In one of the recent articles published by Porosh it was highlighted how lockdown impacted us in more than one way. With all the shopping malls, restaurants and other places of entertainment having been closed, we were left with no choice but get accustomed to simple living not necessarily translating to high thinking. Now, one may wonder what has it to do with entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics!
Entropy as a term was first coined by German physicist Rudolf Clausius in 1868. It is a measure of the amount of energy no longer capable of conversion into work. This impliesan increase in entropy will lead to decrease of “available” energy. Hence, low-entropy economy is one of ‘necessities’ and not of ‘luxuries’. Lockdown has taught us to distinguish between the two. Do we thereby imply lockdown to continue till the economy is bled white? Certainly not.
We sincerely believe in building a sustainable eco system keeping in mind the future generations while serving the current generation including the senior citizens. Jeremy Rifkin in his path-breaking book Entropy: A New World View had observed,”… the Entropy Law tells us that a society’s energy flow must be reduced to as low a point as possible in order to sustain the unfolding of all of life as far as into the future as possible.” Hence, the economic activities should be geared to prioritize meeting the ‘necessities’ of the masses than ‘luxuries’ of a few which in any case accentuates entropy. As a corollary this involve deployment of a larger workforce and hence, bolstering our economy. After all, the law is infallible and we can only reduce its rate.
Let us quote Rifkin once again, “… ‘growth’ is really a decrease in the world’s wealth, nothing more than a process to take usable energy and transform it into an unusable state. … the more an economy grows, the more it digs itself into a hole.”
Hope our readers have enjoyed reading the blog. Porosh, as you know, does not shy away from sharing unconventional thoughts and ideas on this platform which need not always be in sync with mainstream thinking. We usually provide the ‘other view’.