The Entropy Engine

A three chapter meditation in fiction about thermodynamics, and LDS theology in the tradition of Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstaedter.

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I am currently reading Brandon Sanderson’s most recent tome, Wind and Truth, the final book in the first five book arc of his massive Stormlight Archive. This book is nearly as long as the Old Testament. That is not hyperbole, nor a complaint. 491,000 words vs the Old Testament KJV 609,425 words. Probably the last Sanderson book I will ever read. There were some issues like lame dialogue and bloat, but that isn’t my concern here.

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A drum corps was providing the rhythm for a great military review, led by two drum majors, one snazzily dressed in pearl gray and the other in ivory.

All went well until one drummer started doing his own beat.  Some of the marchers got off.

The major in pearl gray signaled for louder beats.  Surely this would drown out the errant drummer.  But the errant drummer continued to play in the pauses between the beats.  The chaos continued.  The drum major in pearl gray shrugged and asked his colleague if he had any ideas.

The drum major in ivory signaled for creativity and improvisation.  By varying the patterns within the basic structure of the marching rhythm, the drum corps would not only keep the marchers going but also provide an attractive experience that the out of sync drummer would want to enjoy, thus luring him back into rhythm.  It didn’t work.  The out of sync drummer simply played louder so it could still be heard that he was doing his own thing.

But then the first drum major signaled for louder beats and the second signaled for continued improvisation on the basic rhythm, and this combination ended the sound of the different drummer, whether because he rejoined the group or because he could no longer be heard, and the review went on.

I am told that Elon Musk has asked for more positive news.  Here I am, answering the call:

There are more 84-year old South Koreans than there are 1-year old South Koreans.

Everyone loves Grandmas.

The Clan Chief’s piper played badly out of tune.  The Clan Chief, who had the Benefits of an Education, was not worried.  ‘I’ll just get in more pipers,” he said.  “Lots more pipers.  Given that being out of tune almost certainly varies in statistically standard ways, if I get enough pipers the average will be in tune.”

It didn’t work.

Holiday time is often family travel time.  We were shuffling bedrolls from the cartop carrier to a sibling’s guest room, or from a sibling’s guest room back to the car top carrier, I forget which, with a spectacular view of distant mountains, when I realized that finding beauty and joy in these ordinary moments is of the essence.  Because even extraordinary things mostly just consider of ordinary moments organized and directed toward some great end.  The ordinary moments never end.

As we approach the end of the Christmas season, it is worth considering that the biggest holiday of the year is the one celebrating a birth, something that happens everywhere everyday, and not the one celebrating the Resurrection, a much less common event.  I expect that the Resurrection holiday will become a much bigger feast when the event it celebrates has become less out of the ordinary.

There was a young lord, rich, handsome, happy, admired, well-liked, and with a number of good friends much like himself.  Perhaps because of all these blessings, out of the lightness of his heart instead of walking in to a grand reception he leaped over the threshold.  The other young lords took it up.  It was quite the fashion of their set.

But one of the young lords grumbled to another.  “It’s an arbitrary fashion,” he said.  “We only do it because he who leapt first is the apple of every eye.  There are a thousand different ways we could express our gaiety and show we belong to our group.  We could, I don’t know, whistle after meals!  It’s all arbitrary!”

“Then whistle after meals,” said the other young lord he was talking to.  “But wouldn’t that be just as arbitrary?”

“Pfft,” said the first lord.  Then sighed.  Then laughed.  Then leaped.

At a dance, the ladies were chatting.

I’m here, one said, to attract a man.

That is a good reason, her partner in conversation said, but I’m afraid I am here just because I love to dance, and her eyes shone when she said it.

That’s very nice, the other said, but in her mind the lady wondered, how will she ever attract a man with an attitude like that.

The lady needn’t have worried. She attracted a man.

A doctor drew a sample from a milkmaid’s cowpox and said he would use it to create a vaccination against smallpox.  He told her she’d made a great contribution to the world.  The next day the rest of the milkmaids lined up outside his house, but he told them there was no more need.  He already had his sample.

They went away sad.  As the cows came running up to them for relief from the pressure of the cows’ udders, the milkmaids said, ‘there was our only chance to do something significant.’  As they expertly and smoothly sprayed liquid streams of milk into their pails without hurting the teats, they said ‘we will never be able to do anything of value.’  As they walked back down the lanes and laborers and childrens came out to the fences begging for a taste they said, ‘here we are stuck in this meaningless job.’  As housewives and farmers grinned at the pails they delivered,  they said, ‘we just aren’t good for anything.’

I’m looking for any suggestions you have to make engaging with restoration scripture more valuable this year.  Any and all thoughts welcome.

As part of this it might be helpful to start by reflecting on what helped you with the Book of Mormon this year.

The first step in charting where you are going is knowing where you are and have been.

I think it would be very helpful for all of our LDS friends if they took a few minutes to reflect on

1.  What  they learned from reading the Book of Mormon this year
2. What, if anything, helped their study to be more valuable?

It would also be very helpful if you were willing to share some of your reflections.

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Two boys set out at dawn on a hike into the woods.

They can around a hill and discovered a small stream-fed lake they had never seen before.  Mist was rising from the lake, the sun rose, and then gliding silently into their view they saw swans.

The one boy was awestruck.

The other complained, “where are they going?  There is nothing in this lake.  This is pointless.  Why aren’t they all in a line?  Why aren’t they forming a pattern?”

“I sometimes wonder,” the goose said to her gaggle, “how good I could have got at my career if I had just put off laying?”

Her friends were enthusiastic.  “It’s true!” they said.  “You were always so good at eating weeds.  And your honk!”  “You were always so good at pooping,” added another.

There once was a man with a withered hand who had four thick golden rings on the other.  He mourned when he acquired a fifth ring, because he had nowhere to put it.

At the edge of a wilderness, a wandering fox stopped to share gossip and news with another fox who happened to be there.

“Friend,” the wandering fox said, “back in that wilderness I saw many strange things and  I experienced a marvel.  As I was going I heard a bird call.  it was too complex to be a warning that I was present, because as you you we foxes are often maligned by birds as predators.”  The other fox nodded sagely.  “So I assumed it was a mating call.  Especially when the same call was repeated and repeated until I had heard it run through all the quarters of the wilderness.  But then the same bird, or another one much like, did a completely different call of equal complexity.  It too ran throughout all the forest.  As I traveled, the same phenomenon happened again, and then again.”

“This is easily explained,” the wayside fox said.  “It is had in memory among the foxes and the owls and the crows in these parts that once there was a great empire that ruled from where this wilderness  now grows.  No doubt you marked the ruins.  It is said they were great breeders and among other things they bred a kind of message bird.    They had pet ones that they would give a long message coded into song.  The bird would then sing it in the clear, carrying tones that you heard, and its compatriots that had been released into the wild would then repeat it and repeat it until it reached its destination.”

“Ingenious,” the first fox said.  “Do they taste good?”

The second fox, ignoring this interruption, went on.  “But now of course there are only ruins.  The birds make up nonsense to sing partly in memory of their glory days, but mostly because their breeding compels them to.”