History is often viewed as conflict between the instinct for order and the impulse toward chaos.

Without order,nothing exists;without chaos,nothing grows.

And yet the struggle between them sheds more blood than any other war.

The instinct for order is an expression of mankind's desire for safety,stability,predictability,and a cause and effect simple enough to be relied upon.

Without resistance to change,growth itself would be impossible:resistance to change creates safe,stable,predictable environments in which change can happen.

The instinct for order is therefore aggressive.It opposes any change,any variation of perspective,any hostility of environment or intention.It fights to create and defend the condition it seeks.

The impulse toward chaos is mankind's inbred knowledge that the best way to survive any danger is to run away!It is a focus on the resources of individual imagination and cunning,rather than on the potential of action.Its most common expression involves an insistence upon self-determination,individual liberty,and nonconformity,which is all a rationalization of the desire to flee,to survive by escape.

Therefore the impulse toward chaos is also aggressive.The very act of escape breaks down systems of order:it contradicts safety,avoids stability,defies cause and effect.Like the instinct for order,it fights to create and defend the conditions it seeks.

BUT,stability and predictability themselves would be impossible without chaos.Chaos exerts the pressure which requires order to shape itself accurately.Without accuracy,order would self-destruct as soon as it came into being.

For these reasons,the struggle between order and chaos is eternal,necessary-and extremely expensive.By nature,mankind is at their most violent and belligerent in self-defense.

;) This is a quote from a story I read(with a little improvising on my part),It hit a particular nerve on MY VIEWS of the shape of where mankind is heading,what will the historians of tomorrow see when they look at the conditions we live in today,wars(invariably continuous),plague(aids,etc)and famine.

Any ideas,I do see the world through a certain skeptical view(being a little tweaked myself),but I am still a part of the world,human,and needy like anyone else.

That was a beautifully written piece.

I always look at things in this world as temporary.

And the world I see now with all its chaos and order, seems to be heading for a time when all this will end and justice will be established.

The scientist do not try to explain, they hardly try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
John Von Neumann

The only thing that creates and observes chaos is the human brain, which is merely a vehicle to convey non local, universal consciousness, and sometimes misinterprets what it is actually observing... what it actually is.

And the human brain sees chaos as the way to justify the 'Run away' concept,but order(governments,police,army,etc) tells us all to fight for the right to live free.

But order being aggressive will not bow to the unbeliever,the nonconformist,the genecidelist,the war monger.They face it with what they have,human mind at work.

The chaos theorists among us see the orderists concept with contempt,and vice versa,leaving mankind where?

History has and will repeat itself,in the same or similar ways,till we all perish and some new breed of species emerges from the primordial ooze we all came from.Dinosaurs extinct but not gone(Millions of years alive),Man,like so many other species,working towards extinction on a level we all will never see or understand till its too late,then nature will do it best to find a new,better,more resistant entity to extend its order.

Man IS chaos,not an observer of it.

Just my opinion(I could be wrong,I was once,the day I said,"I DO")
Ken

Ok, time to get a few more people to chime in on this one... :)

hi KBC, nice topic. Here are a few random ideas on chaos and harmony to add to this.

Someone once said to me that 'creative people are comfortable with ambiguity'. I liked that thought, and is an attitude that likely sits most comfortably with Taoist philosophy:

"Tao lives up to idea of a holistic world. It creates harmony in many things, it can see the greater wholeness and does not open its eyes for imperfection. Tao´s order is offered as a spontaneous direction. It lets change simply take its own course. "Restlessness and peace, fullness and emptiness run in an overlasting cycle. Direction is expressed in such way that the meaning is signified to the whole being; order is expressed and all other particular beings are subordinated to."

The above passage was taken from a comparative philosophy article on chaos and harmony by Daniela Fobelová found through Googling just now. It's a bit dense, yet worth wading through if you're in the mood for that sort of thing.
20th WCP: The Idea of Order and Harmony in Philosophical-Aesthetical Reflections (http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Comp/CompFobe.htm)

Gestalt psychology also appeals to me as it's also based on the premise the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Gestalt psychology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology)