Is Chaos Necessary?

摘要

We think of chaos in terms of unpre-dictability, randomness of behavior, un-certainty of outcome: loss of control. It is, however, in terms of human social organization, merely a transitional phase of life. What makes the present era so significant, however, is that we are viewing this transitional phase on a global scale, and it is because of its seeming universality that we wonder at outcomes and time-scales. When will we see a sense of stability and predictability in global structures and affairs, and in our own societies? In other words, when will this cratometamorphosis - this reorganization and transformation of society - reach a stable state? In historical, social terms, what we call chaos is always leveling and horizontal; it tears down, or appears following the destruction of, vertical hierarchies. Did "globalization" and global forms of lateral communi- cation destroy the structured world we knew in the 19th and 20th centuries? Or was global interaction and communication enabled because of the lateralization of access? The same question could have been asked after the globalization generated by the conquests of Genghis Khan and the Mongols in the 12th and 13th centuries.