Ignorance, Decadence, and Entropy

A human system cannot stand for long if a significant majority of the participants of that system don't understand how that system works. If the ignorance of the operations and mechanisms of the system are massively widespread, neither can that system lay claim to being a system of liberty.

     If the saying "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance" is true, than the death of liberty is when that vigilance gives way to ignorance.

      Ignorance has many causes. A general disinterest in the processes of a government or society, mass distraction or "bread and circuses" situation, confusion caused by the complexity of the system, or outright deception are major causes of the ignorance that degrades human systems. 

      Another major cause of the breakdown of human systems is decadence. An overabundance of pleasure and leisure and the overindulgence of these things creates a situation where many individuals no longer need to understand the system nor have a desire to do so, and the overabundance and overindulgence of pleasure leads to a deficiency of people who actually understand how their abundant resources, security, and luxury/pleasure commodities are actually provided to them.

       This creates an entropy of the human system involved which leads to its degradation, breakdown, and possible collapse over time. It's ironic, how the immense success of a society and the abundance that results from it leads to the populace essentially getting "fattened up" and "dumbed down" with many people losing track of the mechanisms of the system that provided their wealth and comfort.

    The success ends up weakening the society over time, making us vulnerable to things like attacks, diseases, and social unrest. If unaddressed or unremedied, it can lead to a system failure.

    Lack of understanding of a social system by individuals often cripples opportunity for social advancement and leads to de facto oppression of certain social groups, no matter what the principles, rhetoric, or talking points of that system or its leadership may be.

     System complexity also creates problems. Because of differences in intelligence levels, not everyone is going to understand the depth of complex systems. 

     Even so, I would argue that most people have a certain degree of ability to understand human systems to at least a rudimentary level, and I would argue if intelligence levels of a population stagnates or deteriorates over time because of decadence and ignorance, then that entropy and decay of the human system involved will be expedited and intensified in a shorter timeframe. 

       Combatting social entropy and the decay of human systems requires quality education on all class levels, poor and rich alike, and the tendency of dumbing down the culture and society must be reversed. The wealthy must come to understand that they also stand to lose immensely from the collapse of a system. That's a pretty obvious statement, yet many fail to grasp it.

     Unfortunately, its the wealthy that often suffer from the decadence I described earlier the most, often at a cost that in their nearsightedness they don't fully grasp until we are at the edge of a precipice, or we fall over it.