If you know anything about physics, then you probably understand the concept of Conservation of Energy. The American Noble Price winner, Richard Feynman, gave this definition of it:
“There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law—it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in the manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.”
I promise this won’t turn into a physics lesson, but there is an interesting outcome from the conservation of energy. Most forms of energy (kinetic, chemical, rotational, nuclear, etc.) give off large dissipate in the form of thermal energy. The former forms are commingle known as ‘organized’ energy, where the molecules are not free to move. Thermal energy is known as ‘unorganized,’ or when molecules can move in whatever fashion they’d like.
Take for instance someone dropping a pen. Before someone drops it, it has gravitational potential energy. As the pen is falling, it has kinetic energy and its gravitational potential decreases. Once the pen hits the ground, it will have 0 gravitational potential and 0 kinetic. But if energy is conserved, where did it go? It transformed into heat–along with a few other forms. Nonetheless, up until the pen hit the ground, all forms of energy where in order, every molecule was in its place and could not move. As soon as it made impact, the dissipation of energy–into thermal energy–freed the molecules into ‘unorganized’ ones. The molecules move in rapid, uncontrolled motions causing heat.
As one can imagine, it is extremely difficult to make organized motion from unorganized motion.
The pen cannot suddenly become cold and then float off the ground back into your hand. That’d be impossible!
So here’s what I realized:
Society acts in the same way that energy does. Once a society becomes unorganized, it is rare that it ever becomes orderly again. Look at every great empire–the Romans, Aztecs, Egyptians, Greeks, Incas, and others. They never recovered from an unorganized state. It became messy, had the wrong leadership, started too many wars, and ultimately ruined their rein. Nonetheless, these civilizations never grew so large again. That is how devastating disorganization can be.
Great societies never have and never will be able to recover from disorganization
What will happen to our own society if something similar happens?
Well, as the saying goes, experience is the best teacher. We cannot let our society get overwhelmed, get tired, give up… We cannot become unorganized. The second we do that is the second it is all over. It is far easier to maintain a well organized civilization than it is to reorganized a disorderly one.
The fact of the matter is that disorganization comes in the most subtle forms. One does not recognize it from the beginning; it reveals itself once it is too late. Once you have realized that all you needed to do was keep up with the maintenance and not throw it to the waste side. Quite honestly, America is becoming unorganized. Our populous cannot team up and find a common problem that needs to be solved. There is a need to always be correct; there is a need to push down others’ ideas. This, in itself, is unorganized. And that is just our culture, let alone our nation’s state of guidance and oversight.
If we as Americans love our country and love the people in it, then we need to start being future-focused. Stop thinking what will be good for the amount of your term and start thinking about what will benefit the American people forever. ‘Will this truly benefit the American people?’ should be the first question asked of any bill, law, act, or verdict.
We must put leadership over one’s search for hedonism.