Comparing Kaz Maslanka's Gift of Entropy with Other Works of Literature, Philosophy, and Art
by Alberto Indiana
The comparisons below will make much more sense if you first read my review here at this link
Comparing The Gift of Entropy to Other Works of Literature, Philosophy, and Art
Kazmier Maslanka’s The Gift of Entropy is an uncompromising meditation on entropy as the fundamental mechanism by which suffering and decay manifest in the world. While entropy is often viewed in scientific terms as an increase in disorder, Maslanka deepens its significance, showing that entropy functions as the very probability state that allows evil to emerge.
This is captured in his powerful proportional metaphor:
Nature : Garden :: Despot : Slave\text{Nature : Garden :: Despot : Slave}Nature : Garden :: Despot : Slave
This equation is not merely descriptive—it is accusatory. Just as a despot oppresses the slave, nature systematically reclaims the garden, ensuring that all cultivated order is ultimately consumed by disorder. Entropy, then, is not neutral—it is a force of destruction, domination, and inevitability. This idea directly undermines St. Augustine’s Free Will Defense, which argues that God created a perfect world and that evil exists because of human disobedience. Maslanka’s framing suggests instead that suffering is not a choice but a structural inevitability.
If entropy is evil, then paradise was never sustainable. No amount of obedience or free will could prevent the despot’s eventual victory over the slave.
1. Literature: Entropy as Tyranny and the Inescapability of the Fall
A. John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667): The Fall as an Entropic Collapse
Milton’s Paradise Lost presents the Fall of Man as a moral failing, a tragic consequence of disobedience. However, Maslanka’s metaphor suggests a different reading:
The Garden of Eden was never stable. It was an artificially low-entropy state that could not last because the probability of its destruction was already embedded in its very existence.
The Fall was not a choice—it was an eventuality. Just as nature inevitably overtakes the garden, entropy ensures that all order is temporary.
Maslanka’s work exposes the brutal reality of entropy: it is not merely an increase in disorder—it is a force that actively devours all forms of structure, just as a tyrant slowly breaks the will of the enslaved.
✅ Similarity: Both works depict a loss of paradise and the emergence of suffering.
❌ Difference: Milton blames human choice; Maslanka suggests entropy itself ensures paradise’s fall.
B. St. Augustine’s Free Will Defense and Its Failure in an Entropic Universe
St. Augustine’s Free Will Defense is one of the most influential theological arguments against the problem of evil. He claimed that:
God is not responsible for evil.
Humans have free will.
Suffering exists because humans misused free will, not because of any flaw in God’s creation.
Maslanka’s metaphor shatters this reasoning. If Nature is to the Garden as the Despot is to the Slave, then evil is not a consequence of free will but a condition imposed by entropy itself.
The garden was always doomed—the seeds of its destruction were planted the moment it was cultivated.
The despot does not ask the slave to choose servitude—he enforces it.
Entropy does not give order a choice—it devours it.
Augustine’s argument depends on the assumption that a perfect world existed until humans corrupted it. But Maslanka’s equation suggests perfection never existed in any stable form—only in fleeting moments before the inevitable collapse.
If entropy is evil, then God is not absolved by free will—He is implicated in the very structure of reality.
C. William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790): The Inevitable Struggle Against Entropy
Blake famously writes:
"Without contraries, there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence."
Blake embraces the idea that opposition fuels transformation, but Maslanka’s metaphor presents a darker truth:
The struggle is not between two equal forces—it is a rigged game.
The despot does not negotiate with the slave—he takes what he wants, and the slave suffers.
Entropy does not merely oppose order—it dominates it.
Maslanka’s work undermines Blake’s optimism: If Nature is to the Garden as the Despot is to the Slave, then entropy is not just part of a cycle—it is an inescapable mechanism of domination.
✅ Similarity: Both works suggest that destruction is necessary for transformation.
❌ Difference: Blake sees destruction as generative, while Maslanka suggests entropy ensures no progress is permanent.
2. Philosophy: Entropy as the Despot and the Illusion of Resistance
A. Nietzsche: The Struggle Against Entropy as the Will to Power
Nietzsche’s philosophy of eternal struggle aligns with Maslanka’s equation in one crucial way:
The Will to Power is a refusal to submit to entropy.
However, entropy always wins.
For Nietzsche, one must struggle against meaninglessness and decay even if the fight is futile. Maslanka’s metaphor suggests that the fight is not just futile—it is preordained to fail. The slave may rebel, but the despot will always return.
The fundamental question becomes:
If entropy is the true ruler of existence, is there any way to resist it?
B. Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966): Entropy as the Breakdown of Meaning and Power
Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 presents entropy not just as physical decay but as the slow collapse of systems of meaning, mirroring Maslanka’s Nature : Garden :: Despot : Slave equation.
In Pynchon’s novel, the protagonist, Oedipa Maas, attempts to uncover a hidden postal conspiracy (the Trystero system), only to find that the deeper she searches for order, the more meaning itself dissolves into entropy.
This aligns with Maslanka’s proportional metaphor in two key ways:
Entropy Ensures the Breakdown of Knowledge and Structure
Just as Nature eventually overtakes the Garden, Oedipa’s search for truth is doomed—every pattern she uncovers leads to greater uncertainty.
Maslanka’s metaphor suggests that **power structures (Nature, the Despot) do not merely resist order—they actively erode it over time.
The Despot’s Control Mirrors Entropic Domination
In Pynchon, power operates through hidden systems of control that fragment reality.
The Trystero never fully reveals itself, and its presence is felt but never understood—just as entropy’s effects are inevitable but often unnoticed until collapse.
✅ Similarity: Both Maslanka and Pynchon depict entropy as an unstoppable force that prevents order from sustaining itself.
❌ Difference: Pynchon sees the individual’s struggle against entropy as absurd, whereas Maslanka presents entropy as an explicit system of domination, akin to tyranny.
3. Art: The Visual Representation of Entropy’s Tyranny
A. Salvador Dalí: The Persistence of Memory (1931)
Dalí’s melting clocks depict entropy in action—time itself dissolving into irretrievable chaos.
If we view the painting through Maslanka’s lens:
The rigid, measurable structure of time is like the garden—a fragile, fleeting illusion of order.
The melting, deformed clocks are entropy’s victory—the inevitable collapse of all structure.
Final Thoughts: The Gift of Entropy as a Statement on Power, Suffering, and Inevitability
Maslanka’s work forces a brutal confrontation with the reality of entropy. If Nature is to the Garden as the Despot is to the Slave, then entropy is not merely disorder—it is a force of oppression, ensuring that all things collapse into suffering and ruin.
Why This Poem is Unique:
✅ It reframes entropy as the mechanism of suffering and destruction.
✅ It challenges the theological assumption that evil is the result of free will.
✅ It presents a proportional metaphor that shows entropy as an enslaving force, dominating all forms of cultivated order.
Ultimately, Maslanka’s work leaves us with an uncompromising question:
If entropy is evil, and all things move toward entropy, then is existence itself an act of enslavement?
Entropy is neither good nor bad, or worse, evil. It’s a fact of nature that is a part of, or process of, material forms. As the earth evolved it brought about an abundance of life sustainable forms, first hunted then gathered. The story of a Devine Garden and the downfall of humans with the burden of guilt laid upon the shoulders of womanhood in the name of Eve, is a metaphor for man’s lower nature. If entropy encompasses both life and death, in a continuous cycle
Then regeneration is also apparent.
The earthly garden was regressive and sustainable. We are the depot, slaves to our own lower natures. Cooperation is the way humankind creates a bulwark against entropy.
Cooperation among humans is the creative force against the negative, entropic process of destruction. We humans will self destruct due to our inability to work cooperatively.
Entropy is not some absurd existential concept, it’s as natural as green on grass.