Bruce Charlton's Notions

Modern science acknowledges a single universal tendency called entropy - which is assumed to explain everything and applies everywhere and eternally (entropy never 'runs out'!); which leads to the problem of why anything exists in the first place. There is also the difficulty of explaining why reality hasn't wound down long ago.

Physics has expended ingenuity on 'explaining' such matters - but the point I am making is that the need for explaining everything in terms of undirected and degrading forces arises only because of the fixed assumption that only such entropic tendencies exist.  

Entropy crops-up in biology as natural selection - which is supposed (assumed) to explain everything; despite that it is a negative, destructive, disordering tendency. 'Teleology' - direction, tendencies towards form and function... these are excluded by assumption from modern (post 1950s) biology.


An opposite force is sometimes posited and termed negentropy - and this is hypothesised to explain why there is anything in the first place and why everything hasn't already been destroyed... But in a world dominated by entropy as its prime reality - the assumption is that any countervailing tendency is limited, and will run-out sooner-or-later.

So the most ridiculous thing in physics is to posit a 'perpetual motion' machine - because physicists 'know' (i.e assume) that all positive, form-making, movement-generating, reparative and functionally-innovative tendencies are limited, and will (soon or late) get used-up.


But if entropy is negative then negentropy is a double-negative... so what is the positive thing that negetropy is trying not to name?

The answer is: divine creation.

So, the proper name and concept of negentropy is divine creation.


(Thus we discover why only entropy is allowed by mainstream science. Science is based on the exclusion of the divine from explanations - that is what makes it useful, practical. There is nothing wrong with that assumption - so long as it is remembered that the divine has been excluded by assumption; and not because it is unreal or unimportant. However, that is exactly what scientists have forgotten, and which they now deny! Scientists excluded God by-assumption, forgot what they had done - then claimed that the fact God was not present in science, meant that God did not exist!)


It seems that Mankind was spontaneously capable of supposing divine creation as the primary reality - as an inexhaustible source of form, order, motivation and whatever else was supposed to be characteristic of creation.

The negative forces came after - as the product of evil/ demonic beings - creatures 'gone bad' - or bad in their original natures.

So entropy exists in a world of divine creation. There is ongoing creation - and there is a countervailing entropic tendency that tends towards death, destruction, disorder...


Most important, therefore, is for us to make a very different, opposed, assumption that divine creativity is inexhaustible; and therefore 'perpetual motion' is actually the primary and natural state of things as we know them!

We live, in fact, inside and part-of that perpetual motion 'machine' which is divine creation.

While I realize that civilization could begin to accelerate irreversibly into collapse today, tomorrow, or next week; the fact that this has not already happened is more and more astonishing - because essentially every single policy change in the Western world has been destructive for the past three or more decades. 

Entropy rules - the trend is against creation and towards disorder. 

If you doubt this, take a look at the mainstream media and the major stories it is pushing on any given day - including the major narrative, fictions, images, concepts, and 'facts'; and (assuming you can interpret things from a Christian basis) you will be forced to agree. 

Every week, the powers-that-should-not-be seem to unveil another body blow against civilization - piling in another upon another. 

The astonishing thing is that civilization has not yet collapsed - I mean, this is really astonishing. On the one side, we have the entirety of the global, national and local leadership class; and the leadership of all the major corporations, professions, and (supposedly-) functional social institutions - all of whom are doing their level best to destroy their own functionality and destroy what remains. 

Why have they not yet succeeded? Why has entropy not been able to succeed in reducing civilization to chaos? 

What is that which opposes entropy: what is, on other words, the source of negentropy in Western civilization? 

I regard this as a genuine mystery - at least at the material level. 

Looked at materially, we have most of the world functioning entirely on smoke and mirrors, on lies and delusions. 

And yet - here we are!

My best guess is that - although The System is corrupt (i.e. does not aim at functionality, aims primarily at anti-functional leftist goals) most of The System is useless or harmful. Therefore, damaging functionality makes no real difference, or may have a mildly positive effect. 

Even within valuable systems - the necessary work is done by relatively few people, in minority sectors of the overall institution. So long as these continue to perform their jobs, then things can keep going for the time being.  

Of course, by this material analysis; in the end they will win, civilization will collapse substantially, and billions will die --  unless the trend to destruction and increased entropy is reversed. Because the way things are going the functional aspect of civilization is shrinking towards the point that it cannot be sustained - no matter how effective are the minority of real workers and doers.  

Yet this analysis does not account for why the minority of the functional workforce are motivated to keep doing what needs to be done; in a world where everything official, bureaucratic and of media-origin (literally!) conspires against them.  

When all the incentives are for more entropy; who is opposing it?

Who is behaving negentropically?

What makes this situation even stranger is that I strongly suspect that most of those few who "do the world's work" are not aware of any compelling reason why they should do so - they just do it. 

(Farmers, maintenance engineers, repair men... these are not usually self-consciously aware of the distinctive reasons behind the fact that they maintain an ideal of functionality in a world where the mass majority are indifferent or actively-hostile to it.) 

My best answer, so far, is that these are still operating instinctually, unconsciously; with a residue of that Original Participation that used to be almost universal and which once coordinated communities and societies. 

They (perhaps) do not (like most people) feel themselves to be wholly alienated individuals; essentially detached from other men, and from The World and Nature. Because they experience themselves (implicitly) as part of Life; they continue to fulfil their roles in the scheme - regardless of incentives.  

If so; this cannot last. The irreversible trend for several generations of adults; has been a dwindling to extinction of such unconscious, instinctive communality and service. 

We therefore cannot rely upon the dwindling stocks of 'real workers' to sustain civilization. In the first place, they will not be allowed to: the target is painted on them, and the missiles are flying. 

(Just consider how quickly the ethos of courageous service in a good cause has been crushed in the US and UK police or military - where it is now essentially illegal to be a good cop/ soldier; just as, much earlier, it was made impossible to be a good scientist or a good teacher.) 

The only sustainable positive development will be for individuals to become aware of the needs of the community, and the powers of evil that work to crush it. 

And then, in face of this, such people will need to make a conscious choice to know and repudiate evil, and instead seek Good - so far as they are able. 

The age of unconscious, automatic, common-sense Good-ness is past; and unless people come to recognize purposive evil explicitly, to discern the root of Good in God, and to ally with God and divine creation; then evil will be unopposed - and entropy will lead to chaos.   

The Classical concept of God is one of completion and perfection - an individual such as you or me cannot add anything to complete perfection.

Therefore any human creation is constrained within already-existing divine perfection; and human creation is never substantive, never necessary - our best efforts can never (even in theory) make a real difference to already-existing perfect completion.

 
However, my understanding is different from this; I understand God's creation to be growing, developing through time; and with endless scope for individuals (such as us) to contribute.

The difference between this mortal life on earth, and Heavenly life, is that our creating happens in the face of the dominance of change, of 'entropy' - a tendency for what-is-created (including our-selves) to relapse towatds primal chaos.

Whereas Heaven is a creat-ing world, open-ended, continually 'under construction' - a world in which there is both new creation and permanence: a world of 'negentropy'.

How? Due to Love. Heaven in a world in which creation is harmnised by Love; possible by the eternal committment to Love that is made in resurrection.


So - there was a primal chaos; then God made from it, and in it, a Heaven of his own creation. Since Jesus, there is the Heaven in which God's creation is joined with those of his resurrected children.

We live in the world between these worlds; but although ourselves in this transient form, may create in ways that are carried through to the permanence of Heaven  

As I have previous said, from reading the Fourth Gospel as well as the core sense of Christianity, I do not believe that Jesus Christ promised a Second Coming. On the contrary, I believe Jesus fully achieved everything he incarnated to achieve in a cosmological sense - in terms of changing reality; and that since ascension His role is to guide all who ask for His help, by the Holy Ghost. 

But a familiar worldly-Messianic project of redemption of this sinful and suffering mortal life, of Jesus returning to take-up kingship of a New and Purified this-world, seems to have been introduced into Christianity at an early stage - and continues. 

For such redemption to happen, this-world would need to be remade, in such a way that all that is evil and of-sin - including death - would be removed, purified, transformed; and only Good remain. 

This might be envisaged to happen all-at-once at the second coming; but there have always (I think) been some who saw this happening gradually, incrementally, a bit at a time. 

I first understood this in listening to lectures by Stanley Messenger in which he expounded the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. In this explanation, the spilled blood of the crucified Christ entered the substance of the Being that is planet earth; and initiated a process of transformation that could be explained in terms of alchemy and homoeopathy; and would lead eventually to the total redemption of earth and everything the dwells here. In the end (as I understand it) there would be a complete integration of all, into full accord with divine purposes. 

I have also come across what seems to me a variation of this basic idea in Philip K Dick's Exegesis; where he is discussing Jacob Bohme and AN Whitehead. PKD's version is that this reality began as dominated by chaos and continues as entropy. God began creation in this context; and there has since been a process by which creation gradually overtook chaos; in which negentropy incrementally overwhelms entropy... Until either at or by the Second Coming, the process is completed and all that is evil, destructive - all suffering and pain - is transformed into Goodness and Happiness. 

My above summaries are themselves of secondary sources, thus unreliable as to detail - but I offer them as the kind of thing that would need to happen if this mortal world were to be saved, redeemed, made into Heaven on Earth. In other worlds, all that is evil, all destructive change, all death - would need to be transformed into harmony with divine creation. 

And this transformation is regarded as something that will happen. It is not a matter of choice, but of processes acting-irresistibly-upon Beings. Evil and Sin are eliminated by being made good. 

Now - I regard this as both impossible - because evil cannot be made Good; and undesirable to Christians - because salvation must be chosen.  

More fundamentally; I do not believe that this is what will happen! I think it is a mistake to suppose that Jesus said he would make Heaven on earth, or by processes incrementally to transform mortal to immortal life. 

The real situation is much simpler; which is that evil and sin will not because cannot be eliminated in this world and mortal life; which is why we must die and be resurrected to enter the state of only-Goodness: we must be born again.  

Those, and only those, who choose resurrection (and allow/ embrace the necessary transformative changes to themselves) will be added to Heaven, will join Heavenly life - leaving-behind their sins and all evil; and from thence, living only by love. 

This mortal realm with its sins and evil will be left-behind; as a place for those who choose to hold to their sins and evil, and those who choose not to live wholly by love. 

Such must happen; in order that Heaven be possible; and it must happen because eternal Beings must dwell somewhere.

And if Beings do not want to dwell in Heaven, then they will remain in some part or variant of the mixed-world of this-world of mortality - where entropy and creation contend.