Second Law of Thermodynamics

The 2nd law of Thermodynamics is of particular importance to the Beaker People.  We refer to it from time to time, but have never bothered to explain it in any detail.
Now I realise you came here expecting perhaps some enlightenment, some thoughts of spiritual significance, or some expression of depth to take away with you.  You didn't come here for the expression of a law of physics.  But I hope to be able to explain to you the importance of this law, in both physical and spiritual terms.

The tendency for entropy to increase in isolated systems is expressed in the second law of thermodynamics — perhaps the most pessimistic and amoral formulation in all human thought. —Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley, Principia Discordia (1965)

So... what's it all about?
It's all about entropy.  "Entropy" being the word that Chemists and others of the white-lab-coated classes use when they mean "chaos".  Because "chaos" is scary and random - whereas "entropy" is all scientific and unscary.  And Chemists are quiet, docile chaps who don't like upsetting other people.  They're nice like that.
It states this...  "in a closed system - with no heat going in, nor coming out - randomness always increases with any change".
Got that?  Simple enough.  That's why you can't un-stir your tea.  The sugar doesn't leap out.  It just stays there  - dissolved.  Putting sugar into tea - simple.  Take it out - you need filters and heat and evaporation and all sorts of stuff.  You have to put energy into the system to reduce the chaos.
But see the sneaky problem?   To repeat: "in a closed system - with no heat going in, nor coming out - randomness always increases with any change".  There's heat going into this little tiny system of one cup of tea with sugar if you want to get the sugar out.  And how does someone generate the heat?  By burning stuff.  Oil, or gas, or coal. That's where the heat comes from.  And what does the burning do?  2nd law of thermodynamics... it increases the amount of randomness and chaos in the system.  You can't not put chaos in the system.  Stuff just gets more random.
So there's some conclusions here.  If you tidy your house - you're increasing the chaos in the world.  Your rooms may be tidy - but the world is less random.  How you going to deal with that?  You can't, you hygiene freak.  You may have made your tiny corner of things more organised, but you've done it at the expense of the rest of the universe.  How selfish is that?  STOP IT!
You will occasionally, if you hang out with the wrong people, hear that evolution cannot be true because it contradicts the 2nd law of thermodynamics.  The argument goes -

2nd Law says things become more random.  But evolution says things get more organised.  So evolution breaks the 2nd Law.  So evolution's not true. QED.

....except, of course, that 2nd Law says things become more random in a closed system.  And one animal breeding (or even two - let's go for it - let's not mimsy around these things) is not  a closed system.  Even if evolution produced more "organised" things (discuss...) animals grow at the expense of the outside world.  Animals maintain their fragile (and temporary) organisational abilities by spewing chaos into the world around them - sweating, excreting, breathing - there's all sorts of ways that animals increase randomness. So the nett effect - on the whole closed system (the entire universe) is that randomness increases.  2nd Law wins every time.
"So where does that leave us?"  you ask yourself.  "What does that mean for me and the world I'm striving for?"  Simples.  It means you, me, the whole universe and the whole improved world you're striving for are doomed.  You can make all the improvements you like, and as you make those improvements you'll be increasing the overall randomness and chaos of the world around you.  You can tidy your house, park your car neatly, sort your vast collection of gloves (which I'm guessing you may possess) into Left and Right - you're just making matters worse.  As you put your CDs into alphabetical order of the keyboard players on each title track (I'm assuming I am addressing male Beaker people here) - you make the world as a whole less organised.  STOP IT!  LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE!  YOU'RE ONLY MAKING IT WORSE!
So where does that leave us spiritually?  Desolate, I suspect.  The words "Things can only get better" are exposed as the biggest lie in the entire history of untruths.  The idea that we can work towards a better future is exposed as a fallacy.  The harder we work for a better future - the worse we will make it.  As St Jarvis Cocker put it - "the future that you've got mapped out is nothing much to shout about".  The quicker the randomness takes over, like a triffid with its own supply of Baby Bio.  The more you try - the quicker it goes downhill.  Until the whole universe is like a giant homogeneous custard of not-much-happening.  This is real science, trumping your imaginary and sad hopes of a better future.
So what can we do?
Despair, is my advice.
And then find a better way out of it, than trying hard.
And a happy new year.