The Decay of Society: The Miscellaneous Rants

As the week of “doom and gloom” comes to a close, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out a few of the various odds and ends of which I find society becoming more entropic by the day. Among these are cultural divides, moral opportunism, and apathy.

Have you ever walked into a situation and felt entirely out of place, as if you were from a different world compared to the other people there? How about driving along the road, seeing the automobile that’s been modified in ways that you can’t quite understand: Non-stock body parts of different colors, rims worth more money than is probably prudent, and a spoiler that looks like it could be paid for with a $20 out of my pocket and which definitely “spoils” any other augmentations of beauty that the vehicle might have. I was walking out of the local mall the other day, having recently finished servicing a customer there. Ahead of me I saw a young man, a teenager of some vintage, who had an oversized shirt and excessively baggy pants. I tried to review the situation further by determining if he was trying to hold them up or not. I kept thinking to myself “why on earth would I want to see your underwear?” Maybe the whole baggy pants thing is the latest fad, but I don’t see the utility in it. Utility that is strictly and solely for status or otherwise to fit in is lost on me, perhaps, but I can’t help but thinking about all the other places that I can look and see things of a similar nature. Take the girls, for instance, that have the provocative tattoos on their lower backs, something which has been given the term “tramp stamp” coined to describe it due to the commonly-held generalities of the types of girls getting this sort of body art. While what a person does to their own bodies is of their own concern, and it isn’t my place to judge them based on it, they do tend to play into what seems to be a cultural norm.

Think about it: When you speak to one of those kids with the earrings, baggy pants, or similar styles about him or her…what is your expectation? Our expectations will be colored by our biases and our prejudices, but there are certain standards which the culture should be held to: Without resorting to corrupting it. Recently, while I was at work, a college-age student dressed much the same fashion—minus the baggy pants, I believe, came in looking for a job. I recall something being mentioned to the effect after the fact that “I don’t care what people wear when they’re not at work, but if I’m going to offer a job to someone, I don’t think they should be dressed like that.” The rest of the team offered the same sentiments.

Save a deeper analysis of the subject and any agenda I have for a later blog post of my “professional manager” bent, so let’s continue to the next: Moral opportunism.

I am the type of person that means what he says and says what he means. I typically don’t like game playing in my interpersonal relationships and I adhere to a strict code of moral standards: Ones that do not change based on the situation which I find myself to be in. For some years now, I’ve been playing an online roleplaying and strategy game called Battlemaster. I’ve found some staggering truths about life from it, as I firmly believe it to be a macrocosm of the rest of the world. I’ve found that people who have military experience are the best to lead armies, for example. I’ve found that there are certain types of people whom you can rely upon and others that are shaky at best. There are many people that I play Battlemaster with whom I would go onto the battlefield alongside and fight in a foxhole with—this being the highest litmus test that I can offer a fellow human being—and just as many people as I wouldn’t trust to be in that situation with and not have to worry about them looking out for themselves. In this world there are people that you can count on and people that you can count on to practice situational ethics: A moral code which adapts to the situation found in front of the practitioner. My experiences on Battlemaster, just as in other parts of life, have proven to me that there are profiles of the types of people that are this way, and likewise there are profiles for the types of people that you can rely on to be there for you in your time of need.

Why doesn’t anyone do anything about any of this? By and far, I’d have to say that many people in this society, and others, are just apathetic. To the tone of the Bystander Effect, people expect that someone else will always be there to fix things, or that it might just go away on its own. Apathy is the general malaise which fuels entropy, causing things that are already in the trash only to get worse.

Is this really the world that you want to live in, or would you rather live in one that was better? Let your amount of apathy be the judge of that.

The Decay of Society: Frivolously Litigious

Look around. The society that we know is decaying from within because evil is allowed to prosper when good people do nothing; a notion deriving itself from a quote most often attributed to Edmund Burke, 18^TH century Irish statesman and philosopher. One of the easiest routes for any sort of thing to decay—such as a right or privilege offered—is for people to abuse it and for others to allow them to get away with the abuse.

I am willing to bet that everyone is familiar with the famous McDonalds coffee-burning case. Many people, however, misunderstand the suit as simply being of a frivolous nature. Heck, I even thought it was your standard “corporate greed” story passed from person to person to perpetuate the myth that the institution of McDonalds is evil. Instead, some facts:

“A jury…awarded $2.9 million to an 81-year-old woman scalded by McDonald's coffee…McDonald's lawyers [however] went on to dismiss several opportunities to settle out of court, apparently convinced that no jury would punish a company for serving coffee the way customers like it. After all, its coffee's temperature helps explain why McDonald's sells a billion cups a year…McDonald's [had given] the opposing lawyer its operations and training manual, which says its coffee must be brewed at 195 to 205 degrees and held at 180 to 190 degrees for optimal taste.”

Is nearly 200 degrees for your coffee too hot? Not according to Mr. Coffee, the people behind the machines that make, well, lots of coffee:

“A spokesman for Mr. Coffee Inc., the coffee-machine maker, says that if customer complaints are any indication, industry settings may be too low - some customers like it hotter. A spokeswoman for Starbucks Coffee Co. adds, "Coffee is traditionally a hot beverage and is served hot and I would hope that this is an isolated incident."

So, while some lawsuits are legitimate but portrayed incorrectly amongst individuals who likely do not know any better, there are plenty of lawsuits which don’t quite live up to the litmus test of being worth it. In the business and legal professions, it is an old adage that lawsuits are simply a negotiation by other means. Take the McDonalds incident, for example: The company had been given ample opportunity to negotiate to the satisfaction of the afflicted party; having not properly done what was perceived as due diligence on the plaintiff’s part, the “negotiation” went into a courtroom.

There are people who will happily sue people throughout this country and its legal system. In fact, according to an organization known as HALT, the number of people who have chosen to represent themselves pro se has increased 6 percent—from 21 percent to 27 percent in federal district courts. In the state courts of California, however, this number has tripled. What is he frequency of repeat abusers? According to an article in the September 3, 2007 issue of Forbes magazine “Nearly half of the study's 765 pro se litigants filed at least one previous suit in that court, including one who filed 57 complaints in one year.”

A great example of this abuse starts with Holli Lundahl and her repeated litigation against Eli Lilly and Company. The company has spent $1 million in defending against this “serial plaintiff.” A quick Google search shows that she has had many more than her fair share of her days in court, too. Of course, she has responded in such a fashion to her critics by stating that she has been abused by Eli Lilly and Company and the courts system—going all the way to the Supreme Court, even. I don’t know, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are that it’s not chicken.

The best for last: Amanda Ajuluchuku claims that Bank of America lost a $200 check of hers. According to court filings is caused her to suffer “panic and anxiety attacks, severe dizzy spells, headaches, and cold chills.” I’ve had much worse money problems, including the one time that the military didn’t process my paycheck properly—which amounted to no less than 7 times the amount Ms. Ajuluchuku claims that BOA lost of hers—and I didn’t sue anyone. Oh yeah: She sued—Claiming $5 billion-with-a-“b” in damages. The suit was eventually settled for $3,000 but she just kept on going. Alleging “discrimination, contempt, and acts of terrorism,” she filed at least 219 suits in federal courts over the course of 4 years. No legal team here, though: She represents herself, on a mission to use the proceeds of her litigious nature “to cater to the needs of the underprivileged children globally.”

While these examples show what seem to be some awfully extreme behavior, think about the case of Bart Ross: When federal Judge Joan Leflow dismissed his pro se suit regarding a malpractice suit of an Illinois medical center, he went ballistic and killed the judge’s husband, mother, and later himself.

Can’t stand the manner in which the society that we are living in is deteriorating? All it takes is for good people to do nothing; the apathy of each individual who just shrugs these matters off and moves on with their lives only goes to allow the fires of entropy to continue to burn.

Thermodynamics and the Degradation of Society, Part 1

“A lost horizon in an ocean of flames.”
—Def Leppard, “Desert Song”

Remember back to when you were younger, playing with your friends. When you were in constant contact or communication with them your bonds strengthened and you grew closer. In a sense, you became second nature to each other. The same could, perhaps, be applied to your first girlfriend or boyfriend or such. On the other hand, when you were out of contact for enough time things had a tendency to decay: You were not so much as in-sync as you were before; what was second nature now becomes a glimmer of a sense of what once was. You grow out of touch, what synergies existed because of what you had now lack the true functionality of what could be.

Physics is the study of the relationship between matter and energy. Thermodynamics is the study of energetic interactions or the lack thereof. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that, over time, a system will gradually grow more into disarray. When a system is being formed if there are any chaotic elements involved, those chaotic elements will only grow more prevalent throughout the life of that system. The only way to avoid complete systemic entropy is for the addition of energy to take place.

Energy, to the physicist, is anything ranging the continuum from heat to electricity; from the grand force of gravity to the strong nuclear force that holds the stuff that comprises us together. Energy, to you and I can be anything from effort to affection. Remarks that build confidence to those that seek malice. There are multiple types and factors involved with these kinds of energies that we use to interact with the world in everyday life. We could do something evolutionary: A task performed with a degree of competence, confidence, etc. We could, on the other hand, do something revolutionary: Not something that is a simple degree of effort and task-oriented, but seeks to be transformational to the end being sought. Additionally, this can be positive or negative. Things that are positive in nature will add positive energy to the system at hand; while negative things done will add to the chaos of the system in the same way that entropy seeks the complete disruption of it.

This Law of Thermodynamics applies to closed systems: A sense of the Galilean approach to physics shining through—simplification for the sake of simplification. The lives we live are rarely in a closed system unto themselves, rather they are open to the context of the environment surrounding it. Energy can be exchanged or events and situations otherwise influenced by the goings-on of the systems surrounding it. In other words, our lives are often directly influenced by our environment and indirectly influenced by those situations and environments around us. This is why context is always very important in, well, anything.

Now, for the bigger picture: Laziness and apathy are things that breed chaos. Have you ever wondered why Patton was such a great general? His famous adage that “something done now is better than something perfect tomorrow” goes to this end. By doing nothing in this moment and waiting for another for your plan or execution to be perfect you risk the system growing more entropic than you could handle or that could fit into your plan’s parameters.

Consider this a multi-part entry. More to follow.