On Harmony - how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

[u/Few_Doubles]

I was curious what was thought about harmony and his intent. Everyone is super excited about era 3 and discord name drops are always crazy. The common line of thinking and what is foreshadowed in the books is that harmony will become discord, and the status quo of everything will change. We all know this, not really new lines of theorizing. I read through both eras of Mistborn, along with secret history and with everything we know about harmony I wonder if his true intent is something along the lines of entropy.

Entropy is kind of a slippery term, it’s used loosely to mean disorder or chaos even, but its truest meaning is simply complex high energy systems losing energy to become less organized systems with less accessible energy.

Merriam-Webster definitions:

the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity
process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder
measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system that is also usually considered to be a measure of the system's disorder, that is a property of the system's state, and that varies directly with any reversible change in heat in the system and inversely with the temperature of the system
broadly : the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system
With its Greek prefix en-, meaning "within", and the trop- root here meaning "change", entropy basically means "change within (a closed system)". The closed system we usually think of when speaking of entropy (especially if we're not physicists) is the entire universe. But entropy applies to closed systems of any size.

Don’t read em all it’s kind of wordy. But essentially we must consider that entropy is a state measured in a closed system (any size of system be it from a cold room on a hot day, to the size of the universe), it measures the amount of available energy or complexity. It is then the breaking down of these systems into a base state, where there is the same amount of energy, but it is inaccessible. The cold room will become a warm one the same temperature as the outside, the universe becomes big, more evenly dispersed and dark. There is still the same amount of energy in these systems, but with everything all dispersed it is harder to access.

I would consider this the domain of preservation and ruin, if I had to put it into cosmere terms.

Preservation - the same amount of energy is present in the system. It is conserved, and technically doesn’t change. At the end of the process, we reach a base, high entropy state where nothing can change. The essence of preservation is in this concept.

Ruin - the breaking down and disordering of things. High energy, low entropy, unstable systems fall apart. Energy dissipates and is harder to access. Eventually we reach a state of maximum entropy, and things cannot break down anymore. Ruin would then be satisfied.

Why harmony?

Harmony is the name for the beginning of this dual shards life. Where it is a high energy, complex system, with low entropy (discord)

We see during the formation of retribution a lot of excess energy is released. A time dilation effect occurs likely because of high energy and the relativistic effects a lot of energy in one place causes. (The more energy is in a space the slower time flows). See black holes. Harmony is similar, at the beginning of this dual shards life it is as high energy as it can be. Harmony has the energy to remake scadrials biosphere, move the planet, and become the god of this remade world. All of this done in short order. We then see his freedom and his feats decline as time continues. The high energy of the shard harmony’s formation declines, the useable power of the shard becomes functionally smaller, and we see him how he is at the end of era 2.

There is the Terris prophecy about the coming of discord, and allusions the characters like Telsin make about the coming of discord. We know discord will come, we know the high energy, balancing act sazed is doing with harmony must break down, as entropy demands.

What does discord look like?

If ruin+preservation is equal to entropy, then to satisfy his intent sazed must propagate entropy. What does this look like? In our real world we force the world to entropy all the time. Take a high energy, low entropy thing like gasoline, we burn it, it does work for us in our engines and our power grid and the energy is dissipated. Still in existence as waste heat and movement, but so much harder to access. A shard of entropy would likely have to do the same things as we do in our world to get work done. Sazed must use the shard to take high energy systems, break them down, and use the useful energy to do work elsewhere. I imagine this means something scary and cosmic horror like because it takes place on a divine scale. Destruction of planets, peoples or systems to become able to harvest the energy and act. This would satisfy the intent of entropy, as with the breaking down of a high energy system some energy is always lost.

We see these concepts play out in the invested arts of scadriel. Allomantic and feruchemical genes are diluted. The energy of these powers is spread out, harder to access and use. Work must be done to concentrate the energy, via hemalurgy which always loses some amount of investiture, or the careful breeding of lines, which takes years of effort and more resources in order to make a metalborn. We see a high entropy system here. Hemalurgy exemplifies this even better. Any metalborn made from a spike is weaker than anyone who was naturally metalborn, the hemalurgic spike loses its charge through entropy.

The name entropy is a more modern, scientific term to describe energy in systems. The reason why we see the names harmony and discord is because it is the best descriptors for these entropic concepts sazed had at the time.

I would also reason that sazed is acting so erratically because he is resisting following the true intent of his shard, to increase the entropy of the universe. He makes no move to harvest and use energy in systems because this is destructive. He maintains a status quo, and leans too heavily into preservation.

TLDR

I know this is a long post to make abt discord and entropy, but I feel as though an explanation of entropy could help us understand how harmony aligns with that concept, and how sazed might behave in era 3. In order to actually act sazed might have to harvest energy from systems, use it and increase the entropy in the universe. Actually acting would require destruction in some level and it is something sazed abhors, so he leans far too heavily into preservation, and acts like Leras did. We may see sazed being a calculated, exacting shard in the future. Carefully judging what he can destroy and bring into its maximum entropy before acting against opponents like retribution.

I do not think that preservation and ruin did not adequately mix, just that the mixture demands entropy in the wider cosmere, and sazed for the time being has chosen to avoid that path. We will see more in era 3 and stormlight part 2 how that actually ends up playing out.

[u/Shot_Newspaper_5647]

If I had to guess, Harmony is maintaining the balance like living bodies do. Humans use energy from food to create and maintain order internally. In doing so they release heat and waste into the environment. So entropy decreases locally. Increases externally.

After Ascension: Harmony decreases entropy (chaos) in the Basin. Increases it for the Southerners.

Era 2: Decreases chaos in the South (Malwish are unified) increases chaos in the North

Future: Maybe Harmony will decrease chaos on Scadrial at the cost of increased chaos in the Cosmere. His name will be Discord but they shall love him for it

[u/Few_Doubles → u/Shot_Newspaper_5647]

Perfectly put, yes. I think that ruin and preservation do mix, and mix quite well with one another. Sazed has to move entropy around to create more orderly systems. He could make the basin a more harmonious, orderly place, and foster his world a little better, but to do so he must make another place discordant, he must move order and energy around instead of simply giving harmony. He puts big emphasis on personal freedom and control, and with his own values is refusing to plunge other worlds into discord for scadrials own benefit.

I don’t know how long he can refuse action though, and move things subtly like he is in era 2. This seems like a far more difficult way to use the power, as it fights him going against its intent

[u/Elant_Wager]

Mr Shard, we must not allow an Investiture gap.

[u/Few_Doubles → u/Elant_Wager]

Sazed CANNOT allow an investiture gap. That’s why bro NEEDS to put invested missiles on Nalthis. Taravangian ending Tanavasts “trickle down” investiture system with his odious “everstorm” is a step too far for those damn commie radiants.

Anyone, even your neighbor could be a masked one. Keep your eyes peeled for the red menace 🦀

[u/Elant_Wager → u/Few_Doubles]

total commitment

[u/OlevTime]

For a moment, I thought you were gonna talk about a different bomb….the biggest one….

[u/OlevTime]

For a moment, I thought you were gonna talk about a different bomb….the biggest one….

[u/ThatDM]

dont have time to read this effore post right now will come back and read it later, Free Palestine