Murphy’s Bye-Laws

Ferris Bueller, with his carpe diem attitude and despite his carless existence, is known to have quipped that life moves pretty fast, and if one doesn’t stop to look around once in a while, one could miss it. In 1986 this bit of wisdom was true. On the brink of 2010 this wisdom holds as true as it did then. Life seems to have its foot firmly pressed to the accelerator. Why does life move so fast? And what’s the deal with -isms, anyway? Keep reading and some order will reveal itself from the chaos.

I quote Henry Miller in my email signature as saying, “Chaos is the score on which reality is written.” I also find this to be true. Call it a worldview. Fate, destiny, preordination; these all only exist in the imaginations of those who prognosticate what has already happened. The delicate imbalance of a single object with the entire universe – the forces acting on it, the forces acting IN it! – depends on an infinite number of variables. This whole equation raised to the power of everything else in the universe is the equation for the chaos we refer to as The Universe – or in Henry Miller’s words, “reality”. The fact that many things happen predictably over and over and over again shouldn’t diminish the perception of the uncontrolled and random nature of the universe. What we humans perceive as controlled, predictable, or even constant are but a mere snapshot of a universe in flux. Our human existence is a single frame in this Kevin Costner-length epic. So how can a snapshot seem to move so fast and be so out-of-control so much of the time? Well…

It appears to me that the speed of our lives is an illusion from all the stuff we squeeze into each day, which increases with the speed with which we can transmit ideas. Some people thrive on a hectic schedule and may rely on the activity to keep their brain stimulated. Others can immerse themselves in the flurry of activity in order to lose track of inconvenient truths while their mind is distracted. Still others buckle under the weight of obligations and activities. Regardless of how it is dealt with, the appearance of speed in our lives continues to increase.

I would like to postulate that the organizational structures erected purportedly to help us deal with such accelerating lives actually do the opposite. Social constructs and our various roles and responsibilities inside of them help to alienate us from the chaotic flux of events and restricts our ability to go with that flow and integrate ourselves into that flow. Being alien to this chaotic symbiosis of the universe – or trying real hard to be, anyway – makes it even more daunting and adds to the illusion of great haste in the pace of our existence.

Wearing Many Identities

Based on the above picture, the many hats we choose to accept for ourselves can make fighting against the flux of the universe seem damned-near impossible. Removing the institutional structures that pile many of these hats on, and figuring out a place in the flux, can help our motion sickness. Once integrated into this chaotic flux of existence we can learn to navigate within it, rather than trying hard to fight it. Embrace the chaos.

Hail Eris.