Dichotomies of Order and Chaos
A perfect world, a perfect heaven. The aspiration of so many people, for a perfect life, one without sickness, without death, without chaos. And that is a cruel lie, and a cruel hope, for there is no life without chaos, no order without change. Only nothingness is static, and even that lies full of possibility.
So what do we hope for, if not a perfect world to come? Growth can only come out of chaos, although understanding that growth comes from times of order. Our goal, our purpose, is growth and understanding of the world around us and ourselves. To find a static world, or to change to one, would make us useless and our purpose unreachable. Instead, we should hope for learning, for growth, for becoming more than we currently are, as painful as that can be sometimes.
That doesn't mean all chaos is good, any more than all order is good. Every change holds within it seeds both of growth and pain, of advantage and disadvantage. And times of order degrade over time, taking what had been good to simply what is, and often what is bad. Chaos and order are both good and bad, depending on what is done with the opportunities, not the fact of order or chaos itself.
Order however, is much more comfortable than chaos. We crave order, security, comfort. Even when the order is obviously not serving the people involved, it is still quite difficult to take the risk of chaos and make changes. When we cannot find order, we find ways to force order, see patterns, create comfort out of confusion. We call upon Gods to create order or explain what is, blaming chaos on divine disfavor. We deny growth because it scares us, because the potential for growth is always the same potential as loss.
We must learn to embrace chaos as we embrace order, to accept that our lives cannot remain pleasantly constant. To understand that how we deal with change and chaos are the things that truly define us as people. And to accept that our lives are short, and not constant, and that to embrace anything in life is to embrace the fact that it is impermanent.
Questions:
What are the limits of order?
What are the limits of chaos?
How do we balance our desire for security with our need for change?
So what do we hope for, if not a perfect world to come? Growth can only come out of chaos, although understanding that growth comes from times of order. Our goal, our purpose, is growth and understanding of the world around us and ourselves. To find a static world, or to change to one, would make us useless and our purpose unreachable. Instead, we should hope for learning, for growth, for becoming more than we currently are, as painful as that can be sometimes.
That doesn't mean all chaos is good, any more than all order is good. Every change holds within it seeds both of growth and pain, of advantage and disadvantage. And times of order degrade over time, taking what had been good to simply what is, and often what is bad. Chaos and order are both good and bad, depending on what is done with the opportunities, not the fact of order or chaos itself.
Order however, is much more comfortable than chaos. We crave order, security, comfort. Even when the order is obviously not serving the people involved, it is still quite difficult to take the risk of chaos and make changes. When we cannot find order, we find ways to force order, see patterns, create comfort out of confusion. We call upon Gods to create order or explain what is, blaming chaos on divine disfavor. We deny growth because it scares us, because the potential for growth is always the same potential as loss.
We must learn to embrace chaos as we embrace order, to accept that our lives cannot remain pleasantly constant. To understand that how we deal with change and chaos are the things that truly define us as people. And to accept that our lives are short, and not constant, and that to embrace anything in life is to embrace the fact that it is impermanent.
Questions:
What are the limits of order?
What are the limits of chaos?
How do we balance our desire for security with our need for change?
posted by Vieva @ 1:05 PM
2 Comments:
At 10:03 AM,
Star said…
My only comment on the essay itself is that I think the mention of specific examples of the effects of chaos (illness and death) at the beginning is a little out of place... Because the rest of the essay is dealing with chaos as a general, abstract idea, not in terms of the specific forms it can take. The specific examples took me off on a whole different track having to do with pain and how we handle it, and then that turned out to have nothing to do with what you were saying. *G*
(Okay, no, I'm not necessarily reading these "for critique"--but I know you want feedback too, so when I happen to notice something I figure I should say something.)
Questions, questions:
1. The limits of order... Well, by its very nature it is composed of limits. And that is its own limitation: that to maintain it, you have to stick to specific guidelines and parameters. There is no room for "thinking outside the box" in a system of perfect order. You have to follow all the rules all the time, no exceptions, no excuses, and so on and so forth. I suppose in that sense perfect order is something like a big beaurocracy.
2. The limits of chaos, by contrast, would be that it does not allow for limits. Forget thinking inside or outside of the box; there is no box. While this can be useful in some circumstances, generally a "system" of perfect chaos would have the problem of being so disorganized as to render progress nearly impossible. Connections between one thing and the next are formed somewhat randomly. When progress is made, it is either so slow that it's barely discernable (because the connections formed run you around all over the place before getting to the point) or it's so fast that you don't have time to process it (because the connection is made so suddenly and intuitively that you're there before you know where you're going).
3. In theory the balance between security and change is an easy thing--you just examine the situation and determine whether it's better to stay where you're at or move on. However... That could happen only in a system of perfect order, where the decision is made based on an objective list of pros and cons for each option, and you could tally up which is best and stick to it. In real life, chaos enters this picture in the form of emotions. Most decisions, especially important ones, involve some sort of emotional component, and that just screws up the whole theory of making decisions based on what is objectively the best choice. Because of that element of chaos, I don't think it's possible to lay out guidelines for how to strike the balance between security and change... Everyone's balance point is going to be a little different, and it will shift depending on the circumstances of their life and the specific situation they're deciding about. The best one can do, I think, is to watch one's overall pattern of choices and how they affect one's life, and adjust the balance according to what seems to bring about the best results.
...And I hope that sort of made sense. Yet another "Am I speaking Vogon or English?" day. The more I do this, the more I realize what you've meant when you've said it's difficult to make thoughts go on the paper (or monitor, in this case) in English. My brain doesn't want to form words at all for these things; it just wants to transmit thoughts directly and forget about language entirely. *G*
At 9:24 AM,
Vieva said…
if you ever figure out how to get these thoughts on *paper* easier, let me know! :)
I'll take a look at the start of the essay .. I really didn't want it to focus on pain, but at the same time, pain is often how we perceive chaos .. gah.
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