Thanks for this engaging, rich and informative meditation and for the shared resources. Wondering if your thoughts will extend to the work of Karl Weick in this series, and his extensive research and writings on the topic of sensemaking, organisation and psychologies of order. Another thought that came to mind is what a bad rap ‘chaos’ gets in our instrumental view of the world. We know from our experiences in art, psychology, dreaming, and everyday reverie that we plunge into and freely swim in chaotic realms. What would our lives be without this? Yet we associate un-order, or imperceivable order, or order where we can't define categories as inherently dangerous. In a bushfire this is true! In living a psychically healthy, engaged and rewarding life, I think not. An unfortunate by-product of the Enlightenment perhaps…Thanks once more for a stimulating read.
That is such a good point, Faruk. I was watching a documentary about the very chaotic Woodstock 99, and thinking also of the joy of chaos and unpredictability we seek out in mass events.
Similarly, writing this made me realise the bias towards the restoration of clear medical order in an episode of House. The other implied moral of every House story is that chaos is temporary and can be tamed (by some savant-like saviour).
And the last point I’ll make is about the strategic use of chaos. Sometimes we use chaos to create resilience in systems - the classic example here is Netflix’s Chaos Monkey, which would randomly kill critical services, so that failures were treated by developers as inevitable, making redundancy an obligation rather than an option.
Thanks for this engaging, rich and informative meditation and for the shared resources. Wondering if your thoughts will extend to the work of Karl Weick in this series, and his extensive research and writings on the topic of sensemaking, organisation and psychologies of order. Another thought that came to mind is what a bad rap ‘chaos’ gets in our instrumental view of the world. We know from our experiences in art, psychology, dreaming, and everyday reverie that we plunge into and freely swim in chaotic realms. What would our lives be without this? Yet we associate un-order, or imperceivable order, or order where we can't define categories as inherently dangerous. In a bushfire this is true! In living a psychically healthy, engaged and rewarding life, I think not. An unfortunate by-product of the Enlightenment perhaps…Thanks once more for a stimulating read.
That is such a good point, Faruk. I was watching a documentary about the very chaotic Woodstock 99, and thinking also of the joy of chaos and unpredictability we seek out in mass events.
Similarly, writing this made me realise the bias towards the restoration of clear medical order in an episode of House. The other implied moral of every House story is that chaos is temporary and can be tamed (by some savant-like saviour).
And the last point I’ll make is about the strategic use of chaos. Sometimes we use chaos to create resilience in systems - the classic example here is Netflix’s Chaos Monkey, which would randomly kill critical services, so that failures were treated by developers as inevitable, making redundancy an obligation rather than an option.