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17 February 2009

Chaos and Order

When it comes to chaos and order, or anarchy and law or whatever you want it call it, people think they've got to pick a side. If you're not good, you're evil. If you don't support government, you're an anarchist.

But the fact is, opposites doesn't only balance each other out, they define each other. Which is obvious, if you think about it. How are you going to explain the one without sooner or later referring to the other.

And the beauty, the thing that makes it all fantastic, is that it is the mix of the two that makes the best result.

100% order in a government: Planned economy police state. Now that's a recipe for destruction (and eventually; chaos).
100% chaos, meaning there is no goverment: I suppose at this point Somalia would be a good suggestion. But is Somalia a complete anarchy? No. There are warlords and such telling other people what to do, governing them around.
And this goes on and on and on. With the possible exception of machines, neither one can self-sustain. Yin and yang comes to mind here, I didn't suckle this idea from my own breast (as that would be disappointing and anatomically difficult).
Anyway, the point here was, the idea is to mix them. I wrote about creativity some time ago, a perfect example. If you just spac out random things all the time, you're just mad. If you're spaccing out random things while rich, you're eccentric.
But if you put your randomness into a system, or build your randomness on systems, you're suddenly being creative, innovative, inventive and other things ending with -ive. (repulsive? attractive? magnetic? locomotive?) Words that are positive.
Go the other way and be aaaall about systems, and you'll be very boring. Or an accountant.
Traditional fiction is all about picking a side. Jedis vs Siths, Midgard vs Mordor, The Dark One vs The Light, the Titans vs the Burning Legion and so on. Who will win? Who will prevail? In the end, there can only be one victor!

Wrong.

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