“Organization and Chaos”
By Ron Stultz
26 September 2005
For years I have been going around organizing, be it:
screws; a swim team; all the product manuals I have; my CATV system or whatever,
and in the back of my mind I keep thinking that sooner or later, I will organized
just the right thing or the mass of what I have organized will be the last
tumbler in some lock and the lock will click open and something huge will
happen like world peace will break out. What a weird thought. Really just some
other syndrome I have like being compulsive, I guess.
Chaos theory says that if a butterfly flaps it’s wings in
China that action will have some affect in the middle of Kansas or somewhere
else, or everything is tied together in some yet, not fully understood, way.
So maybe I am not so crazy after all, doing all my organization, as can’t my
efforts really be viewed a flapping butterfly? What I think of organization is
simply a different form of chaos? Perhaps all those screws in a jumble in my
nuts, bolts and screws drawer in the garage are meant to be in their current “state” and
by my organizing all the screws in one box, I have set up some chaos movement
somewhere?
Why do I want to think that organization is a very low
energy state? Energy state? If I take a bowling ball to the second floor of my
house and hang it out the window, it has a potential, an energy state. If I
drop the ball, it will speed towards the ground and if I aim it just right,
break open a walnut for me, doing some actual work. But once the ball is on the
ground, it’s potential is gone or reduced as it has nowhere else to fall. Is
organization like that? When all the screws are in a jumble, they have some
potential energy, but organized, they are in a lower energy state?
Right now, not sure what is chaos and what is
organization? From a distance, cannot what I call organization really be chaos?
Is Einstein’s relativity at work here in that all is dependant on the time and
place of the observer?
Seems to me, as I organize and organize, my small world
only gets thicker and thicker with organization, down deeper and deeper into
the stuff of my being, existence. There does not seem to be any end to it.
Will I die when I have organized just the right amount? Will world peace break out?