Musings from work

Apologies in advance, cause this post is long and not an effort to be amusing in any way. It's a collection of words forming a hopefully intelligent thought, so if you came here to avoid shit like that, then it's a good time to leave... but I will get back to the barely-intelligible-babble type of content ASAP!

OK, so I'm listening to one of those light rock stations -- You know, the ones who steal obscure sound-clips from TV and movies, then arrange them into sound collages that are either just plain stupid or full of sexual innuendos. And they play them ad nauseum. -- so I was listening to Dust in the Wind (by Kansas) while I was pipetting and it got me thinking. Stick with me:

I find it odd that when people become chronically depressed, they are labelled as having a chemical imbalance in their brains -- an imbalance that gives them an outlook that every effort to accomplish anything is useless. It seems to me that they are the only ones who are balanced. They are the realistic ones! I mean, when you think about it, everything we do (humans, that is) as a race is -- in terms of the big picture -- useless. All our efforts will be erased after we're gone, and that's a fact. Anyone who finished high school chemistry/biology should know something about a little thing called entropy. Entropy is basically a measure of randomness and disorder. It is a proven fact -- a law of thermodynamics, in fact -- that every process increases the entropy of the universe as a whole. Every action of anything, though entropy/disorder may decrease locally, actually makes the universe more disordered. So what I'm trying to say is that the universe tends toward disorder. Got that?

Ok, so here's the kicker: We, as humans and living organisms, are basically islands of order and organization in a sea of increasing disorder. We are beings of order in a universe which is tending toward disorder. So basically , the universe is trying to kill you. Period. This is not a disputed fact kiddies, so don't argue, though there may be some dispute in the way I've worded it ("kill", for instance). The universe and the laws of thermodynamics oppose life. We're a transient side-effect of the universe's journey toward maximum entropy -- We're "allowed" to exist, because in the end, the result is going to be the same. Kind of like how if you're on a really slow train from Boston to New York, you could probably still run toward the back of the train and for a very short time at least, you would be able to get closer to Boston, but there's no fucking two shits about it that you're eventually getting to New York, cause sooner or later you run out of train. So there's my analogy for the day. Happy birthday to you.

OK, so back to depression: It's been said that our perception of time is our interpretation of the reactions going on that make up our thought processes and beings. It's all about the reaction, baby! The passage of time's... I guess you could say it's our interpretation of the universe's increasing entropy. We feel this increasing entropy as the passage of time, and the reason time doesn't go backward is because entropy doesn't. (This is an actually a well-respected theory, by the way. I don't think it's proven, but theories rarely are, so it's the best that can be expected.) Bear with me: So according to this, we feel the increase in entropy -- We fell the universe's flow toward disorder -- We can, in essence, feel our impending destruction -- and we measure it in hours, and minutes, and seconds. We use these "units of doom" to figure out when we have to pick up the kids, when we have to get to work, and how long before we give Grampy his pills again.

That is what I call fucking crazy! Talk about denial on a massive scale! It seems that those who are depressed actually, for whatever reason, feel the true gravity of the whole situation. And they are the ones who are imbalanced? But I suppose it couldn't really be any other way. The truth of it is that this denial of our doom which is built into us is necessary for our existence. Life relies on this little inborn psychosis in order to continue being -- a psychosis which prevents us from seeing the big picture, cause the big picture is depressing. Which is weird, to say the least...

OK. Wow. Enough of this hooplah! I've had my rant. Back to pipetting, says I!
...And I'll do that diagram when I get home later tonight if I get time.