“Why ‘Beyond Order’? It is simple, in some regard.
Order is EXPLORED TERRITORY. We are In Order when the actions we deem appropriate produce the results we aim at.
We regard such outcomes positively, indicating as they do, first, that we have moved closer to what we desire, and second, that our theory about how the world works remains acceptably accurate.
Nonetheless, all states of order, no matter how secure and comfortable, have their flaws. Our knowledge of how to act in The World remains eternally incomplete — partly because of our profound ignorance of the vast unknown, partly because of our willful blindness, and partly because the world continues, in its entropic manner, to transform itself unexpectedly.
Furthermore, the order we strive to impose on the world can rigidify as a consequence of ill-advised attempts to eradicate from consideration all that is unknown.
When such attempts go too far, totalitarianism threatens, driven by the desire to exercise full control where such control is not possible, even in principle. This means risking a dangerous restriction of all the psychological and social changes necessary to maintain adaptation to the ever-changing world. And so we find ourselves inescapably faced with the need to move beyond order, into its opposite: CHAOS.
If Order is where what we want makes itself known — when we act in accordance with our hard-won Wisdom — Chaos is where what we do not expect or have remained blind to leaps forward from the potential that surrounds us.
The fact that something has occurred many times in the past is no guarantee that it will continue to occur in the same manner.1 There exists, eternally, a domain beyond what we know and can predict.
Chaos is anomaly, novelty, unpredictability, transformation, disruption, and all too often, descent, as what we have come to take for granted reveals itself as unreliable. Sometimes it manifests itself gently, revealing its mysteries in experience that makes us curious, compelled, and interested. This is particularly likely, although not inevitable, when we approach what we do not understand voluntarily, with careful preparation and discipline. Other times the unexpected makes itself known terribly, suddenly, accidentally, so we are undone, and fall apart, and can only put ourselves back together with great difficulty—if at all.
Neither the state of order nor the state of chaos is preferable, intrinsically, to the other. That is the wrong way to look at it.
Nonetheless, in my previous book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, I focused more on how the consequences of too much chaos might be remediated. We respond to sudden and unpredictable change by preparing, physiologically and psychologically, for the worst.
And because only God Himself knows what this worst might be, we must in our ignorance prepare for all eventualities. And the problem with that continual preparation is that, in excess, it exhausts us. But that does not imply in any manner that chaos should be eliminated (an impossibility, in any case), although what is unknown needs to be managed carefully, as my previous book repeatedly stressed. Whatever is not touched by the new stagnates, and it is certainly the case that a life without curiosity—that instinct pushing us out into the unknown—would be a much-diminished form of existence. What is new is also what is exciting, compelling, and provocative, assuming that the rate at which it is introduced does not intolerably undermine and destabilize our state of being.”
