The Order-Disorder Paradox
“’Created disorder’ is the shadow side of rational-scientific developments and its addiction to anxious ordering. To survive the disorder accompanying scientific-rational awareness, something new and unique in the history of humanity was wrought: the ego. But this ego has become extremely insensitive to the effects, much less the necessity and usefulness, of its created disorder. The rational ego has a tendency and capacity to split its ordering acts and products from the disorder required by the second law of thermodynamics. Then the order-disorder paradox ceases to be noticed, let alone to have an unsettling sense of paradox. Created disorder is split off and projected into other people; into unconscious, and into the environment.
What is the effect? Created disorder can turn against a newly established attitude and structure. This disorder tends to reactively diminish the gain, if not totally destroy the results, of all creative acts in time. These acts can run the spectrum from generating order in near-mindless, repetitive ways, to discoveries that are totally new to the individual and the existing collective consciousness. Along this spectrum, with any order, whether it be the rare occurrence of an emergence of consciousness that sees the world in a fundamentally different way, or the ordinary arranging of information in a ready-made form, disorder is always created. The newer and more energy-upgrading the behavior, the greater will be the disorder. That is why the latest structures in development are the least stable. The same applies to the psyche: the latest structures are the least stable and need to be continually fed by the energy sources that spawned them, until more stability forms. Created disorder can result in an internal ferment dissolving resistances and character armoring, releasing not only hidden, creative aspects of the psyche, but also dissociated states often related to trauma. The dissolving effect of the disorder explains why even the slightest creative effort can feel dangerous to a person suffering from traumatic states...
"Created disorder is also a subtle part of interpretation in psychotherapy. Whereas an interpretation adds a new form of order to the patient's psyche, the created disorder has the power to dissolve defenses that are inhibiting his or her capacity to associate freely. As a rule, created disorder is the essential ingredient that allows fresh forms of awareness to actualize. This potential value of disorder is completely at odds with collective ideas that want to produce more order while repressing disorder. Our own created disorder, if we become sensitive to it, can cause us to pause and consider our attitude and behavior. As we have seen from a mythical point of view, doubt or insecurity accompanying creation--common forms of the concomitant disorder--can urge us to go deeper than we had in our previous insights. Disorder can lead us to see what we may have left out, and, if we can tolerate the injury to our narcissism, to care about what we don’t know. This purpose within disorder, one that could slow down, stall, or even stop our compulsions for fixing in order to reflect on what we don't yet know, is anathema to today's rational consciousness. Created disorder is the great limiter. Yet the power drive that easily invades rational-scientific methods tries to overwhelm this fundamental truth. However, sensitivity to the internal ferment of disorder, learning to sense its existence, and allowing ourselves to be limited by it, can prove an invaluable guide, and perhaps a saving grace from a driven effort that will have unknown but terrible consequences. This sensitivity must be earned, for it flies in the face of collective values and rational problem solving. Created disorder may, to a large extent, be internally ordered by the psyche's endogenous structures, the archetypes.
Archetypes can be viewed as endogenous structures that seek a balance between order and disorder; created disorder can necessarily throw them out of equilibrium or their complacent spots at the table. How they regain this balance is not well understood, but, along with an innate capacity, there may be input from essentially chaotic processes in which order spontaneously re-emerges…"
Excerpt from The Order-Disorder Paradox by Nathan Schwartz-Salant
Books mentioned:
The Order-Disorder Paradox by Nathan Schwartz-Salant
