Living in Entropy – When the Future Stops Feeling Real (E1 of 5 in Series)

Emotional Entropy: Coping with Psychological Strain in the Entropy Age

Host Leslie Poston of PsyberSpace introduces a five-episode series on the 'entropy age,' focusing on the psychological impact of living in an unstable world marked by late-stage capitalism, technological upheaval, and rising authoritarianism. This episode explores the concept of 'emotional entropy,' comparing it to physical entropy to describe the fraying of our inner lives. Key topics include existential anxiety, mortality, freedom, isolation, meaning, ontological insecurity, and anticipatory grief. Poston aims to validate the feelings of uncertainty and confusion that many experience, framing them as rational responses to current conditions rather than personal failures.

00:00 Introduction to the Entropy Age
01:01 Signs of a Fraying Future
02:04 Emotional Entropy Explained
04:50 Existential Psychology and Modern Life
07:12 Coping Mechanisms and Responses
08:56 Ontological Insecurity and Anticipatory Grief
11:56 Validating Emotional Reactions
13:43 Conclusion and Next Steps

Resources:

Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. Free Press.
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189–212). Springer.
Laing, R. D. (1960). The divided self: An existential study in sanity and madness. Penguin Books.
Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 1–70.
Rando, T. A. (2000). Clinical dimensions of anticipatory mourning: Theory and practice in working with the dying, their loved ones, and their caregivers. Research Press.
Campos, R., & Martins, J. C. (2024). Ontological insecurity and urgency as a political value: Discourses of youth climate activists in Portugal. Globalizations. Advance online publication
Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.
Yalom, I. D. (2008). Staring at the sun: Overcoming the terror of death. Jossey-Bass.
Lindemann, E. (1944). Symptomatology and management of acute grief. American Journal of Psychiatry, 101(2), 141–148.
Lifton, R. J. (2019). Losing reality: On cults, cultism, and the mindset of political and religious zealotry. The New Press.
von Wirth, T. (2025). Ontological (in)security and sustainability transitions: A theoretical perspective and future research prospects. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 57, 101042.
Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. Scribner.
Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). The cultural animal: Twenty years of terror management theory and research. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 13–34). Guilford Press.
Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524.
Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20–28.
Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. Guilford Press.

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Episode Transcript

Leslie Poston (00:11):
Welcome back to PsyberSpace. I'm your host,
Leslie Poston. If you are newhere, this is the show where we
look at how psychology, media,culture, and technology shape
the way you think, feel, work,and live. This week, we're
changing it up a bit. We'redoing a five episode short
series about what I'm callingthe entropy age.

(00:35):
I wanna talk about what it feelslike to live inside systems that
are fraying under late stagecapitalism, tech driven
upheaval, and risingauthoritarian movements, and
what all of that does to ourinner lives. Longtime
subscribers will recall we'vealready talked about learned
helplessness, chronic stress,burnout, and the brain's comfort

(00:58):
seeking tendencies in pastepisodes. So today we're going a
little deeper into what happenspsychologically when the future
itself stops feeling real. Youmight notice some signs of this
in your own life. Maybe fiveyear plans feel like science
fiction, or you used to picturea clear path for yourself and

(01:21):
now the horizon feels foggy.
Maybe your goals have quietlyshrunk down to just survive the
week or just keep things fromgetting worse. You're not alone
in experiencing a strange mix offeelings right now. Time feels
distorted. Months are vanishing.It's harder to remember what

(01:41):
year a big news event happened,much less which one happened
this week.
You bounce from politicalscandals and machinations to
climate headlines, economicanxiety, elections, or AI hype
and war footage, and sometimesall before lunch. It's not just
stressful. It can make the veryidea of a future feel thin. I

(02:04):
want to give you language forthese feelings today, not to
diagnose you, but to namepatterns that many of us are
going through all at the sametime together. We'll talk about
emotional entropy as a metaphorfor what's happening inside,
about existential anxiety anddeath awareness, and about two

(02:24):
ideas that help explain thisweird unreality that we're all
describing now, ontologicalinsecurity and anticipatory
grief.
My aim's not to cheerlead ortell you to think positive. I
just am here to say you're notbroken for feeling strange in a
moment like this. Your mind isresponding accurately to very

(02:47):
real conditions. When physiciststalk about entropy, they're
talking about the tendency ofsystems to shift from order to
disorder unless something isactively maintaining structure
and energy. I'm borrowing theword entropy as a metaphor for
what happens emotionally whenyou're living inside systems

(03:10):
that keep changing the rules,shifting the goalposts, and
piling on new crises.
Emotional entropy in this senseis the slow scattering of your
inner life. It looks like atension that feels harder to
hold, energy that leaks awayfaster than it used to, or a
sense that your feelings are allmixed together in a way that's

(03:32):
just hard to sort out. Insteadof clear moments of joy, anger,
or sadness, you just get a vagueblend of numbness, irritability,
worry, and fatigue. Part of thatcomes from pace and layering of
events. Many of us are jugglingunstable work, high cost of
living, concern about theclimate, political threats to

(03:54):
basic rights, and a constantdigital feed that never really
turns off.
TED platforms reward urgency andengagement, not calm reflection,
so your nervous system ends upon a kind of low level alert
even when you're sitting on thecouch. It's important to say
this directly. If you feelscattered or afraid, that

(04:16):
doesn't mean you lack disciplineor that you are bad at adulting.
It often just means you'retrying to hold yourself together
inside a set of conditions thatwill strain anyone. This leads
into a deeper level of what'sgoing on.
It's not just that you're tired.That's not quite big enough.
It's that the big questions thatunderpin your life have started

(04:38):
to feel unsettled. What are youbuilding toward? What's safe to
hope for?
What kind of place are we goingto be living in twenty or thirty
years from now? Those questionspull us into existential
psychology. Existentialpsychologists like Irvin Yallam

(04:59):
talk about four big themes thathuman beings struggle with:
mortality, freedom, isolation,and meaning. They're always
there in the background, but atsome points in history, they
move closer to the surface.Mortality is the obvious one.
You don't need a philosophy textto feel that. We've had repeated

(05:20):
reminders in the last five yearsthat life is fragile. From the
pandemic to climate relateddisasters, increasing weather
instability, state and nonstateviolence, and many other events
that show how quickly conditionscan change. And that steady of
threat can keep death awarenesscloser to the front of our minds

(05:43):
even if we don't talk about it.Freedom is the next theme.
In theory, modern life sells usa lot of choice. In practice,
many people feel trapped. In TheUnited States, for example, our
health care is tied to ouremployment. Housing is
expensive, educational debt isheavy, and authoritarian

(06:05):
movements and policy choices areremoving human rights that we
all thought were settled.Freedom on paper doesn't feel
like freedom in practice wheneach option is wrapped in
financial or physical risk.
Isolation is another piece.People are surrounded by digital
connection but still feellonely. Communities have been

(06:28):
hollowed out by economicpressure, long commutes, and the
shift of social life into appsthat are optimized for content,
not care. When the social webthins out this way, existential
isolation can intensify even ifyou have a long contact list.
And then there's meaning.
Work cultures and brands promisepurpose, impact, and belonging.

(06:52):
Institutions talk about values.But when you look closely at how
decisions are made, it feelslike profit, control, and public
image come first. The gapbetween the story and the
reality makes it feel harder tofeel like your daily efforts add
up to something that matters.Researchers who study death

(07:13):
anxiety talk about how awarenessof mortality tends to push
people toward psychologicaldefenses.
This line of work is sometimescalled terror management theory.
When death feels close or thefuture feels unstable, people
often cling more tightly totheir worldviews, their
identities, or their groups.They might double down on

(07:36):
nationalism, ideology, or strictmoral codes that promise safety
and order. Others go theopposite direction and lean into
distraction, consumerism, or awe're all cooked, nothing
matters, might as well enjoywhat I can attitude. You can
clearly see both patternshappening now.

(07:57):
Some people move toward rigidpolitical or religious positions
and treat any challenge as athreat to their sense of safety.
Others slide into resignationand talk about collapse as if it
is inevitable and alreadydecided despite monumental
amounts of evidence of peoplegetting out in the street on the
ground to move society forwardin a positive direction. Both

(08:22):
are ways of trying to handle thediscomfort of living with
constant real risk anduncertainty. This isn't a
personal flaw. It's apredictable response when
existential questions getlouder.
Your brain is trying to give yousomething firm to stand on. Even
if that firm thing is a beliefthat everything's doomed and

(08:42):
there's no point in caring, it'simportant to find a way to push
past that. There are two moreideas that can help put words to
the strange unreality manypeople experience now. The first
is ontological insecurity.Psychiatrist Arty Lang used this
phrase to describe a fragilesense of self and reality.

(09:06):
And you don't need to agree withall of his work to find the
phrase helpful. Ontologicalinsecurity is what it feels like
when you're no longer sure aboutthe basic ground rules of your
life. Maybe you grew up with astory that hard work leads to
stability, a meritocracy, if youwill. And then you work hard and
still can't afford housing.Maybe you believed that human

(09:30):
rights, once granted, were safe,and then you watched them be
rolled back by authoritariangovernment.
Maybe you thought publicinstitutions would at least try
to act in the common interest,and then you see decisions that
clearly favor a small group atthe top at everyone else's
expense. When these kinds ofemotional shocks pile up, it's

(09:54):
only natural to start asking,what can I count on? What story
am I living inside? Is theproblem me or is the framing
itself broken? That'sontological insecurity.
And it's not just doubt aboutone policy or one leader, it's a
wobble in your sense of howreality works. The second idea

(10:17):
is anticipatory grief. Griefresearchers use this term for
the sadness and anxiety peoplefeel before a loss that hasn't
fully happened yet, but feelslikely or inevitable. We're more
familiar with it in the contextof terminal illness, for
example, when the family beginsgrieving a person while the

(10:38):
person is still alive. Rightnow, many people carry a wider
version of this anticipatorygrief.
You might be grieving a climatefuture you thought would be
better than this or grieving theidea of steady work with a safe
retirement. You might begrieving a sense of progress on
human rights and equality. Youmight be grieving the life you

(11:02):
once imagined for your child orfor yourself. This kind of grief
often goes unnamed, which makesit lonelier. It shows up as a
heavy feeling when you read thenews or an urge to joke about
collapse to mask your fear or asa quiet reluctance to invest in
any long term plans.

(11:24):
It might look like flakinessfrom the outside, but inside it
feels like, how can I commit toa future I don't trust?
Ontological insecurity andanticipatory grief can feed on
each other. When the groundrules keep shifting, it's hard
to orient. When you're alreadygrieving futures that feel

(11:44):
stolen or threatened, each newshift hurts more. No wonder so
many people feel both numb andoverwhelmed at the same time.
Before we wrap up, I wanna pauseon one important point. A lot of
messaging around you stilltreats these reactions as
individual weaknesses orpathologies. If you're tired,

(12:08):
unfocused, or worried, the storygoes, you need better habits, a
new productivity system, maybe agratitude journal. Sure. There's
a place for personal tools, butthey can't carry everything.
They can't fix the system that'scausing the problem. If you
struggle to make five or tenyear plans right now, that is a

(12:30):
rational response to realinstability. If your emotions
are swinging between hope anddespair, that reflects accurate
mixed signals from yourenvironment, not character
flaws. If you find yourselfhesitating to invest in
relationships, careers, orlocations, that is your mind
trying to protect you from lossthat feels probable. So rather

(12:55):
than asking what's wrong withme, try a different set of
questions.
Ask what future am I quietlygrieving? Where did I learn the
story that life would look oneway, and how has that story been
broken? Which parts of my lifestill feel reliable even on hard
days? And which parts feel likethey could vanish with one

(13:19):
policy change or one corporatedecision? Simply naming these
questions can be a relief.
You don't have to answer themall at once. You don't have to
fix the conditions that producethem by yourself. But you are
allowed to treat your emotionalreactions as valid data about
the situation you're in, not asevidence that you're failing at

(13:40):
being resilient enough. In thenext episodes of this Entropy
series, we'll widen the lens.I'll talk about what happens
when institutions and systemsthemselves begin to decay, how
information and truth getwarped, and how people with
power make use of that chaos.
And then we'll talk about formsof response that are grounded,

(14:02):
small scale, and sometimes evenplayful. In this first part of
the entropy series, I talkedabout emotional entropy as a way
to describe that scattered,frayed feeling inside. I looked
at existential anxiety aroundmortality, freedom, isolation,
and meaning and namedontological insecurity and

(14:24):
anticipatory grief as twopatterns that can make the
future feel unreal or out ofreach. If any of this sounded
familiar, I hope it gave you away to see your reactions as
understandable responses to theconditions you're living in and
not as a personal failure. Ifthis episode helped, share it
with someone who's been sayingeverything feels off and I can't

(14:45):
explain why.
The show notes will includelinks to research and resources
if you want to read more aboutthe ideas we talked about today.
Next time, we're going to movefrom the inner experience to the
outer structures and talk aboutsystem decay and what it does to
our minds when institutions stopfeeling believable or sick.
Thanks for listening toPsyberSpace. I'm your host,

(15:07):
Leslie Poston, signing off.Remember to stay curious and
tune in tomorrow for the nextepisode in our special series on
entropy.
And if you are a longtimesubscriber, thank you for your
patience. Last week, we did missour first week ever in two years
of the show due to sometechnical difficulties. But as
you can see, we fixed them thisweek and we are back in action.

(15:30):
Thanks for your patience.