:What is chaos theory?
What is chaos?
How often do we face chaos?
What happens when we face chaos?
Do we succumb to it, or do we grow stronger?
All these questions are closer to me, as chaos is an indivisible part of my life. People facing chaos every day know better than anybody what it can be for them. Every time I face chaos, I have observed a few points that happen to me.
- I go into denial.
- I would have to come out of denial.
- I start doubting the environment.
- I doubt if the environment works to help me survive.
- When I get no answers or ambiguity for an answer, I realize I have to stand up.
- Every time, sooner or later, that’s what I see people doing, and that’s what I do.
Standing up is one’s ability to convert chaos into order. Sometimes, we have to take help and at other times, we have to work alone to restore order. I have also observed that standing up actually means different things for different people.
What does arranging chaos and standing up mean for many?
Here is what standing up can mean for different people.
Type 1 People: Some believe revenge is standing up to manage the chaos and restore order.
People: Type 2: Others believe letting go can remove a person from the path of chaos and set them on the path of order.
Type 3 People: There are many who also believe that we must live and organize our lives while constantly working to disorganize others’ lives.
Out of all these three previous ways, I have found that people who practice the third method are the most intriguing of all. They are, in short, transferring their chaotic energy into others’ lives and sucking the energy within an order into their own lives. These people can relatively transmutate energy which means your happiness can live in them and their sadness can live in you.
They are people seemingly incapable of arranging their chaos into order and work by modifying other’s order.
Why they behave this way is certainly connected to an innate deficit in them, which I have observed the group believes to be an innate talent. It reminds me of a time when I came to know that my dimples were a recessive trait instead of a dominant one. Something of value to me and my appearance- a recessive trait, a deficient exhibition of self—made me realize more about this group.
How does chaos and people seem to understand and work together?
When you think of organizing the world, you will realize this is the hardest of all groups to organize into a herd. Also, bringing this group under an umbrella seems disturbing, as they will keep taking from others until they are full and others are gone. Such people will again decrease the crowd, and that way they will efficiently build their survival, but they will benefit no one, not even the governments and certainly not the people.
They are also oblivious and out of reach of others. Mostly undetectable in the crowd, you’d barely know when they had stolen your shine and given you, their mud. They are the real rebels, and they hide with the herd of sheep very well.
This explanation seems very close to how humans react to pain, sadness, worries, and all other such externally triggered conditions. They would want to react to everything that impacts them wrongly, at least according to them.
To find out more about how chaos theory can be used in life to restore order, I delved into it a bit. But what can mathematics teach you, if not life?
In this article, I explore with you the chaos theory of mathematics, extrapolating it into our lives to better understand it.
What is chaos theory?
As per the branch of mathematics, chaos theory states that in every apparent chaotic complex system, we can observe infinite connecting points, feedback loops, repetitive points of return and exit, and the organization of fractions.
In short, it means that within chaos are branches of order. There are tiny, minute branches of order that one can use to restore order.
But how do you determine a system is moving towards chaos?
There are three prime parameters that a system must fulfill to determine whether the object or system is moving towards chaos or is in chaos.
1. Sensitivity to primary conditions
A sensitive dependence on the primal conditions means that a small change in one of the primal conditions would lead to a large difference in one’s life.
This explanation seems very close to how humans react to pain, sadness, worries, and all other such externally triggered conditions. They would want to react to everything that impacts them wrongly, at least according to them.
2. Topological transitiveness
Transitivity would mean preferring a over b and b over c, which means a over c in mathematics.
Topological transitivity would mean the movement of one point from one iteratively arbitrary neighborhood to another.
Transitioning would mean moving from one point to another and fulfilling the above conditions, which further add to our chaos. Interestingly, point a over b and b over c, which means point a over c, are immensely close scenarios even in human lives.
Have you come across any such scenarios?
3. The presence of dense periodic orbits
Dense periodic orbits specify the orbital locations of a point, and the periodic point will be a point to which a system will return after completing a certain number of functions at a given time.
If you draw a comparison table, you’d see that a human too falls under these above conditions.
In fact, the three kinds of people explained below in terms of chaos appear when these three conditions are met in different combinations.
If I had to compare it to an example, I would take into account the spilling of water on the floor within a group by someone in the group.
I would extrapolate it to the three groups of people I considered in the discussion earlier. I have met all of the three kinds. If you want to understand the sentiments or the feelings that lead people to be one of these types, then you will have to wear their shoes I would say. Noone is basically wrong but rather each group is intriguing in its own way.
1. Type 1 people
They will fight with the person who spilled the glass of water and will try to settle the issue in this way. When they do so, the other person responsible for spilling the glass of water will have to bring another glass of water to make it even.
If they spill it themselves, they will go ahead and fill the glass again, badmouth the glass, and even to an extent themselves in the process.
2. Type 2 people
These men will wipe the floor clean and then mutter apologies to everything around it. Next, they would settle the matter by filling a glass of water from the tap. They might also be those who transfer the water on the floor back into the glass. They might change the way they use the water.
This is a way to restore peace and order.
Some people who lack patience, are proud, and are deprived of adequateness might never resort to this way of restoring order.
3. Type 3 people
They will behave in a tactically different way. Once they spill the water, they will look around to find out whose fault it is. If it is someone else’s fault, they will steal their glass of water and run away with it, or they will say that the glass of water that spilled on the floor was never theirs but the person whose glass they took. They might further state that the glass of water their neighbor held was their stolen glass of water.
While they restore their glass of water, they will create chaos for the other person who faulted here.
If it was all their fault that the glass of water got spilled, they will quietly pick up their neighbor’s glass when no one’s looking.
Sooner or later, when the neighbor discovers the missing glass, they will run into a chaotic situation while the original glass spiller stands quietly sipping from the glass.
All of these are ways of restoring order and moving away from the chaos and thus working in misalignment with the chaos theory.
Do we ever wish to restore order?
How we choose to restore order is what or who we are- moving away from the chaos theory requires us.
If you read further about chaos, you’d know that it’s the present determining the future, but still, the chaos never becomes the approximate present, and it never represents the approximate future.
It shows us that no matter how hard we try, we cannot coerce all molecules to act in a certain pattern. Even though the original universe, from the smallest to the biggest, runs in order, humans don’t. If a group of people run together and try to maintain order in their terms, another group will always differ in their definition of order. For them, order might mean something different.
If you currently see, every way of life has become a different definition of order.
When we collide, we try to find out if the group we are colliding with has something in common with the definition of our way of describing order.
If we find it has nothing in common, we fight.
If we find common points, we try to establish common grounds and try to build peace and order around these common points.
Yet, there are many within the same group who might not want to consider the commonalities but instead focus on the differences.
All my life, I have been puzzled by this fact.
What or how can anyone make every human settle for a common definition of order?
Is it even possible to allow people to set themselves together under one banner, and if not, what is the solution to all of it?
Also, if the bigger planets to the tiniest molecules can agree to follow a pattern and if they could find a common way of agreeing to a set of rules, why is it that we humans are incapable of it?
Snehashree is a content creator by profession and writer by passion. She is a storyteller, poet, and abstract artist besides being a content writer. She has published her works of poetry on Amazon and several online magazines. She moved into full time writing after spending a few years in the healthcare industry. A solivagant and an ardent animal lover, she regularly crafts interesting articles for her blog - TST.
When not writing, she can be found reciting poetries in poetry clubs, teaching kids the art of poetry, and reading avidly. You could visit her website and chat with her on Instagram.
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