My dear friend Ivana Ivković – one of the speakers in the Studium Generale programme War and Rhetoric on April 29 – once told me a harrowing anecdote. The Bosnian capital Sarajevo was under siege by the forces of Radovan Karadžić, who had unilaterally declared the Republika Srpska within Bosnia. It was one of the darkest episodes in the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart – a moral catastrophe in postwar Europe, including the helplessness (or unwillingness) of Europe itself to act. The city was being brutally shelled from all sides; snipers targeted anything that moved.
At the edge of the city stood an abandoned post office, which had become a target for bullets and grenades. On one of its walls, a Serbian nationalist had spray-painted the slogan: “This is Serbia!” Beneath it, a Sarajevan had scrawled in reply: “No, idiot! This is a post office!”
The contrast could not be sharper: a nationalistic cry attempting to redraw borders through violence and ideology, countered by a sober, almost comical correction that lays bare the absurdity of such violent symbolism. In that simple response – “No, idiot! This is a post office!” – you hear a flicker of resistance, or at the very least, a preservation of common sense, of language refusing to play along with the logic of war.
Because hatred, violence, and war begin with language. Slowly, the markers shift. Friends become opponents, then enemies. Migrants are likened to natural disasters (“tsunami,” “flood”), the EU was supposedly created to “screw over” the US, the slur khokhol for Ukrainians resurged in Russia before the invasion, and in Gaza we witness how rhetoric and devastating violence walk hand in hand.
Studium Generale is organising a series of events on the theme War and Entropy. We have deliberately chosen the word entropy, because we don’t just want to focus on war itself, but also on everything that precedes it. In physics, entropy describes the degree of disorder in a system: the higher the entropy, the more chaotic and unpredictable the system becomes. In times of war, we witness a kind of societal entropy – meanings shift, structures collapse, noise increases, certainties dissolve.
What in thermodynamics is an irreversible process (“the arrow of time”), gains its own social-political dynamic: conflict accelerates the decay of order, but also of language, values, and trust. Conflicts bring about a mental and moral disintegration. We are witnessing this globally in the erosion of international structures (the United Nations, the international rule of law), which were precisely established to prevent political chaos.
And yet… even in these dark times, is there still a way to find a new kind of order within the disorder – let’s call it common sense – that we can hold on to? How do we resist the growing noise, violence, conflict, and war?
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy is irreversible. And yet, there are indeed forms of resistance. Life itself – albeit temporarily, as we well know – is already a form of resistance; an organisation of matter that delays inevitable decline. In this programme series, we explore the nature of war, but also such forms of resistance.
In the series War & Rhetoric we examine how language gradually becomes toxic in the run-up to conflict, but also how it can connect and heal. In First-Person War, we look at how technology has changed the battlefield. Drone operators – and we, watching at home via social media – now witness war up close. What does this mean for our experience of war, and is there a way to turn that experience toward something meaningful? During Ethics and Military AI, we ask whether, and how, scientists can take a personal moral stance in relation to war-related research. In the final event, Rob de Wijk, a leading expert on international relations and security, will reflect on the current geopolitical situation, with special attention to the role of a University of Technology.
A special highlight is the so-called Antidebate, led by TU Delft philosopher Madelaine Ley. Precisely in today’s entropic public sphere – where debate has shifted from collective truth-seeking to a spectacle of polarisation, ‘gotcha’ moments, and tribal posturing – the antidebate offers a new form of public exchange. It’s based on deep listening, feeling, and thinking as central values. We are looking for people who want to participate in this experiment! For more information, email L.M.Heuts@TUDelft.nl