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Controlling Chaos Is Impossible. And Extremely Dangerous.
Life is unpredictable and chaotic. Despite my best efforts to control my life, I’ve had to essentially start all over several times, and I’ve ended up in a place and a job that I never could have possibly predicted when I started laying out my “life plan”. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that while planning is important, it’s more important to respond to unexpected changes efficiently. Unexpected changes can’t be avoided, no matter how much I plan. Success is not the result of avoiding unexpected changes, it’s the result of responding to those changes intelligently, fearlessly, and efficiently.
I view conservatism as an understanding that the world is largely governed by chaos, we cannot control it, and it is in our best interest to learn how to adjust to changes as they come. The disadvantage of this worldview is that it can sometimes lead to a laissez-faire approach to life, which can be unhelpful. Taoism has its appeal, but you can only carry that so far. But in general, conservatives are more willing to allow things like free markets and individual liberties to guide us to, well, to wherever they lead. We’ll figure it out when we get there. Trusting chaos is not easy, so conservatism is difficult.
On the other hand, I view leftism as an effort to control chaos. It’s hard to make plans and organize things if you have no idea what tomorrow brings. So it’s understandable to attempt to control the world around us. The disadvantage of this worldview is that such efforts at control often lead to tyranny, which tends to be repressive and violent. And, therefore, even more chaotic. Thus, attempts to control chaos inevitably lead to more chaos. Marxism has its appeal, but you can only carry that so far. But in general, leftists view things like free markets and individual liberties to be things to be controlled and managed in the most efficient way possible. Trusting chaos is not easy, so leftists don’t try. Which makes leftism easy.
Well, leftism is easy in theory, but impossible in practice, because it doesn’t work. It can’t work. In a world governed by chaos, the more you try to control it, the worse things get. It’s like trying to hold back the tides with a rake. Or trying to control our economy with federal spending. Or trying to control a virus with a mask mandate. Or trying to control the weather of the entire world with solar panels. Pick your own example – it’s always the same.
This is the point of Bjorn Lomborg’s book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. He points out that the climate has been changing since the dawn of time, it will probably continue to do so, and it would be in our best interest to try to prepare for whatever changes might be coming next. He views efforts to control the climate as too unpredictable, too risky, and too expensive. He would prefer to spend that money on preparing for whatever comes next.
Dr. Lomborg is a gay, vegetarian, Danish environmentalist, and he considers himself to be a man of the left. But the left destroyed him for even bringing up these topics, and suggesting that perhaps we can’t control the weather of the entire world. He suggested the resources spent on controlling global warming might be better spent on more pressing topics, like malaria and malnutrition. But he was attacked by his colleagues on the left as a heretic.
Which, I suppose, to them, he is.
Let’s deal with the problems facing us right now. Trying to control chaos is either difficult or impossible, so we should utilize our limited resources intelligently.
The left went bananas.
I think that most American citizens who describe themselves as ‘conservative’ understand on a certain level that excessive efforts at control are hopeless and destructive. They understand that free markets and individual liberty are impossible to predict, but are overall beneficial to most people. They may not use those words, but I think they pretty much grasp the basic concept.
I don’t think that most Americans who describe themselves as ‘liberal’ understand the inherent problems with attempting to control chaos. I’m not convinced that most of them have even given it a great deal of thought. It is the centerpiece of their worldview, but they avert their gaze, and instead prefer to dream of a better world in which everybody sets aside their own self interests to build a better world, by controlling the chaos that is so scary to us.
Chaos scares me too, of course. So I understand their desire to control it.
But I don’t understand how on earth they ever expect that to actually work. Our track record so far in human history, when it comes to controlling chaos, is absolutely horrifying.
Many conservatives have probably never listened to Milton Friedman speak. But they would understand him if they did, and probably agree with much of what he says, even if he openly acknowledges the difficulties of their own worldview.
Meanwhile, leftists prefer to stick with John Lennon:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only skyImagine all the people
Livin’ for today
AhImagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, tooImagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
YouYou may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as oneImagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of manImagine all the people
Sharing all the world
YouYou may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
At least Lennon had the decency to call the song, “Imagine”. Not “Controlling Chaos is a Good Idea”.
Imagine, indeed.
I suspect that even he understood that while Marxism has its appeal, you can only carry it so far.
American conservatives understand the limitations of our own philosophy. In fact, our entire philosophy is based on the inherent limitations of our ability to control the world around us.
It’s not obvious to me that American Democrats understand the limitations of their own philosophy. When their efforts at control inevitably lead to disaster, their solution is always more control.
Which is extremely dangerous. Which we are all finding out during the Biden administration.
Again.
And again and again and again.
Published in General
Leftism is based on an overestimation of the capabilities of human designed systems.
They should cut it out.
I loathe that song. For once, the melody isn’t the culprit. It ain’t Bach, but not much is. It is sentiment of the lyrics, which would embarrass a moderately intelligent six year old.
I always thought that chaos is what the left wants. They believe that by creating chaos they can achieve power. Even when they get that power, it is never enough, so they must continue creating more chaos to achieve greater and greater power. By the time they have achieved all of the power they want there is nothing left behind for them to control any more. Thus, death and misery is always the result from the totalitarian left. And they never learn, so they go somewhere else and do it again.
I would say that is more a definition of anarchy – which is the inevitable result of extreme left OR extreme right.
I think we give way too much credit to Marx in characterizing Democrats. There are Marxists among them, no doubt, true believers in government ownership of production, but while this is a potent group, it is not the majority of Democrats. Most are more like the old English Whigs, Benthamites, who are more interested in approximating utopia than collectivism and the elimination of the notion of private property. They are Dukakisesque, promising to manage everything better if just given the chance. That’s why “equity” rings so true to them. That they continue to push “Climate Change” proves how incredibly arrogant and silly they are. Equity is also a powerful charm for them, something that they promise to manage and that will make everything better. They promise. Really. Come on, skepticism is unAmerican. Unfortunately, no one can even remotely describe how equity can be managed, or even what it is.
The crisis is their favorite political tool, as they often say, a reason to deploy them with their skill and empathy. And their degrees. And certifications. They are the ones… you know, the thing.
But they oversell, overpromise and exaggerate. They fail to understand history. And human nature. What they do know is that if they can get the electorate to hate their opposition enough, to distrust them, they can cement their votes without argument and win by default. They need tribal loyalty. Add to that a feckless and compliant media, and you have our current situation.
But nothing snaps a person from mass delusion like harsh reality. Falling markets, rising interest rates, high inflation, military embarassment, the COVID fiasco, world instability, lawlessness, the border, the Jan 6th reality, etc.
It’s time for the Republicans to turn to their inner Tory and make America resilient and conservative again.
Man: We can control the virus by controlling society.
Society: [Suffers extreme harm.]
Virus: [Laughs and carries on as before.]
The idea of centralized economic planning is a very seductive one. It just seems to make sense that such planning would lead to more efficiency…less waste…and certainly less unnecessary human suffering than an environment in which millions of decision-makers, many of them in competition with one another, are making their own separate and uncoordinated decisions, resulting in pointless product redundancy, economic cycles driving unemployment, and lots of other bad things.
To understand the problems with this view requires either a pretty good abstract intelligence coupled with time spent thinking about the problem, or bitter experience.
Francis Spufford’s book Red Plenty is a brilliant demonstration of the realities encountered by top-down planning, Soviet-style.
I reviewed it here a couple of years ago.
No, the left does not work toward the crisis of chaos because chaos is the end they want. It is an intermediate goal: a means to an end, not an end.
They want absolute power because they believe that that is the only way chaos can be permanently extinguished in the world.
The proportion of commenters on this thread, including the author of the above-quoted Comment, whom I will, if asked, nominate for one of the limited number of spots in the bombproof shelter under an unidentified hotel somewhere in the Appalachians if worse comes to worse is striking.
[TAGS: Replies, Momentarily Intriguing but Quickly Recognized as Incomprehensible]
God brings order out of chaos. The Garden was not chaotic, it was ordered and eminently livable. The Devil brought chaos, death, infertility of the land, thorns, thistles and murder. The Devil uses chaos, but toward an important (to him) end. It is directed and controlled chaos.
Civilization is a reasonable attempt to bring productivity and goodness out of greater chaos. Laws are intended to control chaos. Lawlessness, either societal or judicial, is chaos. Fences, rightly used, make good neighbors.
Agriculture and animal husbandry bring a large degree of order out of a greater chaos; herding animals and planting grains and fruits is much easier than relying on hunting and gathering and even having to pick up and move when that which you’ve hunted and gathered grows scarce from your harvesting.
Stampedes are chaotic, and deadly to both the cattle and the cowboys. The whole herd is moving, but not in an organized way, and a cow’s quick turn to the right may cut off the path of the cow behind, and cause the third cow to trample it. The same with human beings. How many times have we heard about concert-goers being crushed and trampled. This is uncontrolled chaos.
But in (I hate to bring it up, but) the Jan. 6 protesters’ approach to the Capitol, I’ve read that there were men with bullhorns, men shouting directions, and a crowd being herded into a funnel of fencing. And even then when people tried to escape the crush, others were there to redirect those in the crowd back toward the goal, the Capitol doors. There were reports that people feared being crushed, and that at least one other person was crushed in the chaotic slow-motion stampede. People didn’t know where they were going, or even want to go where the herd was going, but were not able to control even the direction that the crowd as a whole was moving.
This was controlled chaos.
This was planned and directed chaos. Chaos as a tool.
“Everything moves to the left all the time.”
I believe that conservatives try to control chaos, and to build and maintain civil societies, based on millennia of experience. But even this — with men perpetually seeking controlled chaos through fear, intimidation, and rules for thee but not for me, and displaying greed, pride and physical control over people — has lead to a world history characterized by on-going war.
Leftist followers seek the orderliness that they are promised, but those making the promises only seek a partial order, order for themselves and their immediate servants. For the rest they seek the taxation of the people’s labors, and the dissolution of marriage, the perversion of sex and sexuality, the alienation of people one from another, the chaos of civil unrest, the debasing of money, the starving of the populace, to bring about the herding and yoking and cow-belling of people like cattle.
When rule is secured, then, no more chaos.
That one thing you did, with the contrast between two opposites made by repeating the same sequence of forms, with the particular object changed the second time?… I do that a lot here.
Did you get that from me or did we both get it from the Old Testament?
Eloquently put.
If this is directed to me? I just wrote don’t my thoughts and had to take out 12 words for the 500 limit, including unfortunately, the attribution to @rufusrjones. But I see your comment summed it up perfectly.
Added: I suppose I should have read the comments first. :)
It was directed to the article’s author. But it may have applied to your comment by accident.
Another good one from Dr. B with great comments. I would phrase it slightly differently. Conservatives promote freedom. A person is free to do what he or she wants to promote his or her interests, family, etc. To the left this can become “chaos.” But the only real “chaos” we have seen domestically in the last 3-4 years are the BLM, Antifa “mostly peaceful” riots, rising crime in cities from police defunding, etc. So forget the real chaos. So the left focuses on” chaotic” freedoms: parents decide what the kids should be taught, individuals decide if they are at risk for Covid and act accordingly, teaching 5 year olds about changing genders is not a good idea. Guess we will see which version of “chaos” wins out.
Yeah, I do that a lot too. I’m not sure where I picked it up. I hope it was from the Old Testament. No offense.
None taken.
Now that I think of it, you do do that a lot.
To answer the question that naturally follows from that: Maybe. But I if I did learn it from you, I am not conscious of it.
I agree. It is a form of conceit that leftists believe that humans are the principal cause of climate changes and that humans can somehow fix it.
12,000+ years ago, the place where I was born was under 6000′ of ice. That happened more than once.
It’s nicer now.
Those darn SUV’s…
Same thing here. What we think of as Cape Cod Bay was formed by a great big glacier ice cube that melted in that spot. Eventually the ocean found its way into it and turned it into seawater.
It is always surprising to me to hear the same people who ardently preach the theory of evolution as explaining the existence of everything think that climate changes from decade to decade are the fault of our combustion engine lawnmowers. The earth’s climate has never been, nor will it ever be, static, if for no other reason than that we are traveling constantly and wobbling as we go along. :-)
Just this past week I got two little notifications at the foot of my monitor screen that Cape Cod was under a “high UV” warning. It was so interesting. I had been outside, and it was indeed uncomfortably bright. “Huh,” I said to myself. Apparently there were some solar flares last week that caused it. The last two summers we’ve had tornadoes here in the Midcape. The first time I saw the warning, I laughed. I thought Google had gotten my Zip code wrong again. :-)
A few years ago I watched a fascinating documentary on the Dust Bowl disaster. Ken Burns, who in between preaching the dogmas of the Democratic Party, can be very interesting, describes how it happened. It was in the 1930s when there were no evil SUVs in sight. :-) The Plains had gone through a ten-year period of constant rain, which led to spectacular growth in the prairie grasses. It looked like an arid area had suddenly become quite farmable. Then it settled back into its normal arid weather pattern, which caused the horrific dust conditions and starvation for the farmers who had been optimistic. Terribly sad story.
At any given moment on the earth, there are massive earthquakes and volcanoes happening, a lot of them under the seafloor. Those volcanoes cause a lot of year-to-year changes in the ocean temperatures, which cause year-to-year changes in the hurricane frequency and strength. In fact, I read somewhere a few years ago that in 2004 and 2005 (the 2005 season was the year of Katrina and Rita), there had been an unusually high number of volcanoes on the seafloor that had caused it.
There was the anomalous Izmit earthquake in Turkey in 1999 that caused the instant death of thousands of people.
We solved the air pollution problems we were having in America twenty years ago. But the activists never disbanded. That’s what’s fueling the global climate change nonsense. I agree with Lomborg: focus on preparedness, not prevention.
I like the way you just mention the facts about it, and then move on. I wish people in Cincinnati would learn to be more like you and the others who have lived in your town for a long time.
We are newcomers to Cincinnati, having moved in only 40 years ago. So we get to hear the sad stories that start, “Well, we lived here when the real snowstorm hit…”
That’s different. They figured out what the problem is with Cincinnati a long time ago – it’s a result of putting their chili on their spaghetti. So it IS human caused.
It’s ok if you put enough cheese on top…
I’ve always been puzzled by this persistent criticism of my adoptive tribe. (Although I was White by birth, I was captured by Cincinnatians, and raised amongst them from infancy (I was only 29) so I have only vague memories of any other way of life.
So how do others make a 3-way?? If there is no chili, then once you put on the cheese, you still only have a 2-way, right?
Or, do they count the hot sauce as a way?
It isn’t really chili. It is a Mediterranean meat sauce. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t chili.
At the border, we always erase the hard drives of departing visitors, to prevent theft of state secrets like this.
You must have hidden a memory stick in a tube of goetta when you left.
Nah. There’s a Skyline Chili about two miles from here. I like 4-way with onions. And funnel fries.
I’m not sure what people mean by chaos. Chaos means utter disorder and confusion. A spontaneous riot with fighting, smashing of windows and indiscriminately setting fires may be chaos. But the recent Summer of Love with BLM and anti-fa rioters was anything but chaos. And the reporting on it, the framing of the riots was anything but chaotic, it was nearly uniform is its regulation.
The Rioters were highly organized, from the kind of clothes they wore, to helmets and googles, the umbrellas they carried, the backpacks they prepared — presumably with raincoats, snacks, water for drinking, frozen water for throwing, hammers for smashing, lasers for blinding, and fireworks for threatening police. Bricks and lumber were surreptitiously prepositioned, for throwing and burning. The very arrival of the protesters were organized and coordinated, from bussing in rioters to staging areas, to the choice of districts. Even the tactics of the rioting crowds were planned, with people hurling rocks placed in the middle of crowds with others placed in front to shield them.
These were highly organized, individually and as a whole over the course of the year, even if they looked chaotic to the outside eye. But the very fact that they stopped when Trump was out of office and Biden was installed gives an indication that they were not only organized but tightly controlled. And it also may give an indication of the purpose of the riots.
(And this is just one example. So it goes with pretty much everything that we’ve seen in that last few years, or even decades.)
And add enough hot sauce. But maybe effect of the beans is adding to the global warming crisis!
[A crisis that exists only in the minds of the left, I am quick to add.]