Managing Social Entropy

Entropy is a concept central to the second law of thermodynamics. Readers will be spared its origin and technical definition. It captures an intuitive idea: left alone, order naturally drifts into disorder. Maintaining stability always costs energy.

The notion has turned into an over-used interdisciplinary metaphor. Its commonality does not make it uninteresting. In this note, a pessimistic view of human nature is treated as an entropy model of society.

If people are assumed to be naturally selfish, violent, and opportunistic, in the spirit of Thomas Hobbes, then disorder is the default outcome and order must be imposed by a powerful outside force. The state, or Hobbes’s ‘sovereign authority,’ becomes the permanent energy source that holds social entropy in check: law, police, surveillance, punishment and bureaucracy.

In a darker geopolitical context, regimes may seek to displace disorder rather than merely contain it. Vladislav Surkhov, a Russian political operator, argued that ‘social chaos’ can be conveniently exported abroad through geopolitical initiatives, so that part of the entropy is pushed into the environment.

In ‘Humankind: A Hopeful History’ (2019), Rutger Bregman, the Dutch historian, challenges this pessimistic anthropology and endorses a more Rousseauist perspective. He argues that the familiar ‘veneer theory’ of civilization, namely that humans are inherently evil and only kept in check by authority, rests on weak evidence or sensational stories.

His book revisits famous cases such as Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments, and the Easter Island collapse narrative, in depth. He uncovers serious biases, flawed research methods or outright experiment manipulation.

Because these stories feed a pessimistic anthropology theory that is deeply embedded in the societal psyche and justify power transfers from the individual to a sovereign state (always eager to promote that self-serving view), they have proved resilient.

But if Bregman is even partly right, the risk is not that humans naturally collapse into chaos, but that institutions built on deep suspicion provide fertile ground for the very disorder they are designed to prevent. Indeed, behavioral expectations become reality, a circularity discussed in ‘Pygmalion’ (2023).

The same logic shows up in firms. A management system built on distrust requires constant reporting, approvals, and compliance checks. It consumes organizational energy. A system built on trust still needs rules and accountability. But it needs fewer high‑energy interventions because cooperation and adherence to cultural pillars are treated as the default rather than the exception.

Social entropy is as inevitable as physical entropy. It must therefore be managed, not wished away. The choice, in firms and politics, is which human nature is assumed, and which it seeks to cultivate.