The Paradoxical Logic of Order

[Cain]

"I was trying to show them that it's possible to get involved in this world without being corrupted by the crimes of this world. And I failed. One by one, I resorted to all the vices of governors: deception, carnival magic to impress the gullible, and finally, outright murder. Once again, the cynics have been proven right."

- Hagbard Celine, The Illuminatus! Trilogy


There is a strange and self-defeating logic held by the adherents of order.  Its really quite fascinating, when you realize what it is.  Not only does it demonstrate their general uselessness in trying to impose order on the world, it also shows – almost humorously – that in reality, the people who run the world are not that different to us after all.  And the implications of that particular thought could be quite fruitful.

The problem is this.  Tradition and order are always under threat.  They are based on the idea that the world should not change, or if change is brought about, that it should happen slowly and in increments, so that any side-effects can be mitigated (and also to benefit from the old way of doing things for as long as is possible).  However, we know history does not work like that.  While retroactively, one can trace the history of events with surprising accuracy, detailing richly how the world came to be what it is, it is otherwise nearly impossible to predict from now what the future will hold.  Even worse, those changes in history, those moments where the world is turned upside down and once the dust has settled, something is changed, do not happen nicely and with warning.  They erupt unexpectedly onto the scene, disrupting events around them by virtue of their shocking and unforeseen impact.

In short, time and reality are the enemy.  Given a long enough time period, the chance of a black swan type event approaches one.  How then, can one keep order, sustain tradition in such a world?  Odysseus, also known as Ulysses in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, has advice for Achilles, after expressing the archetypal argument for tradition and hierarchy at a previous council of war.  He tells Achilles that to win back honour, he must rejoin the fight.  But more than simply restating his arguments, he also proposes a way to fight against the deprivations of time that so threaten the established order.

That way is one which is very familiar to us.  Odysseus is too cunning, too honest to say that simply sticking by one's virtues will make them last and be right – instead, he admits it is only by manipulation, deceit, the methods of cheating and playing people against each other for public consumption that the hierarchical method will be retained, and that Achilles will get his honour back in the bargain.

In other words, order is supported and indeed reliant on an undercurrent of chaotic, deceitful and antithetical values to that of the orderly world.  Hidden variables abound, games played in the dark, things are not as they seem.  Illusions and phantoms are thrown up and people used as chess pieces in games they did not even know they were playing.  Order must be transgressed if it is to be maintained, but if it is being ignored and broken by its chief principles, then it is no longer order, is it?

Of course, Odysseus is interesting in that apart from Achilles, he is the only Greek to receive a reprimand from Agamemnon, the Greek commander.  While he manages to keep the morale of the Greeks in check, he is also the most disruptive element in their camp.  He kills another Greek commander in revenge for an earlier slight, framing him as a traitor.  His claim to the arms of Achilles leads to the suicide of Ajax.  It is he who comes up with the plan to storm Troy, and he who humiliates Menelaus by not allowing him to kill Helen, for betraying and leaving him.  He may uphold the order, but he does it in such a way that he is saving up a lot more disorder for a later point, and he himself has no qualms about using such methods himself.  Can the same be true for other adherents of order?

It is possible.  Nietzsche also considered the self-destroying nature of Christian order, in that it posited a metaphysical world beyond our current reality, and gave humanity a fixed place in the Universe, but at the same time made truth one of the key aspects of its belief system.  The problem is, of course, that Christianity is built upon lies and falsehoods, so eventually it turns in on itself.  Its truth was a powerful weapon, in the right hands, and most certainly part of its moral order, but once turned inwards, it helped cause the whole thing to unravel.

Its not so much a matter of us acting like them, as RAW tried to put it, more the issue is them acting like us.  Often the methods of the proponents of order are fairly well known and manipulated (such as getting inside the OODA loop – a military method for decision making – so that the hierarchy itself becomes a weapon to use against your enemies).  Not everyone on the other side is a stupid automaton, or even a very smart one.  The Subgenii got this right, as well:

"ROGUE SUBGENII are Latent Subgenii who repressed themselves until they hit the fusion point and went too far.

The people at the TOP, the REAL top, of the Conspiracy are Rogue Subgeniuses who were seduced over to the expediency of the Conspiracy, the Dark Side of the Farce.  The Conspiracy IS more DIRECT, and they can't wait for the Way of Dobbs to evolve in its sloppy way; they want to give things a push."

Its not a nefarious Other we are against, its an unrealized (or differently actualized, depending on your point of view) aspect of ourselves.  People, just like us, are the ones running the things at the top.  The real sneaky bastards, the Karl Roves and Alistair Darling's and E. Howard Hunt's and Freddie Scappaticci and the like are nothing but mirror images of ourselves.

And that is probably why we know them better than anyone else.  When idiots in the press or the citizenry go along with the insane plans of such people, we seem to be the ones who instinctively know what these no-good shits are up to.  And that is because, barring some fortuitous or calamitous event, we are not all that different.  We think in the same ways, and plan in similar ways.  Sure, our end goals are different, and ours are certainly more consistent than theirs, but its the same methods and same ways we would use.  Indirect.  Manipulative.  The path of least resistance.  Underhand.  Ultimately undermining of order and authority, in one way or another.

And that, to me, makes the game much more fun.  Any idiot with half a brain can run rings around those fools who take order seriously – hell, I suspect anyone here can do it in their sleep and has done at least once.  No, it means we have something much more interesting, a fair match, almost.  Of course, having "allied" themselves with the order they seem so intent on undermining does give them some advantages, in terms of resources, but in the end they are killing the goose that lays the golden egg.  They become...dependent, on their strengths.  While very good at unconventional fighting, they are used to having much more to work with.  Their memes infect the structure of tradition, while at the same time, they benefit from the discipline of tradition.  However, the two eventually wear each other down, wasting resources and undermining the original strength that allowed for such power.

In fact, doing the same thing ourselves may be worth a shot, now and again.  Taking someone for a ride and grinding them down, while also using them against another power base, is a time honoured strategem in China.  Killing with a borrowed sword is all the rage.

In the end, chaos always wins.  Always.  And empahsis on order just helps the process along.

[Payne]

Good one!

It's good to see the old adage regarding imposition of order actually increasing disorder without referring to entropy or any other physics talk.

I was always quite partial to Odysseus, myself.

[Cainad (dec.)]

[Sepia]

I love your pieces Cain.

[Cramulus]

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar, 1. 2




“If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.”



"Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more".

[Bu🤠ns]

 

thats really good, Cain.

so would it be correct to say that the corruption of power is really just a corruption of order?

[Rhys Rhaven]

A problem with your argument. You say that to further Order you need to use Choatic methods to do so. This is false. Zero tolerance policies are an example of order, unreasoning simple strict order. Imagine Zero Tolerance laws implemented by robots. Order implemented by order.

Also, isn't the fundamental nature of the universe such that each and every action has a reaction? Isn't everything ordered, just as a matter of perspective? Isn't it just a matter of how high must a being be to see a system as ordered?

An idea to counteract these issues, could you help define "Chaos" for me? If things are viewed from our perspective, then obviously chaos exists and with humans zero tolerance fails terribly. Your point is valid in the real world, but not in a pure sense.

Rhys

[Payne]

Your point is valid in the real world

As I see it, thats all that matters, as far as this piece is concerned.

[Golden Applesauce]

A problem with your argument. You say that to further Order you need to use Choatic methods to do so. This is false. Zero tolerance policies are an example of order, unreasoning simple strict order. Imagine Zero Tolerance laws implemented by robots. Order implemented by order.

Zero tolerance policies create just as much havok as any other stupidly strict policy.  Everyone breaks the rules at some point, even if they are in the spirit of the rules but are technically against the rules as written.  Shipping everybody off to Siberia over slips of the tongue leaves you with an ever-shrinking and increasingly panicky population.

[Verbal Mike]

Rhys, first of all, what Payne said. Seriously.
Second of all, robots are not relevant. Seriously.
Third of all, the point is that those in power, those making the policies and supposedly championing Order, will always inevitable resort to Chaos in order to maintain a facade of orderly conduct.
I have certainly experienced on all occasions when I was in power, in organizations both democratic (my school) and authoritarian (the gaming website where I admin). And in many of those cases there were zero-tolerance policies involved. It really makes no difference how absolute your policies are.

[Rhys Rhaven]

Robots are a bad idea. Maybe. Giant robots are pretty sweet.

What I mean is, how do you define certain things as chaos? Political dissidence is counteracted by the DHS or NSA "removing" certain people. Action, reaction. Seems pretty ordered to me. 

[Verbal Mike]

The point is that the proponents of so-called "Order" do exactly the kind of things they are against, in the interest or saving face.

[Cainad (dec.)]

The point is that the proponents of so-called "Order" do exactly the kind of things they are against, in the interest or saving face.

And thus, the supposed "Order" is violated. A violation of "Order" may be described as "Chaos".

Sorry, had to follow up for completeness.

[Bu🤠ns]

i always understood chaos as like an undefined roarschac blot.  the order/disorder is more of the way we perceive that blot. 

allow me to adjust for clarity ... at least as far as the way i see it.

...to further Order you need to use Choatic disorderly methods to do so. This is false perceptual.

Zero tolerance policies are an example of order, unreasoning simple strict order. Imagine Zero Tolerance laws implemented by robots. Order implemented by order.

i don't feel this is relevant because in my definition i'm referring to human perception

Also, isn't the fundamental nature of the universe such that each and every action has a reaction within our model it's a dialectic between order and disorder? Isn't everything ordered, just as a matter of perspective? Isn't it just a matter of how high must a being be to see a system as ordered?

i think the scalability is a good point.  what's order at one vantage point looks disorderly at another.  That's just it, though.  you're simply focusing on the order part without giving disorder it's due.  the origional snub yet again.  it goes together in a mesh called chaos.

An idea to counteract these issues, could you help define "Chaos" for me? If things are viewed from our perspective, then obviously chaos exists and with humans zero tolerance fails terribly. Your point is valid in the real world, but not in a pure sense.

Rhys

what is going on in the real world reflects the 'pure sense'.  don't separate them, instead find how they work together. 

anyone feel free to correct me if you see fit.

what cain said

[Honey]

Conviction causes convicts.  ...

Engrossed in establishing order, She finally one day noticed disorder (previously not apparent because everything was chaos). There were many ways in which chaos was ordered and many ways in which it was not.

"Hah," She thought, "Here shall be a new game."

And She taught order and disorder to play with each other in contest games, and to take turns amusing each other. She named the side of disorder after Herself, "ERISTIC" because Being is anarchic. And then, in a mood of sympathy for Her lonely sister, She named the other side "ANERISTIC" which flattered Aneris and smoothed the friction a little that was between them.
-Principia Discordia

& Love is sometimes just hate with some friction mixed in. 

Things get fucked up when peoples try to impose order on things they have no business even touching with a 10 foot pole.  & forget about the part where 1 plays with the other.  Take the 10 commandments fr'instance?  Do not covet your neighbor's whatever?  Human nature being what it is people are always gonna go 'round coveting their neighbor's whatever.  Instead of just saying don't do it, human beings would be better served by taking into account what happens after.  Minimize the damage if possible?