kaos theory, uderstanding balance of life

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[Bruce Baker]

For a few years now I have been searching for a reason as to why the world has a balance of good/ evil, right/ wrong, peace/ war, and the ying and yang explanation really doesn't cut it anymore for me.

So, I have come up with the kaos theory of balance. It is a developing theory based on observation of our present society.

Basically I am finding that although the majority of people want peace and security, they also wnat to experience the external kaos that not only leads to hardship but gives opportunity to change.

In our aikido training, we try to maintain a set of rules, decorum, program, and set behavior over seen by a central figure. The kaos of this small group has to do with each of our personal and social views about studying a Japanese martial art.

In living our roles of society, we create kaos in order to affect change.

Whether it is shomenuchi, or a simple static hold, we create change and kaos ( or is it spelled chaos? never mind you get the idea) to affect the changes needed to resolve the situation into a peaceful resolution.

What do you think about the kaos you cause even when you think you are doing it in a peaceful manner, either in your practice, or in your own daily life?

[Kevin Leavitt]

As a buddhist, I spend a great deal of time thinking about such topics. When you talk to a buddhist eventually the concept of Kharma will come up. There are as many different beliefs in Kharma as their are sects of religion.

I think everything in the universe gravitates towards stasis. (hence the concept of Yin/Yang).

Lets say you do subscribe to the big bang theory, then something happened which no one really can know how or why, that through everything into discord, positive and negative were created.

Chaos was created out of this imbalance.

What do I think about the chaos I cause, well that is where the concept of Kharma comes in for me.

Everything we do, even the most innocient thing has an equal and opposite reaction. Many Buddhist spend most of their lives trying to live mindfully of this fact. Jainism takes it to the extreme, going so far as to wear mask to prevent inhaling microscopic organisms. While I agree philosophically with Jain's and admire their conviction, I personally think that it is enough to be mindful of the impact you have on the world, and live in a moderate and reasonable fashion. It is an individual choice.

For me, Aikido serves as a practice to remind me physically that everything I do has a reaction, and it is a means to resolve chaos. It really becomes an active dynamic form of meditation.

To me, the whole concept of KI lay in this basic philosophy. Tempering your ego, becoming mindful of your actions allows you to become closer to the world around you. It has allowed me to be more sensitive to the balance of KI.

Practicing Aikido, meditation, reading philosophy, science, and humanties is what I try to do daily to train my mind, body, and soul to resolve the chaos we call life!

[SeiserL]

IMHO, there is no chaos, only patterns of change I haven't identified yet.

Until again,

Lynn

[Abasan]

balance is the nature of things.

if one thing is continuously positive, it will expand ad infinitum... if entirely negative, it implodes...

At the atomic level, you have both matter and anti matter. positron and electron. etc etc.

but good and evil i think is entirely subjective. one persons good might be evil for another person. depends on your viewpoint, the time, place and context.

your muscles work in balance. it never pushes, it always pulls. so in order for you to move, different muscles work opposite each other.

i believe the world is a test. your task is simple, make the world a better place for all its inhabitants. you have been given a mind, doesn't it make sense for you to bring peace and prosperity to the world you live in? your mind seeks knowledge, and within that knowledge you know that ultimately, for human kind to prosper we must treat the world in equitable fashion. take too much too quickly, and you lay a path of destruction for generations to come. the outcome of the test, can be seen immediately... and perhaps at the end of time.

lastly, chaos and order... wow. fascinating subject. without chaos there can be no life, for death is order. living things change and that requires chaos. but without order, chaotic life ends faster, you must have an ordered system in order to be healthy. cancer cells are an example of chaotic body parts. i believe in order to be balanced, chaos must be bound by order. (sounds familiar? heheh)

[Bruce Baker]

You know, I have read about Karma, and even the different theorys of why we are here, but depending on the level of your humor, and the level of your experience in life, you will probably fall back on someone else's explanation,as it is much easier to prescribe to a proven working model, than an unproven model.

Maybe, I have been out of work too long with my disability / retirement, but damn it, the indicators for change are still the squeaky wheel, and problem at hand. The best intentioned plans are wrought with ulterior motives ... even with the best of supervisors and executive supervision of a project, there is always some means of kaos that creeps in. The old saying of no good deed goes unpunished, may be laughable, but when is it provable in 70% of the good deeds that occur from my experience, I have to be doublely aware of repercussions.

No, there is a force of those who thrive in chaos, they can't wait to affect the peacefulness or calm so they can weasel their way into an opportunity.

It is not something that we normally see in people who stay in Aikido, for any length of time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't come to visit now and then?

Watch the way people drive on the highways, the way they walk in a shopping mall, the way they congregate when there are limited items on sale or at free givaways? Pushing, shoving, weaseling a better place in line, or that one person who just has to be in front of you to prove he/her has what it takes not to be a loser, or at least be better than you.

No, Chaos is the force of the narrow untrained mind that cannot see the road ahead, only what is immediately present.

I see it every time I get in a long line for the local convenience store, as soon as another register opens the rush of people in a hurry surge forward with no regard for the next three people waiting in line. Chaos, not something we want in our society, but it is an effective tool in the shaping of our social and morality?

Observe the world around you, look for the chaos,look for a change in the people around you as well as yourself, and see if it doesn't awaken you to a new awareness in life and your Aikido training ... it should.

[Kevin Leavitt]

Sure does Bruce.

I love the way people in malls will talk to one another and look in windows oblivious to the fact that you exisit and that they will walk right into you without moving...then not say excuse me.

I don't necessarily call this chaos, but tend to call this selfishness and self absorbtion, which stem from the concept of ego that I am so fond of talking about!

I tend to think the chaos that people create comes from the fact that we tend to view our self as separate from all other things and fail to see the relationship and interdependence between all things in the world. In attempt to appease our comforts or egos, we result to self serving behavior...it is such actions which create the "yin" or negative energy, this sways the balance of stability and creates the pattern of chaos you are talking about!

Just my personal philosophy!

[Jim ashby]

Hi Kevin. I have found in my travels that most people never spend enough time outside their own "zone of personal interference". Too many people drive like that as well. Luckily, as martial artists, we tend to see more of the world around us and act accordingly. I used to get really annoyed at those I thought were just pig ignorant, now I feel somewhat superior as I experience so much more of the world than they do.

Have fun.

[Bruce Baker]

I also have a theory how there are subtle undercurrents of waves that affect human beings to react in groups, herds if you will, moving on the waves of subconscious motivation due to weather, magnetic changes in the earths energy, and some type of group mentality ... kind of like subliminal suggestion from hypnosis.

The urge to do this, or the need to do that, the want to be somewhere else than where you are would seem to be instinctual signals of some type of stimuli, either learned or ingrained in our genetic structure.

Maybe this is .. or is not ... the learned ways of decyfering the movements of the universe that affect us in trying to see some of the drives that subconsciously hinder of help us on certain days when training is good, fuzzy, or outright plain deplorable? We not only have to recognize the drivers of chaos, but we need to learn how to retrain ourselves in order to properly, effectively deal with situations that may call for physical force but could be dealt with with verbal confrontation, or just plain change the outcome by standing there and doing nothing at all? We learn to affect changes in chaos by learning the deeper lessons of Aikido that O'Sensei was trying to impart to his students, but came out in etherical terms.

Wave theory? Chaos theory?

Maybe you are saying to yourself this guy is on too many drugs ... and little crazy? I have considered it, but not being a danger to myself or others, I must have some sanity in there, somewhere.

Consider though, recognition of movement around you, affecting stimuli, and the ability to get the hell out of the way of the stampede before the stampede happens ... or stop the stampede before it happens? Not some psychic prediction or psycho-babble, but being able to pick up the signals of societys own driving forces as easily as learning body language, wouldn't that be an interesting addendum to getting out of the grip of someones technique, being able to see what was coming with some 80-90 percent of certainty.

Oh well, it was just a thought on how O'Sensei could see the mood of a group.

[Kevin Leavitt]

Jim, I tend not to feel superior to them. To me that begs of ego....but I tend to feel somewhat sorry that they are missing out on all the things around them they are not experiencing by being more aware.

However, that is not to say that it does not annoy me, I am only human you know!

[Thalib]

IMHO, there is no chaos, only patterns of change I haven't identified yet.
I do agree with you Lynn... here is a little something that I wrote in another forum:
Is everything just random? Every people that one meets, everything that one does, is just coincidences or maybe out of necessities?

Just because one cannot find the cause or the correlation, is it right to call it random? When one is asked to pick a random number, one actually has many reasons why that number was picked, maybe one does not even realize it. When there is a natural disaster, there are many processes happen in nature that leads to that disaster. Do chaos even exist? If one looks closely, there is order, or should one say, a system in chaos.

Destiny or fate is not determined, but it is layed out. There are causes that makes one to be on the path that one is on. How did one get there? Why did one get there? Even a stranger that was standing on some street that one would pass could affect one's decision.

Randomness or chaos in its true sense is just infinite correlations. It is all cause and effect. One what does will affect others in one way or another, even a stranger that only crossed one's path.

We are all connected in this universe, even to a distant star.
An the following is my understanding of infinite correlation (also posted in the same forum):
imagine this:

Event A is caused by event B and event C is caused by event B. Therefore A caused C. That was easy, only one degree of separation. Now imagine if one can't find the connection, then the two events don't seem to have any relationship at all, no cause and effect, just some random event... or is it?

Take another two events, event A and event Z. At a glance, there is no connection between these two events. When traced it is actually separated by events B through X where the event was caused by its predecessor (B caused by A, C caused by B, and so on). Therefore event A caused event Z through 24 degrees of separation. At glance it is random, but it's not.

Imagine if there was infinite degrees of separation, are the two events not connected? It is still connected, by a very long infinite chain of events. Perhaps incomprehensible to our puny discriminant and prejudiced mind.

That is what is meant by infinite corellation. Everything is connected in this universe, every cause and effect.

[Abasan]

Lets see... from the above, if I type the letter 'A' here on my keyboard, some time this week an old rich man in switzerland will die and leave me his inheritence. :)

[Thalib]

Yeah... you wish...

And if I type this "Z", there will be world peace...

I wish it was that simple...

[Bruce Baker]

That is another problem with trying to be too specific without matching the data so it relates to the theory or specific category, you start list subcategorys and sub-sub categorys as the primary activating catalysts.

Example of misinformation: Say there is a flood because there is a huge storm that comes ashore, and you blame it on the guy who bumped into you, spilled your coffee on this person, and they wished you would drown in a flood? Next day there is a flood and you almost drown, so you dwell on those prophetic words, when you really should have been attuned to the mood of the people, the change in the weather, and taken at least one minute to watch the weather channel!

Chaos, is not only the chaos people bring to your life, getting from here to there, or making your way through the day, but it is the ability to spot the crowds who are affected by chaos, and learn how to either move within them, or just outside of them so that you are not caught up in the stampede to who knows where?

Event A to event B to event C may have some contextual meaning in history, but being in the present moment, and judging the situation on observation and gut feeling is another skill entirely.

I guess I am describing a tracking skill in recognizing the habits of a prey, or herd, or group of animals that are affected by everyday events, needs, and their environment?

There is one absolute unshakable, proven fact to show there is chaos ... no matter how cash poor a woman is, she will go shopping to buy something she cannot afford and charge it.

Now that is pure chaos!

[Thalib]

There is one absolute unshakable, proven fact to show there is chaos ... no matter how cash poor a woman is, she will go shopping to buy something she cannot afford and charge it.

Now that is pure chaos!
Well... I can't argue with that.. :D

Joking ladies... just joking... :confused:

[Bruce Baker]

No we are not!

As hard as we are laughing ..

I mean it, even if you do not.

That truth, is what makes it so funny, doesn't it though?