Chaos

Almost all of humanity has experienced a chaotic day or situation. Kids might not know the actual words but they too experience chaos. It’s at the end of the chaotic day or situation that we see people that have triumphed and come out on top; we consider these people hero’s. Rightly so ; riding out a chaotic situation and coming out on top is difficult or is it ? 

Do these hero’s knowingly or by chance turn situations that are terminal into great wins ? What is it that helps them? A closer look at the fundamental meaning of chaos is required. 

To start let’s look at chaos from a Physics point of view. Physics says that chaos is the property of a complex system whose behaviour appears to be random . This system also shows great sensitivity to small changes in its parameters which could be due to internal or external factors. Physics also says that as a complex system reduces that over all energy present in that system it will tend towards chaos - this is a simple explain action of entropy.  

The linguistic view is quite simple - Chaos is complete disorder and confusion . 

Philosophical view is - that in complex chaotic systems there are patterns that are consistent. In essence there are deterministic behaviours inside of a large complex non deterministic system.

To understand the mechanism used by the hero’s we need to combine these three views. For a short while imagine 2 boats at sea in stormy weather; one reaches the shore the other sinks. Both crews in the boats are equally qualified and competent. However its just one crew and captain that triumphs over the face of absolute destruction. (There are other examples we can use - i like this one). Both crews had simple choices to make - fight or flee. Both crews had a finite amount of physical, mental energy available along with whatever spare energy the boat had. Both crews wanted to live. With everything being the same at the starting point of the chaotic situation (the raging seas and the storm) only one comes out on top.  It boils down to the choices made by the crews and he captains. If we take the physics view of entropy - one realises that the over complex system has become chaotic because an external force has overcome the equilibrium in the system resulting in energy loss and chaos (the external force being the storm ; over riding the over all energy represented by the crew, the boat and the calm seas). To get out of the situation we have a choice - either add energy to overcome the external force or to use the external force to help get you out of the situation. Adding energy is not the answer - there was only a finite amount of energy that the system started with and as time progresses the energy is going to be lower; diminishing returns to the point where there is n energy left and the boat and its crew is lost.  The second choice is to use the external disturbance to find the deterministic behaviour in what appears to be a chaotic situation; i.e find the wave or the ocean current that helps you ride the storm out without having to spend any more energy that what is absolutely required. 

Hero’s do this - they find the one thing in that chaotic day or situation that allows them to ride the day or the wave and come out triumphant on the other side. In our day to day lives there is enough chaos because we get overwhelmed when we try to mange all the balls in the air with reducing energy levels. One needs to identify the really important things and only spend energy on those - not all things are important and not all things can be managed with the limited mental and physical energy available. 

Find your wave/ocean current and reach the safety of the shore - tomorrow is another day when you will be at sea again and who knows there might be monsters in the deep or another storm to deal with. 

C