I forget which book I just heard it in, but the concept of "the edge of chaos": The spectrum of order and disorder. Too much chaos, no evolution possible. Total static existence, no evolution possible.
Change and evolution come in the spectrum of "chaos" between total chaos, and total freeze, with evolution becoming harder and harder the closer you get to either end of the spectrum.
It's a great way to view the information war that is being waged right now.
As I have grown to accept, it has probably always been like this, mutatis muitandis. The battle between those in control, and those seeking to challenge that authority. The battle between elites and the hoi polloi. The people telling you what to believe, and the people trying to figure out what to think.
I would say that pre-Covid - maybe pre-Trump 2016, we were certainly on the end of the spectrum of static freeze - the opposite end of total chaos. People believed what they read. Trusted the media. The government. The experts. There was no evolution.
Come Trump 2016, we were thrust into the middle end of the spectrum and we flourished. We evolved. We learned to distrust those whose very existence relied on us trusting and not verifying.
Come Covid, we were thrust to the closer end of total chaos, but still evolving.
Our distrust in media was confirmed. Our distrust in government was reaffirmed. Our distrust in "experts" was awakened. We realized that it was so much worse than we ever thought it was. They don't just lie. They cheat and kill with impunity and immunity. They - the political, media, social and scientific elite - don't just have apathy towards us. They have total disdain.
We learned all of this like Adam and Eve discovering their own nakedness.
And then, as time passed, some of us forgot. Some of us dropped out of the market of consciousness entirely, and other new faces entered without having learned the lesson of the last decade. Tabula rasa. As naive as a child giddily playing in flood waters after a storm with no idea of the toxic pathogens brewing in the stagnant puddles.
Time heals all. But it also destroys all. It is the endless cycle of birth, destruction, and rebirth.
We have lived through the cycle of awakening, finding alternative sources to replace the "trusted" sources. We are now living through the souring / corruption of some of those sources. We have lived through the cycle of trusting authority, questioning authority, distrusting authority, to trusting nothing. Which means we can once again believe anything.
The pendulum has swung back to the edge of total chaos where nothing makes sense, and nothing can make sense. Hence, anything goes because justification is impossible.
And if it is not by some design, it is by some inevitable pattern.
We have now gotten to the point where truth is unascertainable. Where everyone thinks everyone and everything is corrupt. Bought off. Paid for. Selling out. Cashing in.
The sentiment is being pushed. Promoted. To the political elite, to those in control of the levers of power, total chaos is almost as good as total trust and total subservience, in terms of implementing and imposing the tools of power.
And on the individual level, the person who believes everyone and everything around them is duplicitous en evil, there is no conduct or course of action that cannot be justified to themselves.
A proverbial Squid Games of real life.
What is amazing is how the tools of the awakening - social media - have now become the tools of the chaos.
The sources of democratization of information have now become the sources of confusion, turmoil and pandemonium.
Add to that the "dead internet" theory - that many, if not most of the interaction online is fake, bots, paid agitprop, or otherwise inorganic - and it becomes clear that the tools of the awakening have now become the shackles of our capture.
I asked Grok what percent of replies / reposts on a political issue are likely bots, paid, agitators, and it said roughly 40%. I feel that is wildly underestimated, but even still, it is shocking.
Governments, legacy media, entities and agencies that used to operate in clandestine manners have now co-opted what many still believe to be the keys to our freedom. And I think it is becoming increasingly clear chaos is being pushed into these platforms the frustrate the progress we have made over the last decade.
Though this feels like a longwinded black-pill diatribe - and in reality that is how it started, if not only in the post, but in my mind - in writing this, I have realized what the white pill is.
Family at the most basic level, and community more broadly.
I don't know who said it, but the most revolutionary thing you can do is grow a tomato.
Existing independently of the pursestrings of power is the greatest threat to those who wish to control us.
Then family.
There is a reason why tyrannical governments have always sought to control, or sow chaos, into the family unit. Destroy the family, and man becomes totally untethered, and therefore totally defenseless.
Then community.
There is a reason why during Covid, the government sought to destroy community. To turn neighbor on neighbor. If you fight your neighbor, your home becomes a prison, not a refuge. Good fences make good neighbors. But the government prefers cages. And what better way to get the citizens to lock themselves in their own cage than by pitting them against their own neighbor.
The tools of our awakening have been coopted, there is no doubt.
Evolution is natural. Then it gets corrupted. Then it gets coopted. Then it becomes useless. Or worse, destructive. And that is where we are at in this era of information, disinformation, misinformation and (my favorite coopted term) malinformation.
The cure is getting back to the basics of community until we swing back to the center of the spectrum of chaos..
Reliable community.
Where there are social rewards, and social consequences.
There will be a cleansing of sorts. For now, it's a question of navigating through increasingly muddy waters understanding the nature of the predators and parasites lurking within.
Peace.
