“In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.” ― Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop

Life on the Edge of Entropy

The second law of thermodynamics states, that the entropy of an isolated system can only increase. Entropy is a state of disorder or chaos.

To put this in plain English: If you wait long enough, everything eventually turns to noise.

On an infinite timeline, every atom in your body has an infinite chance to end up anywhere in the universe.

Everything eventually slides over the edge of entropy. Humans, animals, plants, objects - entire civilizations and galaxies.

Taking those horrible odds into account, it is amazing that anything exists at all.

What’s even more fascinating, is the fact that there is a clear distinction between you - who is alive - and a carcass. The latter will fall victim to entropy way faster than you.

Inside of you run billions upon billions of entropy-reduction processes, feeding on external energy and reducing the amount of chaos in your system.

Evolution has selected for every organism on this planet to enter into these types of self-replicating entropy-reduction loops.

You are the ancestor of a chemical reaction that refused to fizzle out on its own.

As above, so below.

The perceived equilibrium all life eventually finds with its surroundings is not static. It is a self-replicating process that repeats all day, every day.

Our bodies are self-replicating machines. Every aspect of our being is bred to enter into self-replicating loops. And our minds are no exceptions.

They are made of self-enforcing, self-replicating patterns. (Which is why we are amazing at recognizing patterns, even when there are none. Our entire reality is patterns upon patterns.)

Your mind reflexively creates self-replicating patterns to bring order to chaos, to reduce its entropy.

Mental machinery Have you ever wondered, how building a strong, robust body takes hard work and dedication - but how nobody ever had to will themselves into drug addiction?

Some people are simply unaffected by drugs. They take them, get high, and move on.

For other people, however, taking a drug for the first time turns out to be the missing part that completes a piece of mental machinery - which then will continue self-replicated for a long, long time.

The truth is this: Your mind assembles mental machinery all the time.

Most of the time, that machinery sputters out after a few weeks - like that one time you got really into stand-up paddling.

Other times, mental machinery gets disassembled when it no longer produces the outcomes it was originally built for - think college-socialists who move to gated communities, as soon as they cash their first fat pay-check.

But sometimes the mental machinery becomes self-replicating. It is there to stay. It becomes a part of you, your “identity”.

The Driver‘s Seat is Vacant

When we got to eat broccoli for the first time, we did not get to pick whether we like it or not. Our mind automatically sorted the experience for us, relative to our existing memories and mental machina. All we got was the end result of broccoli being „yucky“, and continuing to be yucky every time we had to try it.

We don‘t get to pick what mental processes persist. They randomly endure, firmly wedged into homeostasis between our inner and outer world.

Repeat this process a million times and, assuming your surroundings allow for it, you find yourself living as a pan-sexual NASCAR driver with a foot fetish.

Since any new experience is sorted by referencing what is already chugging along in our skull, even seemingly minor inputs can result in a major shift in attitude and personality down the line. And all of it is entirely chaotic.

The driver is not asleep at the wheel - he is in the back of the bus, high on Molly, getting blown by that inked-up chick that smells like cigarettes and cheap vanilla perfume.

How to rage against the machine

Most people’s destiny is entirely rooted in automatisms out of their control. They rage against machines external to them, unaware that their inner Machina is just as oppressive.

Assuming you are unhappy with the direction your life is taking, you likely wonder what you can do. Is it possible to actively change your mind?

Yes, you can. Theoretically, you can change your mind at will. If you had a clean slate, you could simply decide you like a certain person - or broccoli. However, this not only takes a lot of willpower - you need to learn how to get to clear your mind to get that clean slate. Otherwise, there are just loads and loads of contradictory goals rummaging around in your brain.

So let‘s park this one for a bit and start with some low-hanging fruit: Changing your external world.

As mentioned before, your mental Machina exists in homeostasis with your external world. Change the external world, some of it becomes obsolete, dysfunctional, and may even break down. This is rarely pleasant. Culture shock is a common example of this. Breakups are another.

If you want to change for the better, find out what about your surroundings feeds into the mental processes you want to rid yourself of.

Do you want to stop drinking? Stop hanging out with drinkers and going to bars. Sick of being disrespected? Ditch disrespectful people. Sick of toxic relationships? Break up.

Want to be more productive? Create a clean, functional workspace. Want to be more disciplined with the gym? Eliminate any obstacles between you and your workouts - move next to the gym, if you have to.

Initially, you will feel a sense of vertigo. You will feel home-sick and culture-shocked. You may even get worse for a little while.

This is your mind experiencing the breakdown of its components. When this happens, the mind scrambles for older creations that used to work in the past. *Pulling up old files is easier than creating new ones. * This is usually the point where broken-up couples get back together - they revert from their toxic personas to the sweethearts they used to be at the beginning of the relationship. Only to override it all over again.

Stay strong during the vertigo phase.

Only when referencing older mental models fails will your mind create new machinery. If your surroundings reinforce and validate these creations, they become permanent.

Trust the process, do the things you set out to do.

How to change a mind

If you managed to escape your toxic surroundings, you are ready for the next level: Consciously changing your mind.

Elite athletes are experts at this. They simply set a goal and decide they are capable of attaining it. There rarely is any doubt for them. They don‘t have to bullshit themselves into doing what is good for them.

To build up this mental skill, you need practice.

For a while, my favorite way to practice was sitting on the bus or the train and randomly deciding I like or dislike people.

I would look at and mentally compliment them for things that look good about them, trying to find grace in their movements and warmth in their expressions. I imagined good things happening to them and so on. A positive side-effect of this: The conscious effort mutes your inner-chatter, blocking out any self-doubts about what the other person might think about you. This skill turned out to be profoundly useful at work because it allowed me to instantly connect with people.

Sometimes I practiced the opposite: Deciding I dislike people - and then seeing if I can revert that dislike at will.

If you want to take this a notch further, you can even decide you love/hate doorknobs, furniture or certain foods.

However, being able to hate kitchen-counters at will is not really a useful skill. But deciding you are going to like your workout is.

People normally make the mistake of imagining how much they are going to like having a fit body or being admired for their skills. This is a mistake and a coping mechanism.

I at some point decided I am going to like the actual work-out-sessions. I decided exerting my body was a pleasant sensation.

At first, this is not going to work. You need some practice. But there is a very distinct sensation when this process starts working:

The colors in the room will become brighter and you will have more peripheral vision. This is because of your pupils widening in anticipation of pleasure.

If the new preferences you decided upon are in agreement with your internal and external world, they will stick and permanently replicate themselves.

But be careful, this may also work against you.

Getting a clean slate

Some people are going to have a harder time with implementing new mental routines than others. Those people are usually filled up with self-replicating, dysfunctional mental processes.

Writing new information is a lot harder for them.

The solution here is investing time into uprooting those processes, i.e. mindfulness meditation. Catching yourself in the act a few times (and maybe changing your external world in response) is usually enough to kill off a dysfunctional process, or at least mute it for a while.

If you can master this - changing your surroundings for the better, actively deciding on your emotional state, and killing off dysfunctional mental machinery with mindfulness - then your entire life will become a piece of pleasant, self-replicating machinery.