In Defense of Entropy

Consumerism bugs me. Not just the way that I see it manifest in “other people,” at Black Friday or whatever—what bothers me is that consumption and waste are imbedded in who I am as well. 

When buttons fall off my clothes, my reaction is not to reach for a needle and to take 30 seconds to fix it, but to feel as though the shirt has been ruined. We’re conditioned to feel confused by and powerless over the products which we depend upon to subsist in the modern world.

Everything is constantly breaking. That’s what the universe is all about—the trend towards entropy. Old and broken things may be disguised as new and whole, but with time the illusion wears off.

Under previous modes of production, the reality of entropy better understood. Few things one came into contact with seemed new; you lived on land your family had known and used tools which either you maintained or had made yourself. 

But new things can make better margins, and under industrial capitalism it’s easier to make something new than to fix or maintain. New things follow a model which can be endlessly reproduced.  They simply demand a certain amount of raw material processed in a certain way, then shaped and assembled according to pre-determined specifications.

By contrast, maintenance and repair are hard, because everything broken requires a slightly different fix. "Entropy" is often understood as disorder, but in many fields it's tantamount to information," and we see that with our broken things. There is only one way to be fully whole, but there are infinite ways to be fully broken. One production process can make a million identical printers, but you can’t run every busted printer through a machine and have them all come out fixed—each is broken in its own way. The more broken something is, the more information you need to understand the unique way in which it is broken. Capitalism has no time for such things; understanding is inefficient, and investments in repairmen will produce rather paltry returns. 

But at the end of the day Capitalism’s promise of a world free of entropy is a trick and a lie, and it’s a soul-destroying one. There is a humble power which comes from having a relationship with the material around us which is rooted in knowledge and history. Maybe this is a hot take, but I think we need to stop objectifying objects. 

[Insert that onion article about there being enough chairs.]

There’s that old thought experiment, the Grandfather's Axe (AKA the Ship of Theseus.)

The handle breaks, so you replace the handle, then—

Wait, did you say that it broke? Just buy a new one. Here, it’s on sale. It’s just the same as the old one, but it’s not broken. Listen, fix the handle and next thing you know the head of the axe will break. May as well just get a new one, that way the whole thing is new. It doesn’t even cost much more. 

A world where our things are fully replaceable is a world where we are as well. A world where things are not worth maintaining, not worth fixing, not worth investing in, is one where people are treated just the same. Why bother paying your employee enough for them to go to the doctor? What do you care if they have enough to eat? Where’s the sense in rewarding them for loyalty? Would you reward an axe for loyalty? No, an axe is a tool meant to make efficient the process of splitting logs. Use it until it breaks, then throw it out and get a new one. 

Part of the rehistoric mindset is understanding that our physical environment isn’t separate from us. Though they are not alive as we understand it, they are nonetheless a part of our community. Things shape us just like people do. 

Our identities are products of experience (plus a dash of Chemical X.) I have been shaped into the person I am today by the experience of being ignorant about how any of the objects around me work, where they come from, who made them, how, in what conditions. Life, for me, is characterized by a sense of constant, dull befuddlement and irritation; I do not understand where I am, and I do not have any meaningful relationship with my surroundings which so define the terms of my existence. Everything is falling apart. I wish it wouldn’t, but I don’t know how to stop this from happening and I have neither the time nor the inclination to learn. Instead, when something breaks I will feel angry with it, throw it in the trash because I’m pretty sure that either it’s not recyclable, or it is recyclable but, like, I think I heard that it all goes to the same place anyway so whatever. 

What place, by the way? No idea. 

And I’ll go ahead and order myself a new thing and have it appear on my doorstep in two days. And I won’t read the little booklet which comes with it about how to keep it well-maintained because even if I read it I know I’m not going to magically become the “item maintainer” from here on out so learning would be a waste of time. Instead, I’ll sit in my chair at an unnatural angle, watch an hour’s worth of algorithmically recommended Youtube videos, and eat a dinner which consists of 1300 calories of carbohydrates. I’m pretty sure each of these things is bad for my body in a unique and terrifying way. If I get shown a video about how living like this (read: like a normal person) is actually a multi-pronged ritualistic abuse upon every cell in my body, which in this very moment are all screaming out in a symphony of anguish, then I’ll get self-conscious and maybe try to make some adjustments for about a week. But at the end of the day, this is the only thing to do that makes sense. It’s intuitive to me, and that’s worth a lot. Why would I bother attempting to maintain my body, anyway? It’s going to fall apart either way. 

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Things could be different, I think. 

I want for part of the solidarity network to involve creating a catalog of people who know how to fix and maintain. I want to get such people to share their skills to others, and for this growing cohort of maintainers to help their friends and neighbors to break this autocannibalistic cycle of packages and trash.