The Rigidity-Entropy Complex

Psychological entropy is uncertainty-driven anxiety about ever-increasing disorder in complex modern living, rife with social, environmental, and technological changes. Psychological rigidity is resistance to change in habits, attitudes, concepts, and beliefs. Change is stressful, unfair, or augers chaos. In advanced stages, rigidity blocks perceptions of other people’s emotional states, inhibits compassion, and makes disagreement seem hostile.

Rigidity as a coping mechanism first emerges as an autopilot response to mental or environmental over-stimulation. The overstimulated brain systematically limits the information it will process. In stressful conditions, we retreat to previously learned habits and resist information from other perspectives and alternative evidence.

The natural progression of rigidity turns problematic when it becomes conscious and deliberate. No longer able to ignore most information, we devalue or dismiss it, triggering negative reactions from others. We seize on oversimplified solutions that are bound to make things worse with unintended consequences.

Rigidity breeds intolerance of differences. Parties grow more extreme in reaction to each other. Families and communities tear apart, and nations become polarized, with the opposites splintering into subgroups in reaction to each other. Conservatives grow reactionary; liberals, radical.

How to Break the Rigidity-Entropy Complex

Recognize that life is cruel to the rigid. It may not be all that kind to the flexible, but it’s crueler to the rigid.

Recognize that it’s not the strength of conviction that makes us rigid, it’s fear of chaos, confusion, inconvenience, discomfort. Building confidence in your flexibility strengthens your convictions by making them more nuanced, that is, more complex.

Recognize that in business, families, and sports, the teams that adapt are the teams that win.

Reflect on changes you resisted in the past that were beneficial once you accepted them.

The Buddha said that most of the suffering in the world comes from wishing it were not the way it is. The suffering of the rigid ameliorates with acceptance of the way things are, with motivation to improve. The mantra of a happy, meaningful life:

"Accept and improve!"

Recognize that certainty is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out much more information than it processes, which, of course, increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you’re wrong.

View uncertainty as your friend. It drives us to learn more, appreciate more, and connect to one another emotionally. It can make us smarter and more compassionate.

Recognize the continuum of rigidity and chaos with flexibility in the middle. Of course, we can be too flexible, just as we can be too rigid—Aristotle told us that the only virtue is moderation.

Identify with your ability to “make the best” of everything you encounter. The best will never be chaotic or rigid.