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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
I believe you have missed the point of this OP entirely, Mr. Flicker. We are trying to determine, apparently, how much chile we have to eat to melt the glaciers that formed in Cincinnati 400 years ago, or is it 400 million years ago…whatever. Plus, it is important to discover the correct ratio of hot sauce and cheese that is needed to make the hockey sticks go limp, which is why they put spaghetti in their chile, I guess. What other reason could there be for doing such a ridiculous thing?
I think something we have lost that was once widespread is a belief in Providence. That behind the world is its Creator, Who is the real Governor of the world, despite the apparent chaos. There is a difference between trusting chaos and trusting the God behind the apparent chaos.
If we put ourselves in harmony with the Creator (Who knows the world and ourselves better then we know either), then we can trust that things will turn out well. We might not be able to predict how they will turn out – for God is in charge, not us – but we may expect something wonderful to happen. The chaos and darkness loses its fearful, paralyzing power. The diabolical impulse to invest ever more power in political figures who might tame the chaos is muted.
Western civilization was built on the knowledge that God Himself came to Earth and endured the chaos, suffered and died from it, only to be Resurrected and Glorified. His repeated message in the Gospels is to “be not afraid, for I have overcome the world.” It is through remaining faithful to God and putting our trust in Him, rather than in worldly solutions and institutions, that the chaos is tamed, or rather, transcended. The history of Western Civilization is a story of an apparently chaotic interplay of kings, monks, priests, warriors, philosophers, scientists and explorers, saints and sinners among them all, out of which grew a civilization expressing a dynamism unknown to the world until then. It was that bedrock faith in Providence, buried deep in the soul of Western man, consciously or not, that permitted the social, cultural and political spaces of freedom out of which the remarkable achievements of the West were born. It’s the reason Columbus, despite the fact that the best cartographic knowledge of the day said that he would sail off to the West and never be heard from again, nonetheless undertook a voyage in the faith that something good would happen if he did.
When we turn from the Creator, however, then we give reign to the Evil One – the spirit of lies, division and genuine chaos, whom God allows loose in the world if we so ask Him. Then the chaos is just chaos, and the freedom destructive. That seems to be where we are.
As a conservative I agree with you, and it is the grounds for my conservativism.
But there are other conservatives who don’t agree with us, and who derive their ideology from different foundations.
Certainly. The question is then what is the surest grounds for conservatism. Not in a theoretical sense, but in a cultural sense. I’ve long been convinced by strictly secular arguments for conservatism in principle. But over my lifetime I’ve seen a steady erosion of liberty in this nation despite conservatives having the best arguments. Why don’t the good arguments prevail? I don’t pretend to have the final answer to that, but the idea has been gradually growing on me that it has something to do with the fact that, absent a belief in Providence, people find the chaos and uncertainty intolerable, and will sacrifice liberty for the sake of security (or, at least, a false sense of security).
On this point too, I have long been in complete agreement. Always nice to find people who agree.
I have noticed this anomaly. When I close my eyes the discontinuity goes away. And when I reopen them, it returns. This is an odd and unexpected aspect of reality that I have yet to resolve.
And what is this term pronounced I believe, Hoke kee’-yeh. The word obviously has its origin in the indigenous Cincinnate word Haiiuquiiah which means who-keyed-you or get-over-it-bro; hence, triggered, but I cannot comprehend the desire to induce a limp trigger.
Very interesting.
That’s not what I said when I found that someone had keyed my car!
Chaos doesn’t exist. You are trying to prove a negative. Absolutely everything has a logical result. We as humans are slightly smarter than an amoeba given the quantity of facts out there. Now if there is one thing the left can thrive on is ignorance. They will manipulate this ignorance any way they see fit.
For instance, global cooling, oops, I mean global warming, oops again. Never mind, climate change. This is the left pretending to control ignorance / chaos. They can’t define it let alone control it.