People write books on chaos, it has a theory associated with it, I've looked into it, and it's really a lot to handle. Let's try and break it down as simple as possible.
What is the opposite of chaos? Perhaps order. And what is another opposite of order? Disorder. Then we can say chaos is disorder. Let's further examine what disorder is with an example of a house that is in perfect order. All its utilities work great, the paint is fresh and the yard was just landscaped. Then imagine that the house was left as is, the owners didn't touch it, inside or out and other people were not allowed to trespass for 30 years. When the owners returned to the house, they first found that the yard was completely overgrown and out of control. The beautiful paint was now chipped and pealing from the weather, and inside was a mess of dust, cobwebs and other remains of small animals that once found shelter there. The owners would quickly say that their home was in disorder (or chaos). This is true, disorder has taken place,,, but what does this say about human order? We build a perfect house on a plot of Earth's land, we let it naturally deteriorate and the home has changed into something resembling the original plot of Earth's land,,, and we call it disorder. Where in actuality humans have disordered (or changed the order of) the Earth. So what is Chaos and what is Order? From one perspective humans increase order, from another they excite chaos. If chaos is disorder then maybe disorder isn't really the opposite of order but just a change in order. This means disorder isn't very different from order at all,,, and maybe order isn't as different as chaos as we think.
2 comments:
What's to say that the earth has a natural order? Couldn't nature be described as total chaos? If you look at a plot of land in the forest and then look again 30 years later, odds are that things would be completely different.
I would offer that we define "Order" as constant positive human maintainance, while "chaos" would simply be a lack of human intervention.
To C. Haseman, I love it. Completely agree. "Constant positive human maintenance" is a brilliant way to view it. Basically I view order and chaos as subjective and relative to those making the observation. I have a follow up post coming on Thursday, however I think this is a topic to be discussed without resolution,,, which is why I find it so fascinating.
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