Entropy And Discord

     “You know what I hate?” – Clive Owen as Smith in Shoot ‘Em Up

     Courtesy of Hans G. Schantz, I’ve just read this thought-provoking article by Bruce Charlton. Charlton’s concept of entropic pseudo-creation resonated with me immediately:

     The past century has been characterized (indeed plagued!) by a pseudo-creativity which has usurped true creativity.
     This has even afflicted those were were potentially, or at-first, genuinely-creative geniuses – so that these individuals have turned against truth, beauty and/or virtue and end-up harming culture to a similar extent that earlier geniuses used to benefit culture.
     Likely examples would include Picasso, Schoenberg, James Joyce, Wittgenstein, Keynes, Freud, and several other heroes of the ‘modern’ era….
     Entropic-pseudo-creation, by contrast, uses-up the energies and potential of a field of discourse.
     In effect; it generates energy from the destruction of form and positive motivations; and ‘burns’ actual creation to generate the energy (and attractive appeal) needed to make, sustain and promote pseudo-creation.
     False creation is therefore entropic because it depletes achieved divine creation; it erodes God’s-work in order to do more of the devils-work.
     Entropic-pseudo-creation is therefore, like all evil, parasitic upon the Good.

     This describes a vast region of contemporary cultural space. It has afflicted every one of the arts. It has seriously damaged philosophy and the humanities. Worst of all, it’s steadily creeping into the sciences.

     Because I write, there’s a particular subsector of such garbage on which I focus my detestation. Few things in fiction are more important to me than originality. That’s because it’s extremely difficult, after centuries of storytelling, to come up with anything that’s simultaneously original and relevant to people’s lives. I can’t write unless I have an original idea with which to work. However, it must also be an idea that can stimulate conflicts and emotional reactions among my characters. Lack of any such idea is one of the reasons I didn’t release a new novel in the Year of Our Lord 2022.

     Some pseudo-creationist writers circumvent the problem of originality by jamming things together that simply don’t go together:

• Wizards on starships.
• High fantasy novels with vampire characters.
• Romances between humans and aliens…or robots.
• Elves with steam power and women in leather corset-bustiers.

     Combine such a perverse combination with mediocre writing and inattention to mechanics, and you get the worst of what afflicts fiction today.

     Apart from my particular peeve, the arts suffer several varieties of the malady:

• “Drama” composed by formula.
• “Poetry” that lacks rhyme and meter.
• “Music” that lacks melody and harmony.
• “Paintings” that don’t depict anything in particular.
• “Sculpture” that mocks the human form…if there’s a human in it.
• “Literature” in which there’s no perceptible theme, no coherent plot, and no protagonist.

     I suppose it could be worse. We could be forced to pay for the production of such garbage…wait, what? We are? Oh dear. I took my eye off the ball, didn’t I? My bad.

     Those who eagerly consume such crap are egged on by a “critical community” that actively hates the arts about which they claim authority. They also hate the consumers thereof. What matters to them is wholly distinct from any artistic values, for they have none to speak of.

     I could go on; there’s plenty to talk about in this space. But I have other things on my mind at the moment. Ponder for yourself how the humanities, philosophy, and the sciences have steadily been infiltrated by irrelevant or outright destructive ideas and motifs. Why, for example, are philosophy departments being invaded by racialist flacksters determined to twist every question of philosophical relevance into bigotry against Negroes? Why are departments of chemistry and physics being assailed for the preponderance of white male practitioners thereof? Why is the notably difficult discipline of psychometrics being condemned as hateful for finding enduring statistical disparities among the races?

     There is no Last Graf. Sturgeon’s Law applies, as it always has and always will. Just be sure to keep your Garbage Detector well calibrated and its filters unblocked. And most important of all, try your best to convey good values, and an appreciation for good art, good science, and good thinking to your children.