “special interest” is brought into line with the “general.” The mechanisms by which randomness is “removed” are well known. These are, for example, antimonopoly legislation and its application; procedures for conducting tenders and auctions; licensing and certification; law enforcement and judicial activities of state institutions; rules for people to receive education and medical care. The models embedded in these mechanisms must take into account the development of the “special”, taking into account the interest of the “general”. And then, the more fully the models take into account this relationship, the more effectively society develops. But models are just informational negentropy, which in relation to the actual process of life is entropy. The transition of such special information negentropy into life negentropy occurs in an actual process within the framework of the activities of state institutions, when actions are taken to limit monopoly pressure on the market; tenders and auctions are held; licensing and certification are carried out; criminal or civil cases are initiated and cases of violation of the law are investigated; cases are being considered in courts, etc. In such cases, the “special interest” tries to secure a preferential position for itself either by speeding up the process or by eliminating legal restrictions aimed at observing the “general interest”. The ways in which “special interests” draw government institutions into the orbit of their interests are varied. And the deformation of the “public interest” under the influence of incentives from the “special interest” is the result of corruption. The professionalism of people who provide any activity lies in the fact that they are capable of translating information negentropy (professional models) into actual negentropy of life, even in conditions with interference, with a high degree of compliance. In professional activity there are three, in Hegel’s words, “moments.” The first point is the presence of theoretical knowledge about the proper state of the process that a person professionally manages. For example, with regard to the activities of a judge, we can say that a judge must know the general principles of law in general. That is, he must know the philosophy of law. Then he must know all international legal norms. Know the Constitution of your country and only then all the many private laws. The second point is to become familiar with the procedure for bringing the information negentropy of law into the negentropy of reality, which is expressed in its judicial decision. And the third point is the real activity of the judge in a particular case. In the third moment, in actual activity, the process begins from a specific legal conflict with a search for models for bringing the conflict to a specific rule of law governing this particular conflict (special law). If a legal conflict is not resolved with the help of a specific special law due to the absence of a law for a given case, then the information process must transition to the general level of information—referring to another law (searching for an analogy of the law). If an analogy of law is not found, then an analogy of law, constitutional norms, and norms of international law are sought. The judge's decision must not contain a conflict between the “special interest” in favor of which it is made and the “general interest.” Bringing a judicial decision into such compliance is impossible without turning to the philosophy of law. Thus, a professional decision of a judge is an adequate adherence to a complex information model of law, which includes the philosophical volume of information of a real legal conflict. If any norm is ignored when making a decision, “erosion” of information negentropy occurs, which inevitably results in damage to reality, and such a decision carries the possibility of complete cancellation. And this is already an inversion of negentropy into its opposite. Judicial procedure is very much connected with the concept of space-time. Since all life is an indication of space-time dimensions, the time lag of the judicial procedure from the course of real life can deprive the judicial decision of any ordering power. The same applies to space. When the professionalism of those people who should perform the functions of “preventing accidents and paying attention to “special” interests as “general” is low, then the decision-making of these people also turns out to be largely “accident”. It is very difficult to persuade a professional to make an intentional professional mistake, even with the help of strong incentives - the effect of the information field of professionalism, proportional to its information mass, is too strong. It is not difficult to persuade a “random” (in this profession) person to make the wrong decision. When a situation arises in a society where state institutions that regulate a significant part of public life are corrupt, a double erosion of the state mechanism occurs. Incentivizing unprofessional management decisions is not just a case of obtaining private benefits for a “special interest”. This is also a case of squeezing out professionalism from the entire public administration system. Or, speaking in terms of information ideas, the result of corruption is an avalanche-like process of degradation of the information mass of the state management system. This process turns out to be “avalanche-like” because with total corruption there is, as economists say, a “multiplier” effect. This effect is explained, on the one hand, by the increase in the number of models of corrupt behavior of officials. On the other hand, it is required each time to exceed a certain “sensitivity threshold” for the activation of a certain functional element by the next stronger stimulus. Any need for a citizen to turn to state institutions for some kind of “permission” consists of the spatio-temporal characteristics of this process. When these characteristics do not exceed a certain small fraction of the total space-time of life of a citizen (or legal entity), then such a state is accepted as economical, that is, acceptable from an aesthetic point of view. The assessment of such a state of the process of applying for any permission in time is intuitive, entropic, such as “fast” and “long”. And in space it’s like – “you’ll have to run around” or like – “through one window.” This assessment is associated with the very space-time of life of a citizen (or legal entity), more precisely with the energy characteristics of life. Energy characteristics are expressed by the number of information acts per unit of time. Therefore, the same space-time indicators of applying for permission can be perceived as acceptable if life is weakly saturated with the number of information acts - low-energy, and as unacceptable if life is high-energy. The “simplest” way to change the spatio-temporal characteristics of applying for any “permission” is to stimulate the acceleration of the process. A special case of stimulating the acceleration of decision-making leads to a deterioration in all spatio-temporal performance indicators of these “permitting bodies”. There is a redistribution of social energy in the form of different concentrations of the number of information acts per unit of space-time at workplaces within the state system of “permission” and in the external space of life. This gives rise to a difference in information potentials, leading to social tensions. Redistribution of public energy in the case of total corruption occurs in another way - through the flow of money, when corruption is associated with monetary incentives. This way of redistributing public energy in the form of money also leads to negative consequences for the economy, since there is a paradoxical incentive for poor performance in relation to common sense. And here there is a double stimulation of negative negentropy. On the one hand, the uncontrolled flow of money itself leads to inflation (the inflationary effect of monetary bribes, it seems, has not yet been calculated by any economist). On the other hand, incentivizing poor performance automatically reduces the intrinsic value of money.
Social entropy from the point of view of the “information approach”.
To summarize what was written above, we can state that the concept of social entropy is complex. Social entropy consists, on the one hand, of a multiple set of ways for a person to control a person and those processes and things that are included in human life as a culture. These are all methods of control that were in the past, exist in the present and are contained in the future (even in the form of fantasy) throughout the entire space of human habitation, including space. The spatio-temporal characteristics of culture are fluid and difficult to determine. Culture as entropy contains within itself an equal possibility of EVIL and GOOD, “removed” by civilization. On the other hand, civilization is a set of ways of managing a person, processes and things, selected from a variety of cultures, which is accepted by a given society at a given time and in a given habitat. The choice was made on the basis that these methods lead to an unambiguous result when performing information acts of the form: “model - reality - answer YES (NO in the case of protection models)” in the space-time of action of these information acts, within which the probability of receiving an answer YES turns out to be close to unity. Thus, civilization can be described as information negentropy, consisting of many events in a certain space-time of human relations. An event in this negentropy will be considered an “information act”. Real life is represented by a multitude of real events that have the form of an information act. These events take place in a structured negentropic environment, which, before contact with reality, should be described as information negentropy, but represents only the entropy of the possibility of real life. Therefore, the presence of public transport in the city until you get on it is just entropy for you (description), although it is negentropy for those people who are now traveling on this transport. Thus, correlating the information process of the “special” with the “general interest”, we can say that civilization really exists as long as there is a continuous class of events, as B. Russell proposes to understand it. The possibility of committing a continuous class of events is ensured by the civilizational institutions of society. Therefore, leaving your own home “for a minute” (or for years), you can be sure that you will return, if you want and are able, to your living space with all its attributes of civilization. Such social entropy of life, polarized by the field of morality and structured by law-enforcement acts on the basis of mainly GOOD, has a quantitative dimension that can be calculated as the “amount of information” using Shannon’s formula. This social entropy can wax and wane. Then, when such social entropy decreases, the possibility of human choice decreases, therefore, the degree of human freedom decreases. The quality of life decreases. Then, when such entropy grows, a person’s ability to choose from a variety of ways to control a person and the external environment increases, therefore, human freedom increases. The growth of such social entropy is perceived by a person as an “improvement in the quality of life.” But the growth of such social entropy becomes a problem when his space-time of life begins to shrink from the need to manage this entropy. This circumstance requires either expansion or stopping at some level of development and ordering. Problems caused by the growth of social entropy in the sense, for example, of an increase in the number of market participants are not problems of growth of such social entropy, but problems of improving the organization of those state institutions that should regulate relations between market participants. And then we should talk not about the growth of social entropy, but about the growth of negative negentropy. If the emergence of a new market participant is planned, then, therefore, a registration procedure for this participant must be carried out. If it is carried out successfully and within an acceptable time frame, then the negentropy of this procedure is considered absolute. If licensing of the activities of this new market participant is then required, and it is successfully completed, then this is also negentropy of this process. All such procedures constitute the entropy of regulation of market relations, which consists of a number of procedural models, the implementation of which takes place in a limited space-time - “in one window” and in the shortest possible time. Such entropy can be called “positive,” but very conditionally, since entropy is entropy. Therefore, it may turn out that yesterday you successfully prepared all the papers in the hope that today you will register your company, but it turns out that at night there was a “terrorist attack” or a revolution took place and the negentropic act of registration will not take place. When this does not happen, but everything goes “like clockwork,” then a non-gentroic act is committed. And if, in addition to a “terrorist attack” or a revolution, they simply refuse to register you, “play for time,” set some conditions that you knew nothing about before, then this means that the negentropy of the action of registering a company has been inverted into negative negentropy. The same can be said about the process of going to court. The judicial system that actually exists in the state is a “description” for an individual person until he turns to it. Thorough knowledge of this description is information negentropy. But this negentropic model of the court is the entropy of reality as just the opportunity to go to court. An actual appeal to the court will show how much the model coincides with reality. If, when you go to court, your claim is rejected or the claim is left without progress, then this is not an increase in social entropy, but an increase in negative negentropy. But in any case, negative negentropy can also be calculated using Shannon's formula in the same way. Only information acts with the answer NO should be taken into account when calculating. Negative negentropy differs from entropy in that it has very clear boundaries of the space-time of action. If you are a few minutes late in filing your claim, your claim will not be accepted for consideration. The same applies to the area of filing a claim: you must know exactly in which court to file a claim. Now we can take a more definite attitude towards statements about the “growth of social entropy. Social entropy is a complex concept consisting of culture on the one hand and civilization on the other. Culture contains all the multiplicity of both the positive aspects of human activity and equally the negative aspects of this activity. Negative negentropy - the negative aspects of human civilization pass into culture according to the mathematical law of the circulation of signs. The entropy of culture is palpable. Civilization is analyzed. The difference in entropies, that is, the difference in information potentials, is the cause of social movement. Social entropy is a concept related to social phenomena. Social negentropy is an individual characteristic that can be scaled as an individual, a collective, or a state. Social entropy (culture) can be “quantized” in the part related to civilization. And in this part the difference in information potentials as the cause of social movement can be measured.
Conclusion.
In introducing his book to readers of one of the Russian magazines, S. Lem writes that no one could meaningfully predict the collapse of the Soviet empire. Moreover, by the word “meaningfully” S. Lem apparently understood the possibility of a mathematically accurate prediction of an event. Neither then nor now is it possible to mathematically accurately predict the unambiguous occurrence of events in large and complex systems. However, it is possible to quite definitely predict the trend in the life of a society - whether the society will develop or slowly degrade, approaching collapse - if the society has some kind of philosophy (the absence of philosophy is also philosophy). Indeed, in fiction (dissident) literature one can even find the date of the predicted collapse of the USSR - 1985. This means that some people probably meaningfully predicted the historical fate of the USSR. How did they do it? A trend can be defined as the degree to which a social model of life matches the reality of life. In its most general form, the model of society is expressed in philosophy, which is developed in a given society or perceived from outside. The philosophical model, unlike faith, is structured in concepts that include all the specifics of life. The most important concepts are freedom, justice, measure. Derivatives from them: personal freedom, personal will, personal responsibility. These general concepts are concretized in the individual activities of people, in the activities of public and state institutions. The measure of activity is the ability to transform the entropy of “input” into the negentropy of “output” - into a product, services, information useful to society. Mental (will) and social movements (public will, optimism) are determined by the difference in information potentials between the model and reality over time - in the individual activities of a person, corporation, state; in space - the difference in information potentials between the information capacity of the activities of “special interest” (individuals, corporations, states) and “general interests” (another individual, another corporation, another state). This difference should not be too large. No more than a level that determines the probability of successfully mastering the activity is no less than 0.37. The success of transformative activities depends on the ease of access to the entropy of “input”, which is determined in a civilized society by the availability of money, and ease of access to transformative models - technologies. This means that investments and total education are needed. Degradation can be defined as the growth of negative social negentropy, which can be calculated in time - as the difference in information potentials between the model of social relations accepted “yesterday” and the actual state of social relations today; in space - as the difference in information potential between the current reality of an individual, a corporation, a country in relation to another individual, another corporation, another country. A typical example of such a calculation is the determination of the “living wage” and “minimum wage”, and the determination of their ratio, which (which is important!) should be compared with the same ratios in other regions of the country, in other countries. Another example of calculating the growth of negative negentropy can be counting the number of appealed decisions of officials and court rulings; compliance of constitutional provisions with the actual state of affairs. Such a calculation is the “quantization” of social entropy, about which S. Lem says that it (“quantization”) is in principle impossible when considering social processes. Social negentropy, by definition, consists of energy quanta - from information acts. Therefore, it is not difficult to determine both the “energy” of society and the dynamics of this energy – its growth or decline. If the state wants, or rather, if people want to know, and not just feel the dynamics of negentropy in society, they must ensure that the “transparency” of the activities of state institutions and the “transparency” of the economy are ensured. If, for example, the minister of “social protection of the population” issues a certificate for presentation to the court about the monthly salary of a design engineer of the 11th (highest) category in the amount of 1160 rubles, while the “living wage” is 2107 rubles, then this is negative negentropy - colloquially a lie. And for the common man, the dynamics of Russia’s development become clear. As for the question of the exact date of the visible collapse - the “social explosion”, this value is random, although the collapse is already predetermined by the amount of lies (more than 37%). The question is quite legitimate: “Why is there no social “explosion” taking place when Russia’s statehood has virtually collapsed?” The answer may be approximate. The first is ineffective government regulation of relations between owners, which is regulated by alternative “secret” regulation. Secondly, the memory of the futility of “perestroika” is too fresh. Third, there are no social models of responsible behavior in society. Political scientists name many other reasons. Everyone is right. It seems that everyone already agrees with the predetermination of the collapse of Russian statehood - not only “thinking people”, but also “ordinary people”. Just look at the Politra website or listen to the remarks of “ordinary people” on Radio Liberty. The hopelessness in stating the fact of collapse is striking.
Kamlesh D. Patel explains how the second law of thermodynamics plays a role in our relationships, leading to decay and destruction, and he shares with us ways to overcome social entropy, resulting in stability and harmony.
What is entropy?
Let's try to understand it in a practical way. You bring home a book from the library, then your father gives you another book. Your girlfriend brings you magazines and you already have music CDs. All this is collected in piles on the small table in your room, so that the table is now cluttered. The room is also a mess: clothes here, socks there, a towel hanging somewhere. This is an example of a broken system; it is out of order.
The mess becomes unpleasant to you, and you clean it up. Put each book in its place,
wash your clothes and make your bed. Now the room looks cleaner than before, but only up to
until you start bringing even more books and things. Then the system will fall apart again and fall into disorder. Maintaining order requires constant energy expenditure.
Thus, entropy is a measure of the disorder or randomness of a system. The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases with time. It reflects the instability of a system over time if there is no external influence to stabilize it.
In human relationships, we interact with each other every day, and our relationships
also fall into disarray. We allow things to accumulate inside us. The clutter inside increases as we bring more and more things into it, like books and clothes in our room. We keep accumulating things and one day what we have accumulated explodes if we do not take action. Effort must be made to stabilize any relationship and smooth out differences so that they are not carried on forever. But do we need to do this every time we make a mistake? Do we need to buy the other person ice cream or candy to calm him down every time? This would mean that ongoing investment is needed to maintain the relationship.
If you have to constantly put in effort when you have a fight or disagreement with a friend or family member, you will need more and more effort each time. You might even have to buy a Mercedes if you can afford it! At the same time, it is our duty to love each other at any cost. There will no doubt be pain in the process and a lot of energy will be required from you, but if you are prepared for this, the relationship will improve.
If in a family you have to tolerate each other, then this requires a constant contribution of energy. If constant emotional investment is required from you, the family is destroyed, even if you continue to be together.
Whereas if there is love and acceptance in the family, you do not need to constantly offer
ice cream or some heavenly vacation to mend the relationship. It goes without saying that you accept each other with love. Hence the conclusion: love in your heart is what stabilizes relationships. Now everything is all right. There is a higher level of acceptance.
I'm not talking about tolerance. Tolerance can be a great virtue, but when you feel, “I can't bear this person's mistakes anymore,” love can smooth things over and everything will be fine. Where does this love come from? From a pure heart - a truthful, sincere heart.
Mistrust kills relationships, but in a family where we were taught to love, sacrifice ourselves and remain pure, in such a family we are able to give up everything. We can eradicate
incompatibility by understanding this principle of entropy.
When I am in a state of constant love, the need for constant input of energy disappears and the costs are reduced to zero. When the need for effort is reduced to zero, this is the most stable relationship, the most stable family, where I don’t have to make excuses: “I did it because...”, “I didn’t want to do it because...”. Where there is love, there is no need for explanations.
ABOUT KAMLESH PATEL
From a young age, Kamlesh Patel was interested in spirituality and meditation. He became a disciple of his Guru in 1976 while he was still a student. He is now the fourth spiritual leader of the Sahaj Marg system, based on the principles of Raja Yoga meditation.
Kamlesh has a wife and two sons. He is a role model for many students of spirituality who strive to find the perfect combination of the Eastern heart and Western mind. Actively traveling, he finds common ground with people of different backgrounds and different views. He pays special attention to communicating with young people.
Heartfulness Magazine No. 2