The Edge of Chaos in Art and Action
15 Real-World Examples
Published in
12 min readMar 9, 2023
- Natural selection. In multicellular organisms, DNA is the structural loop that is replicated from generation to generation. Environmental stimuli and sexual reproduction bring the mutations. This introduces chaos into the system: the DNA is not only replicated but iterated (a little different each time). These genetic differences give rise to physiologically different organisms. As a result, the constantly iterating DNA produces constantly evolving iterations of a given organism, allowing the species as a whole to be resilient and adaptive to environmental changes. This process (natural selection) occurs at the Edge of Chaos: too much chaos and the DNA-mutations give rise to physiologically defective or dysfunctional organisms. Too much order and the DNA will not change at all, and so the species will not be able to adapt to environmental changes. At the sweet spot, the species constantly responds to
- Gaia Hypothesis. The global biosphere regulates its inorganic support systems, its atmosphere and chemistry, in order to create and maintain the optimal conditions for complexification. That is: for evolution, flourishing and beautification. Gaia — the precious bluegreen jewel. Home of organic life. Oasis of complexity in the vast cosmic desert, where systems are either too ordered or too chaotic to exhibit much intelligence or complexity.
- Mental Health and Wellbeing. Modern neuroscience echoes the Edge of Chaos model. On one extreme: depression and anxiety correlate to very ordered and repetitive brain activity. These are highly self-referential (or ego-centric) mental states. On the other: schizophrenia correlates to chaotic and erratic brain activity. In the middle we find flow, lucidity, awakening, freedom, play. The order of the ego dissolves. The brain lights up and dances. So does the face, and so does the body. Disorder in brain processes is suppressed in normal waking consciousness, meaning that the brain operates just below the edge of chaos. Our thoughts lean towards order, pulling us away from the eternal creative flow. Why does the brain do this? It allows us to perform certain useful functions, known as “meta-cognition”. That is thinking about thinking, or the ability to reflect on our own thoughts and behaviour. These are the functions whereby the brain models itself in order to monitor our current state — “am I acting weirdly in public? Better adjust my posture”. The brain centre in charge of metacognition is the Default Mode Network (the DMN). The DMN is the “seat of the ego illusion”. The processing centre for our “sense of being a self”, as well as our faculties of self-reflection, self-narrative and self-awareness. When our mental experience is restricted to self-referential thought, we live in a painful and highly repetitive sleep of ego-centric order. The DMN is hyperactive in depressed people. We are cut off from the more chaotic processes of mind-body such as emotions and imagination. We can use various practices to bring these into conscious awareness and integrate them.
- Meditation. Meditative equipoise brings a conscious harmonisation of the infinite aspects of heart, mind, and body, hithero dispersed and differentiated. This is samadhi. Order (repetitive thoughts, emotional patterns, recurring mindstates). Concepts and habitual fabrications are transcended and dissolved in the liquid mind: ceaselessly responsive, ceaselessly evolving, ceaselessly awakening into ever greater dimensions of freedom and beauty. We dissolve in the mountain stream to buddhahood. As we see the emptiness of things, consciousness opens up like a vast — infinite — sky. At some point we see right through the order-disorder spectrum: we recognise the mutual dependence and emptiness of order and chaos; that neither are real, but are ways of seeing, fabricated perceptions. But now we know that these ways of seeing can guide us to fabricate perceptions of ever-greater beauty, and that’s the great creative adventure that we are invited to participate in. Clearly, we have all answered that invitation, or we wouldn’t be here!
- Psychedelic Therapy and Plant Medicines. What do psychedelics actually do? One simple and direct answer — straight outta neuroscience — is that they increase the disorder of neurobiological processes. That’s right: you’re eating chaos, beloved trippers. This chaos dissolves the order of ego, and potentially all the associated pain, and you can glimpse the nature of mind beyond these limited and painful states. It can also magnify (or amplify) this pain to excruciating proportions. Whatever happens, the ego is challenged and possibly shattered. In more comfortable experiences, it is gently melted. Like putting an ice cube in a warm bath. Ah. Only if you take too much, you put it in the liquid fire of infinite divine powers. As a result your psychic structure can get so shaken up that it shatters, exposing you to entire limitless expanse of the psyche: from order and ego to madness and insanity and the limitless buddhafields of beauty in-between. This makes clear the need for integration of psychedelic experiences, if they are going to make any tangible or meaningful change to one’s daily life. For me the primary structure that integrates the chaos of psychedelic journeying is the stability, groundedness and rhythmic breathing of the sitting posture. Sitting (you could call it meditating, but I’m not going to here) both during and after the psychedelic experience allows all that psychic novelty — all the newly-revealed images, ideas, emotions and visions — to be integrated into the mind-body complex. It allows all that richness of experience to lead and guide us (as in all of us) towards the Edge of Chaos. If we spend our trip partying, talking, or doing other activities, then the riches of psychedelic chaos do not have a fertile structure land in. The seeds don’t have a clear and welcoming bed in which to root and sprout; rather they are met with an already-busy and competitive forest floor. Additionally helpful for integration are the conceptual and ethical frameworks of awakening traditions. I have found Buddhism, Sufism and Soulmaking to be the most helpful structures for this. Lastly I think the EoC helps to explain why microdosing is so awesome/powerful/effective: it provides that subtle sprinkle of chaos/novelty/spontaneity into your usually predictable and well-ordered day, such that you can move just that bit closer to living freely and creatively at the EoC. I personally find the longer tail of LSD more reliable than mushrooms for a such sustained sprinkling over the course of a whole day.
- Societal and Cultural Wellbeing. The Edge of Chaos is the artesian wellspring of novelty. So, in a dystopia of rampant order, the antidote becomes clear: chaos. Not rampant destruction, but optimally and lovingly sprinkled chaos. Just enough chaos to wake the system up, to catalyse growth and innovation and evolution. Too much chaos and we slip away again, into nihilism, into mindless destruction and confusion. Coming back to Life, and to our place in the order of things. Cue: compassionate introductions of chaos into a highly ordered society, inviting others to play, dance, and be free. There’s an archetype for that: the trickster. This is the time for bold acts of love and creativity. For the lovers, the magicians, the artists, the poets, and the warriors. For a return to Eros. For the liberation of the freaky and the wild and the weird. For a confrontation with the deep dark richness of psyche, the limitless fields of the imagination. This is the time for the reclamation of our fundamental human freedoms to create. recreate and co-create reality itself. This is the time for magic. For a return to Eden. To a society at the edge of chaos. No need to plan or design this one. Just drop into flow — into whatever makes you come alive. Then do it with others. Drop into group flow and nurture whatever emerges from the collective. Beauty, intelligence, harmony and complexity will come to be expressed at ever-greater levels of human organisation: from family to tribe, village to city, nation to planetary civilisation. This is the great undertaking we are all embedded in.
- Metamodernism. Metamodernism can be understood as an attempt to establish a society that flourishes at the Edge of Chaos. Modernism can be broadly understood as an attempt to create a functional and optimised society/economy/civilisation by drawing on natural and eternal orders — such as the laws of physics, economics, growth, logic, rational morality, and the legal system. Postmodernism can conversely be seen as a chaotic counterforce to modernism which seeks to deconstruct the (conceptual) structures of modernism via analysis, critique and questioning. The result is a chaotic soup of relative and subjective viewpoints, without any order or grand narrative to cohere these viewpoints into utopian world-building. Oscillating between modernism and postmodernism, metamodernism synthesises the two into a greater whole; it draws on the orders and structures of modernism, it also continually critiques, checks, informs, and updates with the chaos/deconstruction of postmodernism. This allows us to follow the modernist attitude of pursuing utopia (establishing a new world order), while the reflectivity and responsivity of postmodern analysis and critique prevents those orders from becoming oppressive. See my article Rethinking Utopia in a World in Crisis for more on this.
- Ancestral Evolution. We find that our precursors lived here at the edge of chaos. Prehistoric humans experienced more chaotic perception and behaviour than modern adults. Because they were in tune with natural ecosystems, which operate the edge of chaos. They were utterly harmonised with them. Primordial humans had more disordered minds, allowing them to flexibly navigate rapidly changing weather, hunting patterns and tribal conflicts. If you live in an environment at the edge of chaos, it makes sense that your brain is also operating here. Cave paintings emerged at the “peak” of this initial wave of brain disorder. When agriculture and money came along, a more ordered way of life — and thinking — was needed.
- Child-Adulthood Development. Our childhood-adulthood development shows an increase in DMN connectivity and primordial-modern evolution reflects an increase in DMN size. Order, self and control became dominant. The Edge of Chaos is the Eden we fell from. It’s where we lived as children. Children’s brains show far, far, lower DMN activity than adults. Don’t you remember when there was only NOW, when world was pure play, pure imaganation, so rich and full of beauty and wonder that you just flowed through it, laughing, for hours and hours until you collapsed, your little body exhausted, but smiling, and dreaming?
- Mastering the Art of Daily Living. For me, the real life-changing value of the Edge of Chaos has come from regularly asking myself where am I on the order-chaos spectrum, right now? Just asking this question intuitively guides me back to — or at least points me in the direction of — the Edge of Chaos where I feel most free, natural, creative and alive. Perhaps I just spent the day working at a supermarket checkout. Scan, scan, scan… incredibly ordered. Probably I need some chaos — a walk in nature, a dance, or movement practice. Recognising how ordered we are feeling, how ordered our day has been, reminds us to shake things up a little. Or perhaps I just had a crazy weekend partying at a festival. Lots of fun, and lots of chaos. After that, I probably need a day to order my life again, doing all the usual emails, chores and work-tasks that bring me back from relative chaos to the EoC. Another way to look at this is that chaos needs integrating: it needs to be woven into structures, so that the novelty that chaos brings can feed the evolution of the system (you). This is the where we call on discipline, routine and regularity – allowing the unpredictable / chaotic ups and downs of life to be integrated into a well-structured life. This integration of living chaos into a living responsive daily structure gradually creates an everyday way of living that embodies immense creativity, intelligence, power and vibrancy. Enjoy!
- (Co-)Creativity and Intelligence. Both individuals and groups of individuals are most creative and intelligent when operating at the Edge of Chaos. Imagine a jazz band: the music hits that delicious, burning, sensual and even sexual sweet spot when the whole ensemble locks in at the Edge of Chaos. If any of the musical elements is too ordered or too chaotic, they detract from the overall flourishing and freedom of the group. Imagine a drummer who never changed rhythm (too much order), or a saxophonist who would only blow random notes (too much chaos). In relational and conversational settings, practices like circling, Bohmian dialogue, SublimeWe and collective presencing seem to be effective ways to allow a group of people to cohere around the Edge of Chaos where the collective consciousness begins to express its immense intelligence and creativity (after working through the habitual orders of usual ways of relating, and probably a large amount of chaos/confusion about how and why they have come together to do the work). That leads us nicely to…
- Democracy! A two-party parliament, such as the UK’s House of Commons, is an incredibly ordered phenomenon that does not allow for sufficient levels of chaos (new information) to be integrated into the system. It’s the same old white dudes with the same old white views holding all the decision-making power. ORDER! they cry. As such, the government is not nearly as flexible, responsive, and intelligent as it could be. CHAOS! we cry.
- Corporate Oppression and Globalisation. The 4 richest men in the world have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion of us. Those 4 men are the poster-boys for the global minority who, through their wealth, control the global corporate order that represses and oppresses billions. The New World Order of free-market capitalism does everything it to kill and absorb any chaos — any experimentation, any new way of thinking, creating, exchanging — that challenges its rule. So chaos — not angry anarchic chaos but delicious rich novelty that brings us back to the edge of chaos — is one way to view our resistance to the order of corporate oppression. Living as our most creative, connected, intelligent and beautiful selves — and communities — gently but powerfully guides the human family and its organisational systems back to the EoC. By living at the Edge of Chaos we become strange attractors which those around us can receive influence and new information from, thereby empowering them to also live freely and creatively, and to break out of the mental shackles of the aggressively ordered corporate world.
- Climate Change and the Global Ecological Crisis. Due to the above features of our democracies, industries and economies, global human culture is way too systemically ordered to function in harmony with an ecosphere that is flourishing at the EoC. As a result we are dragging the ecosphere with us into a vortex of order, stupidity and un-creativity. We desperately need to find our way back to the Edge of Chaos in order to arrive at a new psychological balance-point (both individually and collectively), at which we are far more flexible, responsive and adaptive to the unfolding challenges of global collapse. Our human-made systems need to match the relative level of order and chaos as the ecological systems which support and enable them. If there is a mismatch, one of the systems will be damaged by the other. Currently our overly-ordered systems are decimating the planets natural ecosystems which dwell at the edge of chaos. So the task lies for humanity to build societal, governmental and industrial systems at the edge of chaos. Such systems would be indistinguishable from the living ecology, and as a result would regenerate and sustain all Life on Earth. Free Nature, as Murray Bookchin calls it. The interdependent network of all beings — and systems — on this Earth. We’re embedded in that and we can align our whole being with this movement, returning ourselves, returning Gaia to the Edge of Chaos. A transition into creative global evolution. In this time of crisis, we need nothing less.
- Global Awakening. Imagine how long it would take, and how much disharmony there would be, if you were to attempt to tune an instrument with seven billion strings? Or how about one hundred trillion? Do you have any inkling of the patience, love and devotion that it would take to do this? Do you realise that this is exactly the patience and love that we are held in, guided by, and a product of? It is a love and patience that we can — and in some sense already do — embody. It is a love that is continuously and ceaselessly moving us towards a place of global harmony and creative flourishing, such that this entire world of souls will be able to sing, live and dance as one? And as many. This preposterously audacious undertaking is precisely the global awakening we are currently experiencing, and we can only thank the divine forces of creative imagination that have ushered us into incarnation at this critical time of delivery.
