Chaos theory. Order and Chaos as Fundamental Concepts of Variations Mother Planet of the Great Selariel Family
Today we will talk about chaos and order. All over the world, in all ancient religions and views, there was an explanation for such a thing as chaos.
For example, in the "Theogony" of Hesiod, we see that chaos gave birth to all the gods, that is, all the Greek deities known to us come from chaos - from the Thunderer Zeus to the Hekatoncheirs, which have many forms.
In China, chaos was depicted as a circle or an egg, from which everything arises - it arises from the emptiness of this circle, from a circle, more precisely, even from a jade ring, which you have seen many times in museums.
Ancient India speaks of the great cycles of chaos - Pralayas or Maha-Pralayas. During Maha-Pralaya, life sleeps, everything sleeps, and, according to ancient books, there is no sea, no earth, no starry sky. Older Tibetan texts, such as the pre-Buddha Book of Dzyan, say the same thing. In the beginning, nothing existed, everything was in a state of waiting; the two first causes, as a kind of first pair, conceive everything: Prakriti or Mulaprakriti (primary matter), and Purusha (spirit).
We meet chaos in the Jewish Kabbalah, where it is said about Adam Kadmon - not about Adam and Eve, but about the first Adam, about Adam Kadmon, the first who arises from Chaos; in the Sefer Iezira, also at the beginning, Keter, the Crown, is born, as the initiator, the cause of everything manifested - Malkut and Shekini.
In the view of the inhabitants of ancient Sumer, Babylon and all the peoples who inhabited the eastern mountains and the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates, chaos is a huge object or a large diorite stone that arose from black, unknown waters, and these waters cannot be defined.
You also know that in the biblical Old Testament, which Christians borrowed from the Jews, it says that in the beginning there was nothing, and God created the earth and heaven.
Even the peoples of pre-Columbian America, for us a little exotic and little known, both in the Popol Vuh and in the Chilam Balam also mention chaos as the source of all things; in all books and codes that have come down to us, chaos is described as the opposite of the cosmos, that is, the order that must arise.
You also know that, according to Plato, chaos precedes every manifestation. After him come pure, abstract and absolute archetypes, they gradually, step by step, descend into matter until they create the Universe and man. This idea was repeated by Plotinus and Marcion in the Neoplatonic doctrine of the Macrocosm and the microcosm: the Macrocosm, the Universe, arises from chaos and gives rise to the microcosm - a small life, or man, the image and reflection of the Universe.
Similar views existed even among the North American Algonquins: Manitou, the god of lightning and sky, appeared from a dark starless night or from the jaws of a wolf.
The concept of chaos is also found among the peoples of Northern Europe. In Germanic mythology and Scandinavians, chaos is the beginning of all things. They tried to give it some kind of image, but it is difficult to give an image to that which is unimaginable, to describe that which cannot be described, and therefore they call it Gimnungagap. It is something like a vast frozen abyss, where everything exists in potential, and not in reality; it is a bottomless abyss full of frozen dust with a block of ice in the very center. This block is licked by a creature resembling a cow, licking until it gives shape to the primary elements that are to be incarnated.
Even today in English villages they talk about Humpty Dumpty - a character whose head, colliding with a wall, breaks into a thousand pieces, and from these pieces gnomes and many other fabulous creatures are then born. The same happens with the Hindu deity Padma-pani, whose white head crumbles into many colors and shades that balance the universe.
So, we see that all peoples at all times and throughout the Earth asked themselves the most important question that worries us today: what is chaos, what is order, what can we learn about them, how important it is for us, how to apply it in life?
We, ladies and gentlemen, live in special times. Why? The point is not only in the crisis of our system, but also in the fact that cosmically, that is, according to astrology, in 1950 we entered the Age of Aquarius. Aquarius, water, the alchemist's alkahest, the universal solvent - this is what brings chaos with it. I would like to clarify that these astrological connections have nothing to do with the notes in the newspapers, where they write: “It is better for Libra not to leave the house today - trouble may happen. Devs are waiting for a pleasant surprise or good luck in love. No, absolutely nothing in common. I'm talking about ancient astrology, I'm talking quite seriously and from a scientific point of view. It's not news to you that the human body, for example, for the most part consists of water - of liquids, flowing substances; in a sense, physically we are an "unstable colloid" and all unstable colloids are affected by magnetic fields. Since the celestial bodies are huge polarized magnetic masses, it is obvious that the position of the celestial bodies can affect us both physically and mentally. It is also obvious that the cosmic rays penetrating us in this moment, - not all, because some are absorbed when colliding with different objects - reach not only each individual, but all of us together. And we are witnessing a kind of gradual change in the individual consciousness, and consequently, the collective consciousness of humanity.
They are not that easy to spot. It happens sometimes in life. Let's say, shaving in front of a mirror, I suddenly peer into the reflection and exclaim: "Who is this fifty-year-old fat man?" And it turns out that this old fat man is me! What happened? Yes, time has just passed, and the one who considered himself a young guy suddenly realizes that he is no longer a young man. A child whom we have not seen for three or four years appears before us already dressed like an adult, and we exclaim: “How you have grown! You are already quite big, a real man!” But he grew up simply because time passed. The thing is that time flows so slowly that we hardly notice it. Time flows so slowly that we can catch its movement only with the help of the science that is so necessary for all of us - History. After all, if we look at our photographs of twenty years ago, we will see that now we are completely different. And in the same way, if we, having called on history to help, return in our thoughts and consciousness through time and see what happened in Greece, Rome, in the Middle Ages, etc., then we will understand how humanity has changed over time . It is not only about physical change, but also about psychological and spiritual.
So, the Age of Aquarius is in full swing, an era in which chaos rules. In other words, today everything is more or less in a state of chaos. But before I jump into this discussion, I would like to give precise definition some words, otherwise we will not understand each other. One of the features of this more or less chaotic stage is that words can be used in different meanings, including those that are completely opposite to the original one. This is a crisis of our language, a crisis of our speech: very often we cannot correctly understand each other, even different generations, speaking the same language, use different expressions and do not come to an understanding.
First, it should be noted that people usually associate the concept of chaos with freedom and say: “No, we do not want order! Give us such freedom that everyone can do what they want! But if “everyone does what he wants”, this is not yet freedom. Since none of us is a Buddha and is absolutely free, since we are not able to do what we want, we have to do what we can and what our instincts, fears and limitations allow us to do. And this is the truth. The truth that we sometimes refuse to accept, but which I must convey to you, because as a philosopher I am obliged to tell the truth. Like you and I, we are not free, because we have not freed ourselves from a huge number of restrictions, which, it seems, are not necessary to enumerate, but with which we cannot be free. We are ready to take seriously the one who said: "Stop the Earth, I want to get off!" But this is pointless: we can even hit the Earth a thousand times, but it will not stop, and we will not be able to “get off”. And not only can we not go beyond the planet Earth, sometimes we cannot go beyond family problems, political traditions, the economic situation, we cannot, for example, change our gender and age. Each of us has our own limitations - someone understands something better, someone worse, some perceive it this way, others differently. Someone will take pity on a stray dog and take it in his arms, and someone, perhaps, will give her a kick. It depends on our inner reaction, on the kindness of the heart, or on what our image of a dog is associated with.
Then the first thing we must do is stop identifying chaos with freedom. Freedom is not in chaos, freedom is precisely in order. Of course, you know how graphite - the core of a pencil - differs from diamond. Both are made of carbon, both are exactly the same, but in graphite the molecules are arranged absolutely randomly, in other words, they have no rhythm, and therefore do not let light through. Thanks to this, you can write with graphite: graphite breaks easily, and if you run it over paper, particles of it will remain on it. However, draw a diamond across the paper, and you will see that it cuts it. Because a diamond has order, a system, its molecules are built in such a way that light and power pass through them, its molecules are very tightly assembled, and as much as order reigns in the structure of diamond, chaos dominates in the structure of graphite.
On the other hand, everything connected with order is now identified exclusively with transnational companies or with military structures. But let's ask ourselves: why are they so collected? You may have some of the leaders of large enterprises or the military, but for the rest, I declare that entrepreneurs and the military love order so much because they want to go to the market with their products or win the battle. They know that a disorganized person will not sell his product and win the war. And one more thing: who is called for help during a major disaster, a big forest fire, if climbers are lost in the mountains, or when a ship is wrecked? Military. The name is not hippies, but the military. Why? Because they are trained and can really help. So, we must understand that in this sense, order allows you to create a whole theory of life: maintaining order, a person does not lose his freedom, but, on the contrary, gains it.
Nowadays, many praise disorder, anarchy - everything that destroys and divides. But if we really have decided to return to nature, if we are aware of the crisis in our system, let's, dear friends, ask ourselves the simplest questions. Let us assume that we all recognize the human right to strike. Wonderful. I know that the right to strike is a very controversial issue, so today we will not discuss it. Of course, the strike has certain reasons: social injustice, rising prices, pressure from different strata of society, etc., but let's now calmly ask ourselves: would we allow our hearts to go on strike at this moment? No. Why? Because the strike of the heart is called cardiac arrest and means death. Would we give our lungs the right to refuse to perform their functions? No, because it means the cessation of breathing. Would young people like a long sex strike? Of course not.
We all value what we have by nature, and we do not want to spoil it. We want the eyebrows to be above our eyes, not below them, so that the teeth are in the mouth, and the fingers are on the hand. What can I do with fingers growing at the back of my head? Just scratch your head. That is, we need everything to be in its place. My whole body, the body of each of you, the body of any person is the best example of the embodiment of order and a harmonious system. The one who created the body is very intelligent (although some say that it arose by itself - a brilliant statement!). We do not just have arteries, veins, nerves - our arterial, venous and nervous system so skillfully intertwined that sometimes they use the same hole in the bone tissue to pass through the bone. So does a good surgeon. Do you think a good surgeon comes to the patient and says: “Well, fat man, where do we start the operation?” No, a good surgeon knows - that's why he performs the operation - where to make the first incision in order to get to the sore spot, to the tumor, to the damaged organ. After the operation, he will sew up the incision, “fix” it, in order to return the patient to his original state.
If we applied these simple principles, which we apply in everyday life and which the doctor uses in medical practice (after all, the issue of life worries everyone), we would understand how important it is to overcome our stage of chaos and achieve order. My friends, order is not something harsh, rigid, frozen. Often, when we talk about order, we immediately imagine a man with a whip, usually in uniform, and the unfortunate ones that obediently wander beside him. No, this is not order. Have you seen the birds fly? How do bustards, geese, other large birds fly - randomly or in an organized manner? Certainly organized. And if the little snow particles didn't gather together, they wouldn't be able to fall to the ground. There is order in the mountains and in the rivers. In nature, everything is balanced, which once again proves to us the importance of this system of order, the order of the deep, fundamental, and not from scary stories about people in uniform. No, the order is not to wear boots or to wear shoes. It is something much deeper. Man is essentially physically ordered, psychologically he still has to become so, and spiritually he is an archetype, a spark of that order that reigns in nature.
Now, in the Age of Aquarius, when the forces of water, dissolving and dispersing, prevail, it is worth thinking about how to be organized. How to achieve order? How to apply what we just talked about? Whether you like these ideas or not, can they be put into practice? Yes, you can. The simple fact is that the disunity, alienation and general chaos that prevails today make their application very difficult.
As a rule, we are very disorganized, we prefer disorder, and even the connection between our mind and body is not strong enough. Sometimes we do something physically, like frying an egg, and at the same time we think about an article we have to write, poetry, whatever. And later, when we sit down to write an article, we are haunted by the image of scrambled eggs. We must overcome this inner division. I'm talking to you now, but I could, for example, sit down and start playing chess. Of course, that would be just stupidity on my part, and it would mean disrespect to everyone who took the time to come and listen to me today. Firstly, I would lose the game, because I cannot play and speak at the same time, and secondly, you would not understand anything either, because I would constantly calculate moves and think about whether to move as a bishop or a pawn. In other words, you cannot do several things at the same time. More than a thousand years ago, Muhammad said: "It is impossible to climb two camels at once."
There is no order in how we eat: most often we do not sit down at the table, but have a snack on the go so as not to waste precious time. The system of "fast food" in the form of a division into everyday and festive menus has firmly entered our everyday life: we usually eat almost standing up, and when guests come to us, we cook only to sit at the table together. It seems to us that sitting at the table is the privilege of the Etruscan princes. We do not even notice how gradually we limit ourselves in everything. Have you heard about music salons in 19th century houses? Yes, at that time a musical salon with a piano was the most common occurrence. But what about today? Alas, today we listen to the radio, tape recorder, records performed by someone else, but we have forgotten how to do anything ourselves. We cannot sit down at the piano and play or sing for our friends. We can only listen to songs sung by someone else, and in our chaos it turns into a real slavery. The same applies not only to nutrition, but also to many other things.
Agree, a completely absurd form of "social pressure" is a railroad strike. Tell me, please, who suffers from them? Millionaires who can rent a plane, wealthy people who own a car, or poor people who can only travel by train? The answer is obvious. Of course, much is out of fashion today, much is a thing of the past, there is much we do not know at all, and in conditions of chaos we put up with such methods, and sometimes even support them, instead of overcoming them.
How to overcome? Individually - starting with getting to know myself, learning to distinguish where my physical, mental, emotional and mental part begins and ends. Where am I, who am I? What I can? What abilities are already developed, and what are not yet manifested? Can I play the piano, can I paint, can I sculpt statues, or can I just read, walk, play football - what am I good for anyway? What is psychologically capable of? Can I keep the conversation going? Can I not respond with animal rudeness to insults? Am I capable of real, sincere feelings, can I not be hypocritical? Can I comprehend pure and sublime ideas with my mind, because my mind does not always go to all sorts of tricks for its own benefit? This self-knowledge allows us to be truly free. And if we know ourselves, together we will create a more just society, where there will be less wars and violence. Many times from this small philosophical rostrum in the "New Acropolis" it sounded: humanity will be saved from troubles not by abstruse formulas and theories, not by models of a probable future; it will overcome all difficulties and move on only thanks to its strength and real actions. And only so. We will not make the world a better place with slogans on the walls. First, we must become better ourselves and try to infect our relatives, friends, employees, classmates with our example, which means making a real discovery by meeting our Self again, rediscovering the inner, spiritual power of a person, because this power cannot be forged.
You can shackle the hands and feet of a person, but not the soul, not the spirit. Soul, spirit, imagination, fantasy are above any prison, any chains, restrictions, illnesses, above age and distances. We must develop an inner strength that will allow us to live in harmony with nature again, because we need to return to nature, but not by the methods of modern environmental organizations - banning hikes and tearing down flags; no, this does not mean a return to nature, it means a return to the Stone Age.
Chaos and order
The mind of a man is like a crystal dressed in a strict form with even shining edges, an infinite number of edges. Sometimes a shadow of feelings runs along these edges, trying to break out. When this happens, immediately a thought appears from the depths of the mind, which surrounds these feelings and closes them in its diamond embrace.
The mind - mu - of a woman is an empty space in which the chaos of feelings roams freely. Sometimes scattered thoughts float in this emptiness, which are immediately carried away with a hurricane of feelings and emotions.
If you look at the mind of a man from the chaos of female feelings and emotions, he seems dull, fixated and limited by his own thoughts. There is a feeling of male obstruction. A woman overcomes these stupidity, obsession and obstruction either by cunning, or by completely destroying the established order, for example, by cheating on her husband so that he finds out. In the latter case, the woman's actions are a gift for the man, a gift because he has a chance to come to life.
If you look from a man's straightforward mind at the emptiness, at the chaos that reigns in a woman, a man is terrified of unpredictability. There are no directions in a woman's mind, there is none of the predictability that exists in logic. This horror of chaos is overcome with the help of iron rules. This creates predictability in a man's life.
Living in the male mind, a man knows and with the help of knowledge, rules and logical premises can foresee and build a predictable future. In the female mind of the future, predictable by knowledge and rules, no, there is knowledge.
Keeping differs from knowledge in that it is alive and constantly changing depending on the situation, while knowledge is always frozen and therefore unsuitable for a new situation.
Awareness wakes up the more the more the bottom is open: the more the man and woman are connected to their genitals.
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Ever wondered why chaos is needed and how to avoid it? Chaos is devastation, suffering, order is stability, security, prosperity. But order is not always good, and chaos is not always bad. IN Nazi Germany order, as it was understood there, brought prosperity to Germany, and suffering to other peoples. And in modern society those in power are trying to build such an order so that only they feel good, but such a bias sooner or later ends in an explosion, as protest moods grow on the part of those who are dissatisfied with such an “order” and want a fair distribution of wealth and rights. In the history of states, wars, devastation, chaos and times of relative stability are constantly present. After cataclysms, a person seeks to restore order, because only in conditions of stability, security, predictability, confidence in the future, he feels comfortable. But then, despite the seeming stability and security, chaos inevitably arises. Entire civilizations burned in his furnace. Why and how to avoid “good-bad” drops? We experience these changes every day. Ups, necessarily ends in a fall. Why, how to prevent this?.. Only the mind, which must be developed, can level these differences. And the differences “good - bad” arise due to the instability of the psyche, which creates fear. The alternation of the activity of the two halves of the brain is inherent in man (and in every living being) by nature. This is necessary for a two-sided, objective assessment of reality, in order to comprehend it, otherwise you simply cannot survive. The greater the pressure on the psyche of fear, the stronger the difference "good - bad." Fear hinders the stability of the psyche, and in order to cope with it, we wedge on different “correctness”, which sets thinking in a one-sided direction, which is accompanied by a breakdown in the opposite extreme. Any extreme sooner or later leads to a dead end, from which CHAOS helps to escape by force. It sweeps away all the set up correctness that has failed and led to a dead end, breaks down all logical constructions in order to develop and build new approaches to the deadlock situation that has arisen, and from scratch begin to build a new order corresponding to the changed conditions. That is, under these conditions, chaos brings renewal, although the process itself is very painful. Persistence on incorrectness, which was previously considered correct, but under changed conditions has ceased to be correct, can lead to death. Breaking habitual ties is always painful .... If chaos is allowed to grow and become unmanageable, it can lead to a catastrophe on a planetary scale. Slipping into disaster is prevented by fear, which forces us to reconsider previous approaches to solving problems, but often this happens belatedly, when a person is already on the verge of death. Reason forces us to be proactive, but, unfortunately, it is still poorly developed among people and consumption at any cost is in the first place. Society has not yet matured to reasonable behavior and it will be fear, chaos that follows unreasonable behavior that will force it to rationality .... And what is the essence of the mind, because it will still be based on the differences "good - bad", on the alternation of the activity of opposites, on which life itself is based? And there will always be a bias towards “I want”, that is, consumption, without which a person cannot survive. The essence of the mind is to level these differences, to reduce the amplitude of fluctuations between opposites, then there will be no “first I did it, and then I thought or didn’t think at all”, but there will be a viewing of the final result from “I want” and making a reasonable decision that will allow and desire satisfy, and do not harm yourself. The mind severely restricts the ambitions of the EGO, if they go to the detriment of the whole. Will this suppression of desires succeed, will it not harm the animal instincts on which life is based, because “I want” is primary? How to catch this fine line and what role does chaos play in all this? The mind does not suppress the instincts, on the contrary, it gives them complete freedom. By allowing, they limit themselves, but through understanding the situation. The mind makes the consciousness pure, and the emotions completely liberated. What contributes to their emancipation? Emotional chaos that the brain strives for. But this is not a random throwing of emotions, but their transfer to a state of “emotional broth”, from which they are extracted from the situation. Remember the state when you found yourself in deadlock situations from which there was no way out. Fear wedged you on the familiar, promoted as "correctness" and you could not break out of this vicious circle. You were bogged down by depression, until the chaos completely destroyed all the “correct” constructions that had been set up and forced you to start rethinking the situation from a “clean slate” in a new way. That is, it was the transfer of thoughts to a state of chaos in which there is no logic that allowed you to reconsider your attitude to the situation that failed and develop new approaches to solving the “unsolvable problem”. It happens that fear is so stuck on the problem that depression becomes the “norm of life” and then life becomes not a joy. In this case, you should try to let go of the problem, “do not give a damn” about it, let your thoughts float freely and get enough sleep. During deep sleep, the brain itself will return to itself a state of correctness, through the collapse of all improperly built emotional connections and transferring them to a state of emotional broth. At the same time, we must stop clinging to the old, which has failed, and subject it to harsh criticism. You need to shake yourself up properly and wake up from a depressive hibernation .... The transfer of emotions into a state of "emotional broth" makes thinking flexible, not conservative, able to perceive the world directly, without self-deception, and use all feelings to comprehend reality, without dividing them into "bad" and "good". The state of "emotional soup" can be called "intelligent chaos". The more stable your attention, the stronger your energy power, the smaller the amplitude of fluctuations between opposites, the less distorted the feelings, the more reasonable, the more correct the decisions you make, the less likely it is to fall into chaos, since there is no one-sided orientation of thinking, which means there is no accumulation of irritations, with a fall to the opposite extreme. It's like on a tightrope with a pole over an abyss. The more stable the balance (the smaller the differences between balancing), the farther, wider and deeper you see, because the fear of falling into the abyss is less pressing on you and you can relax to a greater extent. As soon as there is a threat to fall down, fear arises, which creates chaos, which, in turn, forces you to break up the wrongly built connections that led to the emergence of a dangerous situation and adjust your actions taking into account all factors, that is, use your intuition .... Sustained attention is beneficial to the individual in every way. It is the mind that guides a person along the divine path of development. It also prevents the accumulation of irritations and the emergence of chaos. Reason allows you to flexibly adapt to constantly changing conditions and self-renewal all the time, without resorting to the surgical intervention of chaos. 07/21/2016
Since society is a super-complex self-organizing dissipative system, insofar as in its history there are - but they act in a specific form - general patterns evolution of such systems.
In any dissipative system, two oppositely directed processes occur: one (entropy) leads to the destruction of its structure, disorder and chaos, and the other (anti-entropy) leads to the structuring of the system, an increase in its orderliness. Thus, order arises and exists in relationship with chaos (both in the external environment and within the system). The relationship of chaos and order -- necessary condition the existence of dissipative systems.
Self-organization is the result of the synthesis of chaos and order. In a self-organizing system, they do not exclude, but, on the contrary, generate and complement each other. Chaos arises from order, and order from chaos. At the same time, the birth of order from chaos and chaos from order is determined not by the external environment, but by the internal nature of the dissipative system, the mechanisms operating in it.
The chaos resulting from the destruction of order is "deterministic chaos." It is caused by those processes that destroy order. It turns out that chaos can be different - depending on how it is formed. Order arising from chaos also bears the trace of its origin. Chaos, no matter how strange it may seem, is constructive in its very destructiveness: it “burns out” all superfluous structural formations - unviable, unstable, not integrated into the overall structure of the system. Chaos thus has the ability to give birth to order. He is not an absolute evil, but an important aspect of the processes of self-organization.
“Order is inseparable from chaos. And chaos sometimes acts as a super-complex orderliness.
Order and chaos in a dissipative system constantly accompany each other, but their ratio changes in the course of the evolution of the dissipative system. At some stages order prevails, at others - chaos. The extreme cases are the state of maximum stability, when stable order reigns in the system, and disorder is minimized, and the state of instability, instability, in which chaos is growing rapidly, and order is decreasing and can collapse under the influence of the slightest chance. There are various modes of system transitions from one state to another.
Considering society as a highly complex dissipative system, social synergetics aims to explore the specifics of its self-organization and the relationship between social order and social chaos.
A society in which there is no order cannot exist. An unorganized, unmanaged society in which chaos reigns is doomed to death if it does not get out of this state. Living in it is dangerous, and people are almost instinctively afraid of such a life.
T. Hobbes believed that people, realizing the impossibility of living in conditions of complete chaos, when there is a “war of all against all” (omnia bella contra omnes), conclude a “social contract”, according to which they agree to recognize the power of the state over themselves, provided that it will establish law and order in society.
"Lawlessness", the lack of norms and rules governing people's behavior, is terrible even for hardened criminals; rejecting the authority of the state and the social order established by it, they consider it necessary to have their own "thieves' law" and their own "authorities".
But such a society cannot exist in which there would be "absolute order" that does not allow any "unauthorized" actions of people. Such a society would become a mechanical system where individuals and groups would be deprived of any freedom of action. This means that their behavior would become completely algorithmic. In such a society, not only free will, but also reason, in essence, turns out to be superfluous, unnecessary and even harmful from the point of view of protecting public order. This mechanical system would, properly speaking, no longer be a human society. In addition, it would be unable to respond to changes in the external environment and would “break down” either under their influence, or because of the “failure” of some of its “cogs”.
Real societies are always somewhere between these extreme states of "absolute order" and "absolute chaos". The "historical pendulum" oscillates within the interval separating these states, never reaching it. extreme points. But, moving in one direction, it "asymptotically brings" society to the states of total order, and in the other - to the states of monstrous disorder, lawlessness and general chaos. These fluctuations are accompanied by a pulsation of processes of various types: differentiation - integration, hierarchization - dehierarchization, divergence (increase in diversity) - convergence (decrease in it), weakening - strengthening, etc.
It is known from history that there were (and still are) societies with a rigid despotic regime and a severe suppression of any dissent and liberties. Such societies are distinguished by the dominance of order over chaos. Societies of this type are called "closed" (A. Bergson, K. Popper), as well as "traditional", "totalitarian", "collectivist" (K. Popper), "mega-tires" (L. Mumford). They are characterized by strict observance of established traditions, “excessive normativity” of culture, petty regulation of all forms of human life, a disapproving attitude towards all kinds of creative innovations, hostility towards everything alien, a desire for self-isolation from neighboring societies. The consequence of all this is their stagnant nature.
Bergson defines a closed society short formula: "authority, hierarchy, immobility". According to Popper, closed societies are dominated by a magical worldview, taboo, authority, and tradition.
Such features were typical of a primitive community, where strict discipline was maintained mainly by the strength of traditions and beliefs. These features were also inherent in the ancient states that were formed in the post-primitive era, with the difference that the strict observance by citizens of the social order established by the state was ensured by the power of totalitarian power, capable of coping with the recalcitrant by violent measures. These were the states Ancient Egypt and China, Ancient Babylon and Assyria, Inca and Aztec empires, etc.
A social order based on a despotic totalitarian regime has been the ideal for "those in power" throughout history. And they, in various forms, sought to establish it. In the XX century. it was embodied in the fascist states and in the states of the Soviet socialist type. Now he continues to live in countries such as Iraq, Iran, Taliban Afghanistan.
At the same time, history knows the state of society close to complete social chaos. These are “epochs of storms and upheavals” associated with mass movements, riots, uprisings, and revolutions. Such conditions are characterized by social unrest, the collapse of political structures, economic ruin, impoverishment, famine, civil strife, violence and mass bloodshed. Chaos sometimes reaches such a degree that society falls apart and disappears.
The described opposite states of society - the state of "closedness", in which despotic power dominates, and the state of social chaos - are asymmetric in relation to time. The first contains a tendency to a stable existence and is able to persist for a long historical time. This becomes possible due to the formation in society of a hierarchy of fractal structures that repeat the same “pattern” of power at all levels. Fractality makes such a society stable (if it is not fractal, that is, it does not include self-similar structures, then it is unstable and does not exist historically for long - as was the case, for example, with the empire of Alexander the Great). The second state cannot exist for a long time, because the breakdown of the hierarchy occurs in it. social structures and destruction of fractality. Society seeks to get out of this state by restoring the social order again.
But both of these states are interconnected and give rise to each other. A stagnant totalitarian regime holds back imminent social change as long as it can. Only the fire of social cataclysms can “burn out” its frozen and incapable of improvement social structures. The new is forced to be born in this fire - otherwise it cannot be born in the conditions of a closed society. But chaos in society is a difficult test for people. No wonder in China one of the most terrible is the ancient curse: “May you live in an era of change!” The time of change is an intermediate time, which ends with the establishment of a new order (even if, as it most often turns out, it is far from what it was seen by the people who started the confusion, and again becomes totalitarian).
In the historical past of mankind there were many more or less long-lived societies of a closed type, which from time to time exploded with brief outbreaks of social cataclysms and chaos, after which the stable order characteristic of a closed society was again established.
However, along with this, in the past there were also relatively rare cases of the emergence of more harmonious social systems in which flexible forms of social order were formed, associated with democracy and allowing for relative freedom of thought and behavior of people. Such, for example, are ancient Greek city-states such as Athens or medieval city-republics. The Renaissance shakes the foundations on which the closed type of society is based. Utopian socialists challenge the state on guard social inequality and injustice. The Age of Enlightenment (XVIII century) introduces the ideals of "freedom, equality, fraternity" into the public consciousness. In the 19th century V Western Europe rigid regimes of despotic power are increasingly giving way to republican-democratic forms of state. And in the XX century. the most prosperous are the countries in which a society built on democratic principles and civil liberties is being formed. Such a society, as opposed to a closed one, is called an "open" society.
In an open society, the hierarchy of power structures is placed (to a greater or lesser extent) under the control of the population. The legal system ensures the peaceful rivalry of various political forces in the struggle for power. The election and turnover of representatives of power makes power structures more mobile and accessible to renewal. This allows you to improve the social order, avoiding destructive social cataclysms and not plunging society into complete chaos. In other words, an open society synthesizes order and chaos, discipline and freedom. And, moreover, in such a way that they seem to mutually prevent the achievement of extreme degrees of both. In society, there is a “permanently acting”, but kept in certain forms chaos (freedom), the local strengthening of which leads to the destruction of individual non-viable social structures while maintaining public order as a whole.
In modern open societies, there are many different voluntary organizations of citizens (communities, foundations, clubs, etc.), which are created by them on their own initiative, and not on orders from above. The free, ordered and uncoordinated activity of many such organizations, it would seem, should lead to the disorganization of society. However, in fact, on the contrary, it contributes to the preservation of social order: these organizations are heterogeneous and different in scale fractal structures that harmonize and stabilize society.
An open society is characterized by social mobility, the ability to move through the levels of the social hierarchy depending on personal achievements and merits, the absence of strict regulation of people's behavior "from above", pluralism of opinions, and recognition of the right of an individual to free development. All this stimulates activity, personal initiative and the search for original innovations that can provide a more successful solution of problems that are of interest to individual social groups and society as a whole. Hence the high rate of its development.
An open society is "a society in which individuals are forced to make decisions." The expansion of opportunities for freedom of action of the individual increases the chaos of society at the micro level (at the level of individuals) while maintaining the stability of its orderliness at the macro level (at the level of large social structures). Finally, an important feature of an open society is that, in contrast to a closed one, it is open to external contacts, to interaction with neighboring societies. If a closed society is "introverted", then an open society is "extraverted". Moreover, it cannot develop without exchanging resources with the outside world, without involving other societies in the orbit of their interests and in the process of solving their problems.
This explains the fact that the emergence and development of open societies is accompanied by active - and often aggressive - economic, political and cultural expansion to other countries. The history of the British Empire is a vivid example of such expansion. The experience of history shows that closed societies cannot withstand the onslaught of open ones. Their resistance to this onslaught continues, but perhaps the 20th century. was the last century in which major world powers of the closed type emerged and lasted for several decades - Nazi Germany And Soviet Union. It can be seen that after their fall, the Western-style civilization began to more reasonably implement the principles of an open society, and the public opinion of Western countries became more resolute in defending the need for peaceful development. Along with the spread of the economic, political and cultural influence of open societies, the desire for them to assimilate the experience accumulated in other societies increased.
The creation of open societies necessarily generates a trend towards globalization historical development humanity. In the second half of the XX century. this trend led to a general cultural exchange, the formation of a global economic market, the emergence of a single political field for the interaction of all the states of the Earth.
In the light of what has been said, it is obvious that the development of an open society is not just a fact of the internal history of an individual people, but a turning point in the history of all mankind.
"The transition from a closed society to an open one can be described as one of the most profound revolutions that humanity has gone through."
Of course, closed and open societies are not separated from each other by a Chinese wall. History knows many intermediate options that carry the features of both types of society. We are talking only about a long historical epoch, during which, through various intermediate forms, the transformation of an open society into the main type of social systems takes place.
With the approval and spread of open-type societies, the “amplitude” of oscillations of the “historical pendulum” decreases. Mankind shows a desire - and finds the means of its implementation - not to bring these fluctuations to the extreme states of a closed society and social chaos.
However, the "pendulum-like" course of historical processes continues, leading to a cyclical alternation of periods of a relatively stable and ordered state and "time of change", perturbation, instability. These “waves of history” in an open society become less turbulent, but it “sways” in them, experiencing in some particular sphere of public life or society as a whole, a change of periods of evolution and periods of crisis. During periods of evolution, a more or less smooth, ordered, "laminar" course of events is established, and during periods of crisis, a "turbulent", unstable, more or less chaotic flow of unpredictable changes occurs.
Introduction to Chaos Theory
What is chaos theory?
Chaos theory is the study of constantly changing complex systems based on mathematical concepts, whether in the form of a recursive process or a set of differential equations that model a physical system (recursion is the process of repeating elements in a self-similar way).
Misconceptions about chaos theory
The general public has drawn attention to chaos theory through films such as Jurassic Park, and thanks to them, there is an ever-increasing public fear of chaos theory. However, as with anything covered by the media, there have been many misconceptions about chaos theory.
The most common inconsistency is that people assume that chaos theory is a theory about disorder. Nothing could be so far from the truth! This is not a refutation of determinism, nor is it a statement that ordered systems are impossible; this is not a denial of experimental evidence or a statement about the futility of complex systems. Chaos in chaos theory is order - and not even just order, but the essence of order.
It is true that chaos theory claims that small changes can produce huge consequences. But one of the central concepts in the theory is the impossibility of accurately predicting the state of a system. In general, the task of modeling the general behavior of the system is quite feasible, even simple. Thus, chaos theory focuses not on the disorder of the system - the hereditary unpredictability of the system - but on the order inherited by it - the general behavior similar systems.
Thus, it would be incorrect to say that chaos theory is about disorder. To illustrate this with an example, let's take the Lorenz attractor. It is based on three differential equations, three constants and three initial conditions.
Chaos theory about disorder
The attractor represents the behavior of the gas at any given time, and its state at a certain moment depends on its state at times preceding the given one. If the input data is changed even by very small values, say, these values are small enough that they are commensurate with the contribution of individual atoms to the Avogadro number (which is a very small number compared to values of the order of 1024), checking the state of the attractor will show completely different numbers. This is because small differences are magnified by the recursion.
However, despite this, the attractor graph will look quite similar. Both systems will have completely different values at any given time, but the attractor graph will remain the same, because it expresses the general behavior of the system.
Chaos theory says that complex nonlinear systems are hereditarily unpredictable, but at the same time, chaos theory claims that the way of expressing such unpredictable systems turns out to be true not in exact equalities, but in representations of the system's behavior - in graphs of strange attractors or in fractals. Thus, chaos theory, which many think of as unpredictability, turns out to be, at the same time, the science of predictability even in the most unstable systems.
Applying Chaos Theory to the Real World
When new theories come out, everyone wants to know what's good about them. So what's good about chaos theory? First and foremost, chaos theory is a theory. This means that most of it is used more as a scientific basis than as directly applicable knowledge. Chaos theory is very a good remedy to look at the events taking place in the world differently from the more traditional strictly deterministic view that has dominated science since the time of Newton. Viewers who have watched Jurassic Park are no doubt afraid that chaos theory can greatly affect the human perception of the world, and, in fact, chaos theory is useful as a means of interpreting scientific data in a new way. Instead of traditional X-Y graphs, scientists can now interpret phase-space diagrams that - instead of describing the exact position of any variable at a particular point in time - represent the overall behavior of the system. Instead of looking at exact equalities based on statistics, we can now look at dynamic systems with behavior similar in nature to static data - i.e. systems with similar attractors. Chaos theory provides a solid framework for the development of scientific knowledge.
However, according to the above, it does not follow that chaos theory has no applications in real life.
Chaos theory techniques were used to model biological systems, which are undeniably one of the most chaotic systems imaginable. Systems of dynamic equations have been used to model everything from population growth and epidemics to irregular heartbeats.
In fact, almost any chaotic system can be modeled - the stock market generates curves that can be easily analyzed with strange attractors as opposed to exact ratios; the process of falling drops from a leaking faucet seems random when analyzed to the naked ear, but if depicted as a strange attractor, a supernatural order is revealed that one would not expect from traditional means.
Fractals are everywhere, most visible in graphics programs such as the highly successful Fractal Design Painter product line. Fractal data compression techniques are still being developed, but promise amazing results such as 600:1 compression ratios. The special effects industry in movies would have far less realistic landscape elements (clouds, rocks and shadows) without fractal graphics technology.
In physics, fractals naturally arise when modeling nonlinear processes, such as turbulent fluid flow, complex diffusion-adsorption processes, flames, clouds, etc. Fractals are used when modeling porous materials, for example, in petrochemistry. In biology, they are used to model populations and to describe systems. internal organs(system of blood vessels).
And, of course, chaos theory gives people amazing interesting way how to acquire an interest in mathematics, one of the most under-popular areas of knowledge today.
