Chaos

I keep reading where people say they lived in Arizona for decades and have never seen a rainbow. This photo has nothing to do with the content below. I just wanted to share.

When I was working on my first degree, my physics and chemistry professors disagreed on whether or not entropy had effects beyond the mundane. In other words, is the universe really trying to kill you?

My answer is yes. It's amazing how much effort it takes just to keep your everyday life from descending into utter chaos. It's even more difficult to keep an organization from becoming disorganized. I'm a big believer in teamwork, but it's also true that sometimes one or only a few people are crucial to the process.

I have previously said that I don't consider leadership potential to necessarily be a virtue, and I don't think this invalidates it, but on the other hand a single person in the correct position can prevent entropy from taking over. It isn't leadership precisely, in the sense of issuing orders, but more like an information filter, someone in the middle who can keep the organization orderly by heading off wasted or misdirected efforts or communication.

If you lose that person, things can descend into chaos.