Chaos is good

[Az]

Discuss.

[lizziegrace]

1. I live it! n/t

[hfojvt]

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[Mike03]

3. Chaos is certaintly entertaining, but

I question whether or not it is "good."

Anyone here study the science of Complexity? The complexity of our world is overtaking our ability to control that complexity, resulting in chaos that--while entertaining--may be our undoing.

Just food for thought. Very interested in what others think--especially those with backgrounds in science and math.

[Az]

4. It is an interesting field of study

And certainly within the parameters of my request.

But chaos also has other meanings. Many of the arts come from chaos. Somewhere in the mix between order and chaos we find meaning.

Absolute chaos is destruction. But absolute order is death.

[Mike03]

6. "absolute order is death"

Yes, that really strikes a chord with me. To me personally, absolute order would be a kind of spiritual death. Lately, it has been chaos that keeps me alert and hopeful.

[Mike03]

9. The "arts" question

I'm not disputing you on this, but my education and training were in the arts, and the emphasis was on organization of chaos--compactifying a theme and meaning into a highly organized structure that would elicit an emotional response. That was about writing, but I must say when I look at a painting by, say, Jasper Johns or Jackson Pollock, my reaction is totally different, because some art celebrates chaos. So I have the subjectivity of a writer when it comes to discussing the role of chaos in art. We are taught not to be chaotic.

[Az]

10. Is creativity order or chaos

Or rather does it take more from order or chaos. It clearly is a mix of both. But the muse of creativity seems to me to spring from chaos and is tempered by order.

[Mike03]

12. God, so True

When I would finish something, I would be like "Where did that come from?" Things write themselves, and I just feel like the instrument. But I'm not some religous weirdo or anything. I don't understand creativity at all.

[Mike03]

13. Sorry, that was quite inarticulate:

I think sometimes the act of creation feels like complete chaos, but it results in order--it is that order that I find inexplicable.

[Az]

14. Order from chaos

It does seem inexplicable doesn't it? Its interesting to contemplate the inverse. Chaos from order.

[Mike03]

15. Chaos from order...

But, in a sense, isn't that more natural? Is that the second law of thermodynamics? Things are supposed to tend towards disorganization and chaos, aren't they? (Well, within a closed system, at least?) Actually, it's quite a wonderful thing that we human beings are able to take something that is in a state of deterioration and reorganize and preserve it, and imbue it with meaning.

Not that as a species overall we are doing a good job of doing that.

[ErisFiveFingers]

40. Chaos in writing...

I might suggest you read some of the "cut-up" writing styles out there (which usually works better for short form poems and stories), or, if you want a "big read", tackle the "Illuminatus Trilogy", if you haven't yet.

About the trilogy: Rather than editing into a linear, consistent, cohesive, format, it reads as if five authors were fed hallucinogens and then forced to write a story, with only a very loose mapping of the characters involved and some possible outcomes... and then the text rapidly proceeds into jubilant disorder. Mid-paragraph, characters are transported in time and space (with the reader left to fill in the narrative blanks), or it will jump from one character's perspective to another's, random paragraphs are seemingly repeated for no good reason, sentences and plot lines that seem like they belong in one part of the book are seemingly scattered in unusual locations in other parts of the book, characters and sub-plots are introduced with great meaning and foreshadowing (only to be totally ignored for the rest of the text), and so on... it may take a good 3 or 4 reads to finally "grok" the story itself (which does, indeed, exist), but even then, no two readers come up with quite the same understanding.

It's either a brilliant masterpiece, or incomprehensible drivel, or quite possibly, both... which is part of the point of the whole thing.

Of course, in writing, just as in painting and all other arts, there is still some level of cohesion and structure (the medium itself), but that medium can contain quite a bit of chaos in the message. Just as a human dancer is constrained from turning into a battleship or a "hyper-dimensional shade of blue" mid-dance, an author is constrained to using something that at least appears to be language or text, and a painter is constrained to colors on canvas or another surface.

[hfojvt]

8. in economics words like progress and growth and modernity

I proposed replacing those terms with a value neutral acronym - Increasing Development and Implementation of Technology Increasing Complexity or IDIOTIC for short. However, I do not believe that complexity is nearly as dangerous as earthquakes, meteors and the venality and cupidity of the human race. The world is too complicated for GWB to understand, but he does not want to understand it, just exploit it.

[Mike03]

11. In economics

I have a really hard time distinguishing between chaos and investor psychology--the latter of which is a complete mystery to me.

[ErisFiveFingers]

39. Well, the field of study I've been undertaking....

... posits that the complexity of our world has *always* been beyond our understanding. Rather than people ever actually having any grasp of what was "really" going on, let alone control of it, the mind forms a self-protective concept of a *theory* of what's really happening, what's really going on.... but it's just that, a theory, nothing more. (I've been undertaking a cross discipline form of study that spans information theory, philosophy, various branches of math, etc..)

So, as our knowledge (as a species) of the world grows, we gradually learn how much chaos and disorder and entropy are intertwined with our existence. Some people fear disorder, and a loss of control (or, rather, the illusion of control), and try to impose as much rigidity and uniformity as they can possibly create or enforce. Others are slowly learning to understand, and even embrace, increasing levels of complexity and chaos.

As far it such a thing being our "undoing", I'm happy to believe that hopefully it will be the undoing of much of life and civilization as we have known it. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Think of the chaos that is induced when media is not centrally controlled, the chaos of everybody having the right to determine what to do with their own reproductive systems, the chaos created when everybody gets a voice in how their government was run... this is the kind of chaos that has *already* been created. Yes, it brought the downfall of monarchy, of heavily propagandized peoples, of state-enforced breeding of peasant classes, and destroyed a great many governments around the world. It ended life as we knew it. I look forward to some more changes of this magnitude, personally.

[knowbody0]

5. the universe is chaos

and that chaos creates order. we just have to accept it.
i love and thrive in chaos

[democracyindanger]

7. I had a boss who believed the same thing

By always keeping things a little messed up, he thought that it would lead to better creative work. He may have had a point, but a side effect was that sooner or later, you were bound to be f*cked over because of the institutionalized chaos.

[rug]

16. What are the parameters of the discussion?

[Mike03]

17. Yeah, AZ, I find this discussion totally fascinating

but I want to keep it within your limits of what you want to discuss.

[Az]

19. Chaos

Let it lead where it will.

[Rabrrrrrr]

18. Chaos is the beginning of all things,

and the end of all things.

Without chaos there is no order; without order, there is no chaos.

And personally, I come down on the side of preferring chaos.

[nutsnberries]

26. i like a little order to chaos and then i'm happy...

"the worldview of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order" ~Gary Zukav

[bridgit]

20. the case for chaos...

A guy visited da syte. Zaid it waz llaurel & hardy to navigate. That’s when I zeen, “Gee. Maybe if llaurel & hardy were made plain & simple instead? U kno? Plane. & zzzimple. Butt den. Just rite den. Dat’s when he zaid dat bee’ing pissed @ re-publicans waz jami farr too groovy. 4go’ing den, waist deeep & rizing and den tu de eyeballz de shrine watt hummm while pro’claim’ing N’stead, “I am holier then thou.” Bea it now, “I am more nothing than you are.” Laced with a glistening gibberish; for the stank that it left in a church where pure chaos has been taken hostage and threatened to be then alloyed with an anarchy of convenience. An upper crust pass-time not so un-removed from that which is, far too many times than not, only sustainable from within the 40acre parcel of a mother’s hand me down. You can believe it. They will want the laws to be writ in their favor when it is time to sign and close the escrow papers. And so…it is ‘a’ anarchy of convenience. As such, any such thing must never be contemplated, if ever, as an ethereal metal suitable to be then alloyed with pure chaos. It cheapens the scent what lay upon the tongue the skin. Chaos-ticians are known well enough. It is the very path itself what be moving upon the water.

So that it should go without saying.

Chaos is far too elegant a concept to be smudged, smeared by the likes of ‘anarchy’ and made then impure. Poor chaos. Subject to the whim of they who seek it as a means to describe their only window possible, their only glimpse into a state of DaDa ‘proper’. Chaos/DaDa. DaDa/Chaos. Two of but a few moving parts within the Perpetual DaDa Device. Chaos is the agreeable, silent partner within DaDa. Hand in hand they rail; against they who will feign nobility as such. As such; chaos can in no way be never-ever less than an alternative to tyranny and so…need be engaged along with an Aikido swoosh, re-directing both pomp & circumstance that way. Over-there. Far from the elegant mysteries what inhabit chaos and then by extension mine DaDa. Your DaDa. Proper DaDa. DaDa what be truly. A chrysalis of Chaos birthed atop a two left feet DaDa pathway to nowhere in particular.

Case in point; Anarchists in Eugene, within recent memory, advertised the times & dates of their protest???????????? What? Is? Up? With? That?

Anyone who witnessed the election debacle may well agree with the following: You want anarchy? Then become a lawyer, my friend.

Udder v’eyes…lieb mine DaDa ‘proper’ mit’out der unspeakable fingers. Lieb mine Slippery French Bag Whore Of A Slut, mine elegant Chaos pure. Undiluted. Un-alloyed. No more mit de more and more dummy-down ricky tic. For…

It is this as such anarchy’s response to tyranny itself what be the more wanting for the lack of a truer finger with or without a hangnail stuck into the eye of the oppressor, the phony elite, causing then their only tears they will ever shed over the likes of Chaos & DaDa. Though here it will be said; that they shed them now, when proper put, from each corner. Da?

When in the end it will be seen…

Everything has been birthed into a world of symbols. Or in the words of the Doctor, “Our…world.” And it is these very symbols over which we have been ‘given’ dominion as well. What to do? And where to put them? These symbols? What do they mean? What are they supposed to mean? What may they then mean? And to whom? The matter was then joined at the virtual interface between a piece of charcoal and a cave wall shear ever since ever. Poor ‘anarchy’. Holding allegiance to none but it self; skimming like a smooth river-rock across the water pooled into the slump of a blacktop parking lot. Never known truly, the caring love between Chaos & DaDa nor the gregarious children they spawn.

[Elidor]

21. Entropy requires no maintenance

But an occasional tune-up doesn't hurt.

[Mike03]

22. A good thing about chaos is...

It is the best argument against Newtonian Determinism.

What concerns me personally are the writings of experts on Complexity like Bar Yam, who has argued for several years that the complexity (chaos) of the complex systems we create have overtaken the complexity of the individuals who need to control those systems. This is why I think it is more difficult than ever before to make rational predictions about the world we live in. My pessimism stems from the the notion that we have lost control of these systems.

[Az]

24. There seems to be a range that people can internalize

While our recorded understanding of the world can explain things to a detailed level out ability to internalize and retain such information is variable and dependent on individuals as well as their life paths. Thus many people instead of learning a reasoned understanding of the world around them turn such matters into faith positions. Seeing and hearing perhaps the tips of ideas and accepting the underlying claims.

It may be that those heavily vested in these fields will be able to maintain an understanding of the ideas they continue to form. But our social understanding will become increasingly dependent on these individuals. As we learn more things about the universe and create our own mechanisms to manipulate it we increasingly become cogs in the machine.

Sometimes it may become necissary to introduce chaos into the machine and smash a few structures to free up the cogs in order to find a new array that better suits us and ensures that the machine serves us rather than us serving the machine.

[ErisFiveFingers]

41. Ah, interesting...

I posted something similar (and yet different) in this thread, and after re-reading your post, I realize you were saying some very similar things.

"It may be that those heavily vested in these fields will be able to maintain an understanding of the ideas they continue to form. But our social understanding will become increasingly dependent on these individuals."

This is the problem, and solution, of a technocracy. An alternate proposition is becoming one of those many individuals who are depended upon, so rather than a society with a few experts and many who are dependent on the experts, we have a society of *many* experts who depend on many *other* experts, or maybe we dissolve into a new form of society that we haven't quite envisioned yet.

"Sometimes it may become necissary to introduce chaos into the machine and smash a few structures to free up the cogs in order to find a new array that better suits us and ensures that the machine serves us rather than us serving the machine."

This is classic discordian philosophy, that there are two important forces in the world: The need to have a functional level of order (Aneristic illusion), and the need to create chaos in order to be free of the shackles created by order (Eristic Illusion). One extreme or the other is considered highly problematic.

[Miss Marmelstein]

23. Wasn't it Agent 86's assignment...

to fight chaos? Just asking.

[Az]

25. Indeed

And a fine organization it was.

Its interesting how villains in such series (both silly and serious) seem to have these over arching goals of applying evil concepts to controlling the world. They seem to be aware of their own evil ways and nefarious intentions.

But when we examine real world scenarios it is never the case. Every single form of tyranny visited upon us in large scale seems to be based upon the notion of doing good from the perpetrators point of view.

It seems it takes the notion of doing good to motivate a large enough group of people to create that much damage on society.

[RandomKoolzip]

27. R. Meltzer: "The most radical form of chaos is order."

[Deja Q]

28. Only if those who do the hurting to others get it.

The good people deserve peace.

[chaska]

29. I think chaos is good in a world with too much order, but....

it would seem that we don't have that particular problem at the moment.

[Az]

30. I would say its the other way around

The right seems to be trying to enforce their particular sense of order. Our appeal to diversity seems to embrace an aspect of chaos. Not all out chaos. But that from diversity comes strength.

[chaska]

33. yes, but their order is based in a kind of adolescent, warrior mentality..

not truly mature and therefore not truly orderly. But I'm just pulling this outta my ashcroft.

If you're serious about this subject, I strongly recommend reading 'The King Within' by Moore and Gillette. It's about the male psyche, based on Jungian Psychology. Stunning book and very readable.

[hickman1937]

31. Are you talking about 2 in diapers, and a 4yr old,

or just death and mayhem? Gimme death and mayhem any time.

[Az]

32. That sounds more like cataclysm than chaos

They are often confused for one another.

[hickman1937]

34. One spawns the other. n/t

[Mike03]

35. Kick

1) just in case there is still life in this thread
2) because I got kicked offline while participating in it
3) because it's an important question

[SOteric]

36. Except in an office filing system.

[alcibiades_mystery]

37. I like Bergson on this: Chaos is merely an order that we didn't expect

He argues that the idea of dis-order is always read negatively off the idea of order.

[Mike03]

38. I like that but I'm ignorant

about Bergson.

[Lilith Velkor]

42. Chaos is on the march

Pass the Chaos fries!

[Guy Fawkes]

43. All hail Eris, all hail discordia!

Long live the brotherhood! Down with the iLLuminati!

[Richard Steele]

44. And pass the hot dogs, it's Friday!!!

[Az]

45. No condiments

Remember the original snub.

Fnord.

[Skittles]

46. I grew up in chaos

to this day "routines" just scare me no end

[Jamastiene]

47. I can't function without it.

I can't seem to find anything if it is "in it's right place." I can't seem to do anything without chaos around me. I can't breathe without it. Must have it. Can't live without it. Where is it? Oh, must keep it close to me. Don't want to lose it. :P