The Entropy of Being

Entropy, in all its cold glory, is disorder. The tendency of molecules to scatter, energy to diffuse, and systems to decay. We were born into this very chaos. Into molecules dispersed in strange geometries. Entropy is stitched into the very marrow of our bones. And yet, we speak of perfection as if it were within reach. As if the universe hadn’t already chosen its side—disarray. 

When the stars collapse, when galaxies scatter, when heat dies—we call it entropy. We are entropy. A momentary arrangement of chaos, clothed in skin and thought. For entropy is not merely a law of physics—it is a condition of being. To exist is to fall apart slowly. What is a human, if not a brief defiance against the inevitable collapse?

If entropy is the randomness of molecules—the natural drift of particles toward disarray—then human beings, too, are built from this scatter. We are not engineered for stillness or symmetry; we are not equations solving neatly to zero. When this concept is applied to energy, entropy becomes a measure of chaos, of how wildly things disperse—how little control they truly have over where they end up. And isn’t that what it means to live?

To be human is to embody entropy: to scatter, to change, to move against and with the chaos, never still for long. But a perfectionist wages war against this very law—an impossible revolt against the nature of existence.

Perfectionists tend to crave clean lines, flawless outcomes, and a stillness that mirrors absolute zero. But just as absolute zero cannot be reached, neither can perfection. Theoretically, there can be an entropy of zero, but not realistically. If zero entropy is peace, then perfection is a myth—something no being can ever reach. 

Therefore, the more a perfectionist resists the scatter, the more they suffer under the illusion of control. Their flaw isn’t ambition—it’s denial. A refusal to accept that chaos is not the enemy, but the condition.

We enter the world wrapped in it. You can't resist the fate constructed into your first breath—it’s the state of things. The order of disorder. An unchangeable. You learn to live with it, live around it. Like a disaster unfolding on the stove mid-meal, you don’t stop—you step over the broken glass, wipe your hands on a towel, and keep going. That’s how it is. That’s how it’s always been.

Even so, a perfectionist becomes a tragic figure: one who seeks order in a universe that only guarantees disorder. Their life becomes a futile equation, always solving toward a standard that can never be achieved. And in resisting entropy, they resist themselves.

All in all, it can be understood that there is a natural tendency in the universe toward disorder. Disorder is in our blood, wired into the circuits of our veins. We were born into it—into chaos, into dissonance, into disarray. How strange, then, that we dare to dream of perfection, to chase it, when we ourselves were shaped by flaw. 

This is the revelation entropy offers: if the universe always leans toward disorder, then what hope do we have against it? Who wages war against the cosmos and emerges whole? Perfection—what a laughable ambition. We are not perfect. We are multitudes, contradictions, shattered reflections—but never perfect. We were made by entropy. And for it.

To live is not to resist this scatter, but to endure it. Perhaps even to embrace it.

The ancients, in their own absurdly fractured ways, knew this. Heraclitus, ever the melancholic observer of flux, wrote: “Everything flows” (‘panta rhei’). Essentially, this suggests an attractive and familiar thought, namely that everything changes—all is in permanent flux.

And in that ‘river’ of his—forever changing, never twice the same—lies the essence of entropy: molecular chaos in poetic disguise. The measurement of disorder. His river is not calm. It churns. It carries. It devours and rebuilds. So too do we. We are never the same from moment to moment. 

It is true. We do not remain the same version of ourselves across a lifetime—we shift with every day, every hour, every minute. Change is constant. It’s only natural. We are never the same self twice. We leave ourselves behind as time moves forward, shedding old skins without ceremony. Only, we rarely notice the transformation until someone else points it out. 

When Michel de Montaigne wrote in Du repentir that he observed not how things are, but how they are passing, he no doubt believed himself to be echoing a very Heraclitean thought. Even Nietzsche and Plato, in their own ways, held the same view. Heraclitus, after all, is said to believe that nothing is permanent—there is only movement. And yet, despite its ancient roots, it all sounds strikingly postmodern.

Hence, to cling to stillness, then, is to disown the river in our blood. It is to deny our condition.

But perhaps the more troubling question is not that we change, but whether we could endure the same disintegration again and again. If Heraclitus gives us flux, Nietzsche returns it to us with a rather brutal challenge: eternal recurrence. Imagine this life—its contradictions, its messes, its unlucky occurrences—looping forever. No end. No escape. 

If entropy is disorder, then recurrence is its cruel theatre. 

This is the crux of Nietzsche’s thought experiment: if time is a circle and entropy is our nature, could you say yes to it? Not once, but eternally?

What he demands is not passive acceptance, but Amor fati—the love of fate. To not merely endure the chaos but to embrace it with zeal. To welcome the scatter, the suffering, the entropy, not as obstacles, but as the very fabric of your existence. As a second nature of sorts.

A perfectionist wouldn’t be too fond of Nietzsche and his Amor Fati—that much is certain. I’m trying my best not to resent it, being the perfectionist that I am. I’m trying to unlearn this fatal flaw.

And just like that, the perfectionist trembles. Because to love one's fate is to release control. To find beauty in the disordered and meaning in the meaningless. It is to stare directly into the absurd and answer: yes, again. It is to welcome every accident and imperfection as is and to smile at the scattering of one’s own self. 

But what if this scattering wasn’t necessarily a choice? What if the fall into chaos preceded even our ability to embrace it?

Here enters Heidegger, who called it Geworfenheit—thrownness. We are thrown into the world, into histories and geographies and bloodlines we did not choose. To exist is to be tossed into entropy with no warning, no instruction, no logic. The perfectionist looks for design. Heidegger reminds us there is only thrownness—only the strange, trembling fact that we are here, amidst it all, trying desperately to make meaning in a world that offers none.

Entropy does offer any semblance of comfort; neither does it provide answers. But it does give us clarity that our imperfection is not failure—it is law. That the scatter in our souls is not weakness—it is nature. That to unravel is not to lose, but to live.

From personal experience, I can say this: when I try to execute something perfectly and a single disruption derails it, just like that, perfection slips through my fingers—I have to remind myself, it’s not always my fault. Sometimes, it’s simply the law of things. Perhaps even Heidegger’s throwness at work.

Still, it’s hard to change a mindset when it has shaped the very way you exist. Perfection does that to you—becomes your compass, your condition.

Yet, even as we stagger through the incoherence of our thrownness, a subversive possibility emerges: what if chaos is not entirely devoid of structure? Enter chaos theory—a mathematical insult to the illusion of control, suggesting that disorder may, in fact, possess its own cryptic logic.

Begin with the Butterfly Effect: a small, seemingly inconsequential movement—a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico—sets off a chain of reactions that eventually culminate in a hurricane over China. The implication is humiliatingly simple: we are at the mercy of initial conditions we neither perceive nor understand. A life, any life, is a compendium of such micro-movements, amplified to unrecognisable proportions. One missed train, one half-meant word, and the trajectory warps entirely.

And no, prediction offers no comfort. Chaos theory makes clear that in complex systems, such as lives, weather, or relationships, even the smallest margin of error in measurement renders long-term forecasting absurd. Control is not only elusive; it is mathematically impossible. We are not steering the ship—we are clinging to the hull.

But chaos is not pure disorder. Rather, it investigates the uneasy transience between order and its undoing. Systems mix. They fragment and eventually, they shatter. Two points that begin side by side can, through turbulence, end up oceans apart—an apt metaphor for the human condition, if ever there was one. This mixing is irreversible; there is no un-stirring of the self once entropy begins to do its work.

Then there are the fractals—patterns that repeat infinitely, neither random nor orderly, existing somewhere in between. Trees, coastlines, mountain ranges, hurricanes—nature wears its chaos in symmetrical disguise. Fractals remind us that what appears senseless may, under recursion, reveal a terrible kind of coherence.

Fractals, too, mirror the human condition: we are iterations of our past, shaped by infinitesimal moments that reflect through every version of ourselves. Like the butterfly effect, a single breath, a single choice, alters the whole design.

In that sense, chaos theory does not contradict the entropy of being—it deepens it. It shows us that the scatter within us is not simply failure, but formula. Not deviation, but pattern. Not meaningless, but complex. And while that may offer no consolation to the perfectionist still scrubbing at the stains of disorder, it does at least offer clarity: you are not broken. You are fractal.

I hope that puts a perfectionist or two at ease—blaming physics and fate—because, well, I know it helps me sleep at night, knowing that my imperfection isn’t always my fault. Entropy exists. We were born into disorder; it’s all we’ve ever known, and all we’ll ever naturally be. There’s nothing wrong with you, or with me. We were made this way. To make mistakes. To be imperfect. It’s only natural.

And maybe, if we can learn to love the fall apart, to cradle the mess rather than correct it, we will stop chasing phantoms in the name of perfection.

We are entropy incarnate—poised, momentarily, between order and collapse. Our longing for order is the most beautiful rebellion against a universe that prefers ruin, and to dream of perfection is to lie beautifully to the laws of physics.

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Glossary:

Fractal - In math, a fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are built by repeating something over and over again (iterating).

Flux - continuous change, passage, or movement.

Recurrence - the fact of occurring again.

Cryptic - mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous | having a meaning that is mysterious or obscure.

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