Today, I wondered what the objective definition of chaos was. (v1.1)
By: Josh Hagood
Tags: Intp, Philosophy, Horror, Magic, Reality

(First Draft, all in one sitting. Sober besides the last gasps of my ADHD stimulants for the day. I say sitting, but most of this was formulated while pacing around my entire house!

1.1 = minor formatting for readability, references started)

Order and Chaos.

Law and… anarchy?

When defined by human-scale terms, order and chaos become extremely diluted within a single step. Of note, however, is the fact that we have a very simple word for Order, but not a common, simple word for the opposite.

Chaos fails to accurately define the state of a complete lack of laws, as it implies a type of action is happening, frequently understood as rapid action that is untraceable by current human limits, whatever those are at the time. There is no inherent state of lawlessness in, at least, the English language. We have facsimiles that approximate this state, and we have longer, compound words or similar concepts, but no simple way to refer to a situation with absolutely zero laws. To be clear, this includes laws of nature, the most basic observable law we’ve defined.

All of our references to this state of total lawlessness known as “chaos” are only relational to other known “ordered” concepts. “Anarchy”, is defined as either a total lack of governmental laws, or a series of laws enforced by various community vectors. Both of these definitions and all other colloquial uses of the word are an example of this “relational” understanding of this concept of chaos.

Anarchy is only chaos in relation to a traditional understanding of a state. There is a possibility, however unlikely or unimaginable, that you could have 100% lack of any sort of system we’d recognize as laws, yet still, humans would exist. So, we cannot define chaos by the standards of civilization, as civilization inherently leans towards Order.

What is Order? What is Chaos? What are their components?

Defining order’s components from an anthropocentric standpoint will typically start with laws of nature that we cannot violate no matter how hard we are currently able to try. Then we move to laws of man, which is where morality is introduced.

As a species with increased agency, compared to most fauna, we should be extremely thankful that we co-developed the concepts of morals with our rational brain. And indeed, it’s likely that there could be no other way to reach this point without this morality development.

It’s known by neuroscience that the section of the brain responsible for the disgust you feel when you see toxic materials like feces or a rotten, liquefied onion is the exact same part of the brain that makes your stomach churn when you hear about the gruesome crimes (against humanity, not the state) of a cannibal murderer, or possibly of a man hoarding resources that could go to improve the lives of so many, yet instead uses it for personal enrichment.

Primate behavior mirrors human behavior when it comes to the physical world and disgust: They tend to turn away from things that would make them sick to ingest or be around naturally. Put a desired food, such as a peanut, on or in feces, and monkeys will either refuse it, or go to wash the item first. Placing the item on a plastic “poop imposter” will NOT elicit the same response in most cases, so it appears they too have a “disgust” reflex.¹

If we, as humans, did not have this reaction to both our physical fuel, food, and our psychic fuel, our actions and those of others, we would surely never survive for long as a species. Therefor, humans need laws to live. We crave law and order, even the most fanatical anarchist punk knows, deep down, that a world with 0 laws is untenable so long as it involves humans. Indeed, this is why anarchy, commonly mis-defined as a lack of government, is actually it’s own form of government.

There, we have the perfect metaphor to explain why it’s so difficult to define the components of chaos.

The label “chaos” will only be applied in relation to order. The label “order” will only be applied in relation to chaos.

Nature appears to be full of laws, and strongly adheres to order. After all, gravity on earth is a constant. Thermodynamics are inescapable. 1+1=2. Right?

What if 1+1=3, though? What then? What would happen? Chaos? Or a new type of order? Gravity is a constant… while on earth. Gravity reverts back to a primal force once you enter space, where there are multiple sources of gravity and we lose our grounding. Thermodynamics only work for as long as we observe them working. And we have not observed everything, and never will.

Every law, every word thought or spoken, and every fact ever “proven” has an implied asterisk next to it, that reads “As far as I know”. That car is red. As far as I know. To someone else, it may be burgundy, or rose, or brown, or grey, to another.

It is only the desire to convey ideas and thoughts, or intended actions and results that we, as a species, have defined the concept of a fact or law of nature.

This is an excellent development, and key to all advancements we’ve made as a species. This assumption is required to retain any information past the lifespan of any one human. However, we must also keep a doorstop in the threshold of our order-seeking brain for true chaos.

True chaos.

What is this? The primary topic of this thought-line is revealed. There is a state of true law that can be imagined, without much effort. There is a state of seemingly true chaos that can be imagined, again with little effort. This is a sign that our language is useful. But not perfect. True chaos or order by what definition? Hundreds or even millions of definitions are possible, but they are all following 2 laws:

The definition springs from the mind of a human. The definition will rely on outside information, referenced outside of the “world” of that true chaos or order. To understand that you are in a world of perfect order, you must understand what chaos looks like.

So, here we are. We’ve attempted to break law and order into it’s most basic components, and found what seems to be the “deepest” you can go. You can only define these concepts by each other, and there is only one step farther to go with this logic: They are the same thing. The are a slider on a range. Right?

What is the range of chaos and order?

What is 100% chaos or 100% order? Are they mutually exclusive?

In an ethnocentric, humanocentric brain, all attempts to go deeper only run into new perspectives for the same core thought. So, the next logical step would be to start trying on new, more holistic thoughts. You must go deeper. Humans have defined the concept of order and chaos, and (perhaps in our hubris, erroneously) have assumed those man-made concepts would apply to reality. But since there is no reality where we can observe a “pure” version of this concept, we cannot be certain it’s objectively real. There are events and states that can feel more or less orderly, more or less chaotic, but even the phrase “pure chaos” implies a certain amount of laws are in place, such as laws of nature. Impure, yet again.

Hello. At this point, I, the author, need to insert myself into this thought experiment.

This is necessary now, as I am moving out of the realm to the universal and into my own psychic field or thought processes. From now on, the phrase “I” will be used and only indicates my own human attempt to understand what we call reality.

I believe order and chaos are the same thing.

Nature follows it’s own order, but it also follows it’s own chaos.

Using algebra and variables, we may be able to come up a human understanding of this abstract formula. By defining this, we may feel that we are moving closer to understanding and re-defining the “laws” of nature into the human machine code (language). To some degree this is, of course, a true representation. But we understand that our language has limits, so it is also to some degree, of course, false.

It appears to be human nature to define. For many, likely obvious, reasons. Therefor, we appear to be creatures of order, inherently. Even the most chaotic of us are only chaotic by comparison. We have no truly objective standard to judge the contents of order and chaos in any individual object and, furthermore, the lines of what counts as “one” object are significantly more blurry than our anthropocentric monkey brain would like to perceive it as.

The paradox of the ship of Theseus will be sufficient explanation of this concept. Our cells make up our “self”, as well as matter being required to make up THOSE cells. The concept of “I” is ever changing in the physical world. Every 7 years, we have regenerated and/or swapped every single cell in what we consider our bodies. That’s the myth, anyway. It’s ~99% true, but there are a small handful of cells, primarily in the brain and eye, that are created and are never replaced. If they are lost in any capacity, they are irreplaceable under natural circumstances. These cells will live alongside your own human-centric life span and die with you. Additionally, we have non-cell parts of our body, such as bone as well as some tissue and proteins.

We are less “corporeal” than we’d like to think about, and that’s ok. It’s not relevant in the day-to-day survival to think about your microbiome as long as you’re giving the collective “body” what it needs to keep functioning as expected. However, this means we’re less “lawful” than we’d expect as well. We, as animals, as humans, and as elements of nature, are a fusion of chaos and order. We ARE this unnamed concept that is both chaos, stretching infinitely on one end of the horizon, and order, on the other.

Humans, nature, and the perceptible “real” world (reality) are defined by this perspective. Seeing that which appears definable as order, and that which appears undefinable as chaos. Actual reality exists on this uneven fault line.

Order is one dimension. Chaos is a 2nd, or vice-versa. The place where they meet adds a third, and a fourth is theorized to exist. This mysterious 4th dimension may be best understood as time, making up the substance of the filler between reality.

Time is what causes order and chaos to fluctuate, to fight and in turn both produce and erode. It is an invisible flow of liquid energy eroding away the little bits of the pure order and chaos we can just barely perceive around us in all directions. Time may influence a temporary dominance of one or the other, but we can only be certain of this “saturation” point within a defined range. And we can never zoom this concept out to the maximum level.

This implies, to me, that we don’t quite understand anything in the way that seems comforting to the human perspective. We have simply inserted abstract concepts into the world of reality to soothe our order-seeking brains. We are tainted. We have a bias. A bias to order. A being of pure chaos, as corrupted of a thought as this is inside your head right now, would scoff at the idea that someone is living a “chaotic” life. The most chaotic human life ever lived is likely orders of magnitude more “lawful” than this being of “pure chaos”, from the human perspective.

We MUST follow laws that we have no hand in making, only observing. These laws are immutable and proven, until the day they aren’t.² Pure chaos would NEVER follow a single law, and therefor be 100% unpredictable in behavior. I being like this would likely be unable to maintain a corporeal form, and the idea of an entity or identity, itself, is challenged by this concept.

Using this logic, is human behavior predictable? Or unpredictable? Logical or random?

With these concepts and thought exercises, I posit that order and chaos are not distinct. They are the same thing, viewed from different sides and perspectives.

As humans, we trend towards our own definition of order no matter our personality or desire. Our very perception, “the human gaze”, is an act of bringing order, while “chaos” is happening all around us, even internally. “Order” is aligned human, while “Chaos” might as well be thrown out of our lexicon and replaced with “the unknown”. Nothing, cosmically, would be different under that change. That substitution of one “law” for another.

The most chaotic individuals are not operating fully randomly. There is not only laws of nature at play, but a list of incentives and rewards that are too long to hold in our brain or fully comprehend.

Our computers, made by humans, are physically incapable of truly “random” number generation, only a level that is “acceptable random” for human use. Our own minds, not our own purposeful creation but certainly cultivated by human interest, produced the concept of “truly random” as an aspirational goal for “pure chaos”, yet we appear to be unable to reach this. On the other hand, there appears to be an end-state to pure order, yes? A world where humans understand absolutely every single phenomenon or action that happens in the entire universe. We would know why any individual action happened, along with every sub-action that was a part of this action, and every component of every force that acted upon this object. What have we found, yet again? Order actually means understanding. Humans are the arbiters of order, of the observed. No matter how hard we try, we cannot divorce ourselves from these concepts we’ve invented under the illusion that we’ve observed them. Both of these end states are equally unattainable. How can we even imagine knowing everything when we appear to have so much still unknown? Well, in a word: Omniscience. Simply defined as: the state of knowing everything. It’s roots? Omnis (meaning “all”) and scientia (meaning “knowledge”). Literally, “all science”. What impetus did we have to define the state of possessing all of the science that is knowable? Godhood. Up on the highest pedestal we’ve placed a God. And they know everything. They are the ultimate arbiter of order, and the dispeller of chaos. They are what the collective human mind, in a state of nature, strives for. Out of the “chaos” of nature, the being that desires to define it all emerges, homosapian. The ultimate question appears to be coalescing. What would happen if we, as a species, accepted chaos?

Well…. nothing. As being of law, we would inevitable destroy ourselves and reduce ourselves (and perhaps our environment) to dust, back into nature from whence we came. Instead, what if we embraced this role as bringers of law and order? To be made in the image of our highest, most celebrated concept, we define the concept as non-human. Above human, even. A goal we must work towards, knowing in the dark, natural recesses of our own consciousness that we will never attain omniscience. Indeed, by virtue of being old enough to read this, you’ve already hit the limits of our electricity based cognition many times in life. There are “laws” that limit our action. You can only read so fast. We forget, you throw out valid data for many reasons, I define things as good and bad. We all MUST do all of this.

Else our own advanced agency would destroy us, no? We’d be the monkeys that ate the disgusting peanut and died from another lifeform, bacteria. A component of our own body, simply in the wrong place. We, as individuals, would be incapable of perceiving that kind of information, much less storing it. To this end, there can be only one conclusion. Order and Chaos are not just one in the same, they are the fundamental elements of our universe, and nothing can be built or exist without significant amounts of both. This is why we only grasp at straws and require inductive logic to begin to define the limits of chaos and order. It is a fundamental aspect of reality, imagination, and all things. Order and Chaos are life itself. We follow the rules of birth and death, but this is simply a temporary limit on our molecules. They will be released back into “nature” when you die, just as they were complied to create those “lifetime” cells when you were aggregated. This is not a tragedy, it is simply an aspect of Order and Chaos. You have received a blessing of Order when you were amalgamated and your reservoir of Order, the human concept, is slowly depleted as your components break back down.

You may be thinking that nature represents chaos, then, no? But the next time someone is born, nature will crack open it’s textbook and follow at least SOME of the laws that we’ve defined for it over the years. A human will end up with a head, torso, and 4 limbs most of the time. Not always, and these patterns tend to perform differently depending on which you follow. Nature is clearly following some kind of agenda, even without any input from us. Both when it completes the pattern we expect, and when it doesn’t. Does this not sound like “unknown laws”, which should be an impossible paradox if humans are the arbiters of “objective” order. The thought disproves itself. Chaos does not exist. Order does not exist. Instead, all we have is reality. As we perceive it, reality is the product and detritus of the constant battle of Order and Chaos. There is no beginning or end state of reality, only cycles upon cycles. It is a human construct to define beginnings and ends, and we have yet to uncover any evidence, by my judgment, that indicates that nature defines beginnings and ends at all. Hopefully you, too, can begin to increase your perception of these fundamental building blocks of reality that we, as humans, have clumsily observed. Reality cannot define itself outside of the very act of existence, which is a type of definition.

We can add chaos or subtract order to a situation, we can increase or decrease perception in ourselves, but the range and the limits of these concepts will always be defined by humans, not reality, and it is folly to expect reality to exist on our terms.

“What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. — Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958)”

🅃🄷🄰🄽🅇 🄵🄾🅁 🄲🄾🄼🄸🄽🄶 🅃🄾 🄼🅈 🅃🄴🄳 🅃🄰🄻🄺

References:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJF-cbTC4Cg

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_theories_in_science