But they're good for you.
I hate vegetables.
When I was a little girl, my dad claimed he could determine the nutritional value of any food with a simple test. If I, his daughter, liked it, it was unhealthy.
For many years I wondered why this test worked. It always seemed unfair to me. Why wasn't I allowed to eat cookies all day? Why did ice cream taste so much better than brussel sprouts?
And then, how much longer does it take to clean the dishes than to get them dirty? Why is it easier to tell a lie than to confess the truth? Despite our greatest efforts, why do our bodies get older and weaker until they eventually collapse?
One day I found the answer in science class. (I've always hated science because it's hard to understand. I'd rather study something that comes easier to me.)
The second law of thermodynamics, also called the Law of Increasing Disorder: natural processes will spontaneously move in one direction, unless an outside influence interferes. They will move toward entropy; e.g. disorder.
It was a law of physical science, and I knew it was true. Not because the science people said it, but because I'd seen it every day of my life. Nature will take the simplest route requiring the least amount of effort. This path leads us down a road to destruction and chaos.
Naturally, spontaneously, and in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics, even humanity continues in the right direction.
In other words, the natural direction.
In other words, precisely the wrong direction. Toward increasing disorder.
Family units disintegrate, morals are more loosely defined, absolute truths are no longer considered absolute. Immediate gratification, sense stimulation, entertainment, and easily obtained prizes become our priorities; we want minimal effort to reap the greatest rewards.
But no matter how many "Get-rich-quick" and "Lose 20 pounds this week!" schemes we fall for, the true way to get somewhere is always uphill. Always. It's always the hard way that we reach our goal.
We will feel our biggest nostalgia, our greatest pride, and our deepest happiness after the long race we ran or the righteous fight we dedicated every ounce of our strength to. We will learn the most because of a struggle. We will find joy at the end of the strait and narrow. We will be saved because One Person faced every agony, every anguish, and every ache.
To achieve, we have to keep climbing. That's why life is a test. That's why life is hard. And that's why life is good.
Unfortunately, that's bad news for me. It means broccoli for dinner.
When I was a little girl, my dad claimed he could determine the nutritional value of any food with a simple test. If I, his daughter, liked it, it was unhealthy.
For many years I wondered why this test worked. It always seemed unfair to me. Why wasn't I allowed to eat cookies all day? Why did ice cream taste so much better than brussel sprouts?
And then, how much longer does it take to clean the dishes than to get them dirty? Why is it easier to tell a lie than to confess the truth? Despite our greatest efforts, why do our bodies get older and weaker until they eventually collapse?
One day I found the answer in science class. (I've always hated science because it's hard to understand. I'd rather study something that comes easier to me.)
The second law of thermodynamics, also called the Law of Increasing Disorder: natural processes will spontaneously move in one direction, unless an outside influence interferes. They will move toward entropy; e.g. disorder.
It was a law of physical science, and I knew it was true. Not because the science people said it, but because I'd seen it every day of my life. Nature will take the simplest route requiring the least amount of effort. This path leads us down a road to destruction and chaos.
Naturally, spontaneously, and in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics, even humanity continues in the right direction.
In other words, the natural direction.
In other words, precisely the wrong direction. Toward increasing disorder.
Family units disintegrate, morals are more loosely defined, absolute truths are no longer considered absolute. Immediate gratification, sense stimulation, entertainment, and easily obtained prizes become our priorities; we want minimal effort to reap the greatest rewards.
But no matter how many "Get-rich-quick" and "Lose 20 pounds this week!" schemes we fall for, the true way to get somewhere is always uphill. Always. It's always the hard way that we reach our goal.
We will feel our biggest nostalgia, our greatest pride, and our deepest happiness after the long race we ran or the righteous fight we dedicated every ounce of our strength to. We will learn the most because of a struggle. We will find joy at the end of the strait and narrow. We will be saved because One Person faced every agony, every anguish, and every ache.
To achieve, we have to keep climbing. That's why life is a test. That's why life is hard. And that's why life is good.
Unfortunately, that's bad news for me. It means broccoli for dinner.
posted by merrilykaroly at
2:17 PM
9 Comments:
Broccoli is delicious!! And it's GREEN!
By
Anonymous, At
8:31 PM
That's interesting how it enables the test of life and the good in life. It's also interesting to think that without the Second Law we might have a hard time recognizing whether time is running forward or backward. Or recognizing intelligence at work (which reverses entropy). (But also, evil has a place to hide here—among the naturally occurring disorder.) Anyway, vegetablewise it could be worse for you—you could be having peas for dinner—and peas are certainly in league with the Second Law because, being round, they roll downhill.
By
Anonymous, At
11:08 PM
Make sure you serve yourself up some nice holllindaise with your broccoli---
that's the only way I can choke it down.
Don't tell Skywalker that I said that.
By
Unknown, At
2:40 PM
But I like bacon. And cheese, I love cheese. And who's to say that the second law of thermodynamics has anything to do with me or humans in general. And if it does apply to humans, then what outside influences do we need to allow to influence us and which ones do we not. So being amoral is bad, because it suggests that nothing is good or bad, so nothing affects us. If we, the human race, allow nothing to affect us then peace out human race. But, what about immoral I thought that was said to lead to disorder. But then again, many people who care about the moral do not see amoral. They see either immoral or moral. I suppose that those who care to label themselves or what they do as immoral also see immoral and moral. So those who see things as amoral are heading down the road to increasing disorder, but what about those who see the difference. Both those who see immoral and moral and are immoral, and those who see immoral and moral and are moral are allowing some outside source to affect them. Which source is best? Or are both sides just as good because they allow an outside source to act on them, thus diverting increasing disorder. I suppose that matters on who/what is the source of both sides, and which side, although operated by an outside source, is most similar to the amoral or what occurs when not allowing an outside influence. If the actions of the immoral is most similar the amoral road then bad, and visa versa. But I see a lot of similarities to the actions of the immoral and the actions of the amoral, while the moral act completely different. Hmmm… Okay fine, I won’t eat cheese and bacon… all the time.
By
Josh, At
10:02 PM
Yes, you will eat cheese and bacon. In fact, you're eating it right now. Okay, so the problem is that to hinder the law of increasing disorder, the outside influence has to be pushing the opposite way. Someone who is immoral is still taking the easy way out by doing bad things--thus increasing the disorder in their life. It doesn't matter what their reasoning is. The only outside influence that will reverse the process is a GOOD influence.
By
merrilykaroly, At
10:08 PM
Those distinctions Josh brings up seem to be important—amoral and immoral. Also the natural world of rocks and volcanoes versus the world of people. There are some interesting ideas that sound like they deal with the idea of entropy in 2 Ne 9: 5-12.
One also can think about disorder in the sense of 1) being a raw material which has not yet been ordered or acted upon creatively, versus 2) something that has been ordered or created, but now is perverted—a disordering in a higher sense: “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
All of this talk of order can be quite confusing! For example, it seems that the second law of thermodynamics cannot really be a law at all! A law by definition is something that is a manifestation of order of some kind (if you throw an object up in the air it will come back down; if you add the same number to both sides of the equation, both sides will still be equal; you must not drive above the speed limit; wickedness never was happiness; etc.). How can there be a “manifestation of order” that decreases order itself? The idea is incoherent. The second law is really just a statistical observation about the number of possibilities available. (If you write ten numbers on pieces of paper and put them in a jar in order from one to ten, and then you shake the jar so the numbers get mixed up, there are 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x7x8x9x10 possible orders of the numbers you can draw out of the jar. The longer you shake the greater the chance that the order you draw them out will be different than the original order you put them in. You will eventually reach a point where every possible order will be equally likely, and you will say they are now all mixed up, and have reached maximum entropy.) As Tolstoy said, every happy family is alike, but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own individual ways. Maybe there are relatively few ways to eat good, but lots of ways to eat bad. Vegetables!
By
Anonymous, At
4:52 PM
Peas are delicious!! And they're GREEN!
By
Anonymous, At
8:39 PM
Brussel Sprouts are really delicious!! And they're GREEN!
By
Anonymous, At
12:28 PM
anonymous--
you're lucky. :)
By
Unknown, At
9:20 AM
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