Division Trumps Unity

It is statistically more likely, but by no means logically necessary, that order will give way to disorder, rather than disorder to order. This principle derives in part from the fact that order is limited to only a handful of potential states whereas disorder is multitudinous. As my friend, and mother of two, once put it: "a teen's bedroom has only one state of being tidy and a million more states of disarray" (I suspect she was speaking hypothetically about the former state). In a similar way, the nations of the world are statistically more likely to form sporadic patterns than they are to coalesce into a united whole. But more than this, there are philosophical reasons for thinking that human beings tend towards disorder and division, rather than order and unity. 

This tendency might help to explain, not only the recent Brexit vote in the UK, but also the success of Donald Trump's divisive "America first" campaign in the US. In calling Trump's campaign "divisive" I am referring to a recurrent motif of many of his speeches, that of "us (America) versus them (the rest of the world)". I should add that my intention here is to help make sense of the forcefulness of Trump''s brand of politics, not to criticize it.

To begin with, it is far from clear to me that we ought to prefer order (or unity) to disorder (or division). Order and unity may have an immediate appeal, yet I can make no definitive claim about why order and unity ought to take precedence. It remains one of the oldest philosophical questions whether the world tends towards order or towards disorder. As a philosopher, I tend towards the view that it goes against the Universe's fundamental nature for things to follow regular patterns. 

From a scientific perspective too, there are good reasons for thinking that disorder (or entropy) is more advantageous to human beings. For instance, the existence of the Universe, of life and of human beings is made possible only through entropy. An ordering principle like "survival of the fittest" fails to explain why there are many species rather than one, or why intelligent beings exist. It has been argued that the governing principle for the existence of diverse and intelligent life is instead a tendency, in nature, to maximize potentiality through entropy; intelligent beings both reflect and perpetuate this principle since intelligent life can more readily maximise its own, and therefore the Universe's, potential. ["Predicting the cosmological constant from the causal entropic principle", Bousso, Harnik, Kribs, & Perez, Physics Review, August 2007]

The political world too demonstrates its own entropic tendency, i.e. towards disunity rather than unity. Consider that any call for greater unity presupposes an existing union, e.g. with our fellow citizens. It is this sense of community that we are asked to give up in the name of unity. In line with the comparison with entropy, this suggests that appeals to greater unity are self-defeating. This is because unity and division, like order and chaos, are part of a closed system; just as there can be no order without chaos, there can be no unity without division. 

This same futility was evident in the recent Brexit vote: in which people of the United Kingdom were asked to reconsider their membership of the European Union. At the time, one of the questions raised was whether the public felt British or European. Despite the very close margin of the referendum result, the vast majority of people identified themselves as British (86%), with few considering themselves European (14%) [Source data at www.WhatUKThinks.org/EU by NatCen Social Research]. Of course, it could be argued that the question itself is faulty since the implicit disjunction (British or European) is misleading. That is, many Brits might well have answered "I consider myself both British and European"; presumably it is this discrepancy that accounts for the 49% of Remain voters. Does this mean, then, that Trump's divisive, "America First" campaign can be undermined by asserting that US citizens are also global citizens? 

For the reasons we have already considered, the answer to this is likely "no". After all, Trump does acknowledge America's place in the international community by putting US interests first. Neither can Trump be faulted for doing so; he is, after all, campaigning to be POTUS. More importantly, what I think the Brexit vote shows is that the greatest threat to increased inclusivity is, counter-intuitive as it may seem, a policy of "ever close union". It was this policy that left no room for the possibility of being both British and European. And it is this policy which asks us to embrace unity whilst simultaneously asking us to forsake what unites us already. 

Put simply, one cannot overcome division by ignoring what it is that divides us. To transcend boundaries takes something other than a disillusion of all boundaries. My suggestion, as at the time of the Brexit vote, is to appeal instead to national pride, to courage and to not backing away from what we rightly fear. Fear is a natural tendency, and so therefore is division, but we are intelligent beings, and as intelligent beings we ought to maximize our potential. If only for the sake of the Universe.