Books on Order vs. Chaos?

Yeah Santa Fe stuff my son

>inb4 nice try Sean

None of you have even read it

>not going quantum and nano

Look into Blake's concepts of Urizen and Los

OP here, I just typed up a giant response only for it to get destroyed by accidentally changing the page.

Let me just make it clear that I am not a Jordan Peterson fan. I don't mind him, it's just not what inspired me to make this thread. I only posted pic related because it was funny way to express how I was feeling and I needed to get a thread going. I feel more like Peter Hitchens than Jordan Peterson, and I think that's where I'm going to end up heading as a person by the time I finish university.

More detailed responses coming soon.

The problem with /pol/'s rhetoric of degeneracy is that it implies that previous social forms were somehow superior. "Well, in the past, we did not have these problems you see around us." Yes, but those in the past had their own unique problems.

Also, not that you explicitly said this, but Peterson's concepts of chaos and order do not have to do with social degeneracy (although you might find some way to link them).

Peterson defines order as the "domain" (you could view it phenomenologically or even metaphysically) where implication for action has already been mapped and inputs yield their intended outputs. Chaos is where this implication has not been mapped and inputs do not necessarily yield their intended outputs.

>First of all you need to get off the internet for a bit and realise that most people don't even know what a social justice warrior is.
1. The counter-productive and self-destructive "social justice" movement is only one minor thing out of many things that motivated this post. And I say it with a heavy heart because I used to be very liberal until I realized the practical consequences that "individualism without judgment" had on people's behaviors and outcomes.

I only care about social justice when I get into an argument with somebody. On a day-to-day basis, I'm more bothered that our presidents no longer learn Latin and Greek, and that the average person has no concept of self-care or self-maintenance, all of this despite what accessible information is out there, and what that says about where our society is heading.

2. I'm doing my undergraduate at an Ivy League university, so I'm not trapped in an internet bubble. I don't like social justice because it as a movement has left me behind because it can't accept how things like illegal immigration harms socioeconomic outcomes in the long-term and how identity politics fractures meaningful political change. I can't escape the "social justice" movement because it's all over campus, and most people are aware of Black Lives Matter and transgender rights, so it's not like most people have been left in the dark either. Anyway, this conversation is getting way too political, and it's besides the point. If you meant to say this because of the Jordan Peterson image, then I'm sorry but I just don't want to talk about it.

>Second thing, while it is true that most people would rather post on Facebook or look at famous people's Instagram's pictures, these are the same people that in the 60s would be glued to the tube watching mind-numbing celebrity shit. Nothing has changed, just the media through which people consume crap.
I think the analogy is true, but on some level, the Internet has "degenerated" and become a more dangerous medium for harming social well-being. At its very worst, television is a one-way street, so the consumers can't accelerate the spread of toxicity through a feedback mechanism. The internet, on the other hand, is consumer-driven and community-centered, so there is much more potential for people to encourage the worst behaviors in us because we actively surround ourselves in that environment that we're constantly creating for ourselves. And I guess you can say it's another irony of chaos overpowering order, since the Internet could have been our greatest asset.

Great suggestion; seconding this.

A lot more peripheral, but John LeCarre's Karla trilogy documents what people are willing to do in the name of global order. It was about the Cold War, which was truly "fought" by the intelligence services.

If you read it, you'll probably be satisfied that the direction of our society is adequate.

You don't being with quantum. Start big and get into smaller scales as you learn more. I thought electrons was the end of it then I learned about quarks and other new particles.

No. Peterson is an evolutionary Darwinist at the core. His idea of chaos and order is in the tradition of Taoist, in that is you need both. In a society you need chaos, in that new, different, deviant from the norm are generated in the same manner that evolution generate variation through sex, so that when shit hit the fan, and it always will, you have a variety of solution to try out to help you survive. But you also need order in that once a solution is found you store it, though culture, religion, or in the case of evolution, through DNA. The problem with degeneracy is not that it is being prosecuted, it is that it celebrated. You do not celebrate degeneracy. You admit that it's there and is necessary but that is it. You do not celebrate degeneracy because it is simply generation of variation. You celebrate things that work. You celebrate order.

(cont.)
>Forget all that and focus on yourself. I can recommend simple living, that is, functional minimalism (not aesthetic minimalism). Read some Stoicism too. As Jordan Peterson says, how do you expect the change the world when you can't even clean your room.
I agree. I don't know what to do with my life, and I have no idea of who I am and what I really stand for. The only thing I know is certain is that it's a good idea to focus on being the best version of myself while covering my bases during my time of wandering.

Stoics are a good recommendation. I love functional minimalism too, keeps me from getting distracted. Speaking of minimalism, are there any good books on both aesthetic and/or functional minimalism? I'm sure somebody has waxed poetic on removing clutter from one's life and how it affects our relationship to the world and what matters in it. God, I feel like my mind is so cluttered nowadays.

Way ahead of you buddy. During my gap year, I decided to switch concentrations from philosophy to chemistry. Haven't looked back since. I still like doing Veeky Forums stuff in my spare time though. I just want a stable, middle-class income because my family is poor, and the 20th century hasn't been very good to us, so I want to "re-establish" my family on the right path again.

Friend, I used to be very liberal. Questioning my beliefs is what led me to this point, and now I'm in unfamiliar territory. I know that "order vs. chaos" is not the only thing out there to consider, and it may just be confirmation bias, but I'm having a hard time thinking about it clearly. That's why I want to read some other books about it so I can explore the feelings that my intuition is providing me.

>Yes, but those in the past had their own unique problems.
The appealing part of conservatism is having a structural base in which to attack problems. Unraveling that base too quickly to rebuild the foundations leads to a collapse of the whole structure, harming everybody involved in the project. But enough with the analogies. Honestly, order resonates with me on a personal level than in politics because it is what I've strived to create around me in response to growing up in a chaotic environment. But yeah, there is some overlap between social degeneracy and Peterson's concept of order and chaos, but I don't know if it is a coincidence or if it is a causal relationship.

>Peterson defines order as the "domain" (you could view it phenomenologically or even metaphysically) where implication for action has already been mapped and inputs yield their intended outputs. Chaos is where this implication has not been mapped and inputs do not necessarily yield their intended outputs.
This is a good way of putting it. Thank you for sharing.

>What about people who buy into order vs. chaos in some moral sense, or those who respond with asceticism, or folk traditionalism, or even kind of romantic conservatism?

check this out:
>philosophy, science, and art want us to tear open the firmament and plunge into the chaos. We defeat it only at this price. It is as if the struggle against chaos does not take place without an affinity with the enemy, because another struggle develops and takes on more importance-the struggle against opinion, which claims to protect us from chaos itself.

so this is a very good book, just skip to the last chapter for lots more on the need to deal w/chaos *intelligently*

personally i think asceticism, traditionalism, romantic conservatism are all good looks. depends as always on how with it the practitioner is & the long arm of their actions & so on

hope to hear more all about it on Veeky Forums that's for sure

Does anybody else have trouble with Order v. Chaos in their creative projects? For a year I was intent on dissecting my own process through spreadsheets in order to come up with methods that would yield reliable results. I recently abandoned that strategy and just scribble in a notebook without a conscious regard for structure and the finished product is much more beautiful. But when I reread it, the structure I focused on so heavily in my writing is just flowing naturally. I don't know if that autistic focus has become inherent or I was just holding myself back the whole time.

Can I unmemeingly recommend Thomas Pynchon?
Especially stuff like GR, the arching themes are variation on Conspiracy (order) vs entropy (chaos).
also
>the romantic poets
>Beckett (more how we invent order from chaos)
>Gombrowicz (Cosmos in particular)
>Flannery O'Conner (A Circle in Fire comes to mind)
>War & Peace and Moby Dick (which are more concerned with freedom vs large inexorable forces, but I think that's relevant)

What you said in the beginning of chaos and order is correct (and I don't want to limit those concepts to that one definition I gave).

But you have to admit that your point about degeneracy is a strawman. Those introducing chaos (liberals, progressives, SJWs) don't do so in the name of chaos - purely for the sake of chaos, but because they think they are liberating certain forms of life and increasing well-being by cutting down old moors. To be sure, they are partly motivated by sheer novelty. Whether you take this to be good or bad is another question.

>order vs. chaos
>vs
this confrontational perspective is part of your problem, it prohibits you from understand both concepts

Not that guy, but you can use "vs" to set apart opposites.

Jesus, went through the same thing. Not just in creative projects: when I was learning languages I would initially try to structure my learning so rigidly that it often hindered progress, then I learned to just keep going even if there are holes in my studies, if you know what I mean. Yields better results in the long run. I think you were holding yourself back, being afraid of a lack of cohesion or a fractured composition.

gotta be antifragile my dudes

seriously though, if you ever get to that point, either 1) find a way to practice where you find a weakness; or 2) stop obsessing over little details and power through it. you'll find ways to improve over time either way.

I know exactly what you mean. A revelation to me was being able to trust my mind as a machine that can function without my direct input. Stop focusing on boiling everything down to information and start living life on the whole. Rather than obsessing over structured diets and stressing about working out in peak hours of the day, just ride a bike to the gym and throw around some heavy shit. Go home and read, listen to music, meet a friend at the bar, and the subject will come to you when you're not picking through the specifics.

And worrying about 'holes' was a huge anxiety. I looked at how I developed music tastes, by liking an album and picking up people who influence them and who they influenced. The whole process happens so naturally, you just have to develop the confidence that it will work.

Yes very true about the diet and exercise, as someone who used to count macronutrients and only exercise between 5 and 6 for optimum efficiency. Turns out those things are marginal and unnecessarily obsessive.

Glad to be out of that phase and just enjoying things.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being marginal, but only after you have experience with balancing it all and observing results. You can't make a reasonable cost-benefits analysis without experience, and you're likely to sabotage yourself if you don't know how to implement it well enough already. It's one thing to start a hobby with bad habits, but it's another thing entirely to try to masquerade as an expert before you're truly ready for it.

Unless you're going to be a doctor or a great professor get out of Chem and into chemical engineering.

t. Chem grad Uber driver

The irony is that in our present moment conservatives are championing chaos (Trump, dissolution of the EU etc.) against order (the liberal international order).

Conservatives are the ones who now hold a naive Rousseauian faith in the natural goodness of man, and how if they blow everything up some sort of morally superior order will arise from the wreckage of their desire for chaos.

Read this, you might learn something worthwhile instead of the ideological navel gazing you're looking for

Not quite. Remember that one of the greatest propellants of the right-wing resurgence has been a distrust of immigration and outsider humans.

Batman the dark knight is pretty good

Read Hegel. Just kidding. Idk who writes best about Hegel but probably read some second hand writing about dialectics.

It seems like Hegel is Veeky Forums's solution to everything.

Which is, as I am saying, a reaction against the current natural order of things.

That's assuming that the supernational institutions are the only institutions there. There's a reactionary movement agains the European Union because its policies are designed to dismantle the foundations of nation-states and the cultural baggage that comes along with it. If a new institution serves to create more chaos than stability, then the old institutions reserve the right to end the experiment before further damage is caused.

I heard that synthetic organic chemists make better chemical engineers than chemical engineers since they understand enough chemistry to save large amounts of money in synthesis costs. Plus my university doesn't offer chemical engineering so...

You posted it yourself. Go read Peterson's Maps of Meaning, you can get it free as a pdf on his site. It specifically explores the nature and relationship between order, chaos and the self that mediates between the two.

I can't believe no one's recommended pic related yet. There's even a poster in here calling himself "girardfag."

The general idea is that social structures and hierarchy are placed in a particular way to prevent disorder and chaos. However, thanks to the way that human desire works, we will necessarily come into conflict with each other. This conflict will diminish and upend the hierarchy, to the benefit of no one and to the detriment of all (from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom, all suffer). Humanity has invented sacrifice as a method of restoring order; blame is laden on the scapegoat who is then torn apart, or banished, or whatever, so that order can be in some sense restored. One of the problems, and Girard readily acknowledges this, is that the scapegoat is always innocent; he doesn't deserve to be destroyed so that society can function. But he must be. Girard thinks this problem can only be solved with Christianity, but that's in a different book.

Anyway, Peterson always makes me think of Girard. I'm surprised he doesn't come up more often.

No one's mentioned Gravity's Rainbow yet??

ah, monsieur, so self doubting "this is probably all a bullshit rant".

why, monsieur, is it true you would like to "explore the topic"? ah, monsieur, that is the kind of exploration that would set ablaze the heart and daring of sir drake. no, monsieur, it cannot be... a new continent. a new land, and you have named it. you haven't even been to topic yet, monsieur. haha! WELL, monsieur, you are a very distinguished EXPLORER indeed monsieur! ha ! ha ! ha ! an EXPLORER, gentlemen, he is an EXPLORER, but it's "PROBABLY ALL A BULLSHIT RANT", he says gentlemen, HAHAHAHA, Oh my ... GOD!

Now, monsieur, is it true you are "disgusted with the messes we've made of ourselves today", and that we have "wast[ed] so much human potential", monsieur. sacre DIEU. MONSIEUR, this is alarming.

ah, monsieur, "materialistic values" you say? skirting of RESPONSIBILITY? monsieur, i assure you, in all the ages of history, from the crowned Moguls of Hindoostan, the myriad Nabobs, the imperators of ancient Rome, the high priests of Rowley's sex magic, not in all the ages of Caligula, of the great pagan, whirling peasant societies of yore, have men ever skirted responsibility, no, monsieur - i assure you. for in those antient societies where men laid wreathes on the tombs of the dead, fought, drunk, fucked, and perhaps fitted in a few weeks of harvest work a year, amounting perhaps to a few hundred hours of toil, for their benevolent Lords, who had no appreciation of irresponsibility, did men beckon unto the social degeneracy of our present epoch. no, monsieur, today we have "embraced meekness", and forgotten our strong warrior traditions, which would indeed present us with great advantages while we wait in the McDonalds drive through, a queue in Starbucks, as we set, sedentary and numb, at our computer desk, in a dimly lit call centre, while dreaming of what video game we may play after work. in such a society, monsieur, the advantages one may procure from being able to slay three score men in battle with a stone axe are - - are - - are - - well, untold, monsieur, absolutely profoundly innumerable.

monsieur, you should absolutely read Gobineau, and Wagner, and cease your Anglosaxon dillentatism. race is real, monsieur, profoundly real. i suggest you update your fax machine with a podcast, and listen - at once - to Richard Spencer. i am currently faxing you a lecture from the most profound phrenologist of our Current Year, transcribed from his anti-feminist youtube series, "Charles Martel: The Frenchman Who Founded the EDL". but, all this, monsieur, all these men but play at reactionary science. i suggest you immediately download, in .epub format, the complete works of Maistre, Evola, and if you inclined to the conservative revolutionaries, the June Movement, the reactionary socialists of Spengler's stripe, i suggest you read their most distinguished sage, his black books in particular, Herr Heidegger, who renders in philosophical form what racial science knows.

OP here, I ignored this at first, but after a second pass through, I realized that this is likely one of many things that I needed to read. Thanks!

Norse mythology is based on order vs. chaos so you should start with that

Read The Foundation for Exploration by Sean Goonan. Not kidding.

feeling mildly embarrassed right now

This is a big theme in Regions of Passion. A dictator wants order and structure for what he feels is a chaotic region. The protagonist thinks it's fine how it is. They fight.

No Sean. Please leave this board.

bump

It's okay girardfag. Even Homer nods.

that quest line in TES: oblivion desu

Hadn't seen you around as much, was starting to worry about you for a while.

dem greeks
hnng dem greeks

kek i've been going fully ham on rye in this one
i'm in a process of retiring myself now but it's basically guaranteed i will be haunting this place for years to come

by which i mean, doing my unique brand of guilt-ridden shitpost cryptomeme apologetics

>hence the need to take a big step back & not go mental
i do love Veeky Forums tho but too much of a good thing & all

gotta rein in dem horses & not meme too hard

>Pfft. Quantum.... Not bypassing quantum and going directly to infinite smallness.

For chaos and order check out " the birth of tragedy" (read the greek tragedys first).

And if you want to have a wider, "red pilled" kind of perspective to respond to our progressive times i recommend you "in defense of intolerance" by Zizek

>For chaos and order check out " the birth of tragedy" (read the greek tragedys first).
came here to post this

But not opposites which require the other to function meaningfully as symbols. Even their cohesion is a problem of a human conceptual capacity not able to make a two into a one. Better to trace their beautiful interlocking than to question their wholeness by standing ringside with your folded metal chair, just encase one lives the ring.