A gaze on order

And zeroing in on the small to grow bigger.

I’m one week in – raising two new kittens – and this is my current view from my desk as I write:

Two bonded brothers. Affectionate. Sweet. Playful. Goddamn non-stop wrestlers. Derek (grey) and Stephen (ginger). Day by day they’re getting more confident and bigger – absorbing our nervous energy as a household of Type-A’s and transforming turbulent energy into a hidden order. A theory famously unpacked in James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science.

I have a friend who is opposed against our household owning pets. You don’t need more stress in your life.

And I, one hundred percent agree. There’s a perfectionist, anxious streak in the adults in charge, my husband and I, and we have conflicting points of view on what is right. Put it this way, we could never work together.

i. the family narrative

Gleick explains in his book that when scientists have visually mapped the data points of chaotic systems over time, they end up making patterns called “attractors".

The lines spread out during unstable manifolds – much like my husband and I when we’re in competition. Competing for airtime, prioritisation or for counsel. I’m a do your bit kinda gal to earn respect and P needs to be provoked with challenge. It is what was on offer growing up, as we learned in therapy. Two separate family narratives. Separate motives for action. Reasons to squabble.

Image credit: https://fractalfoundation.org/OFC/OFC-7-1.html

Attractors will converge when there’s stability. And it surprises our kids, family and friends when we laugh because no one else gets it.

ii. on sense-making

It seems as though daily, there’s several new Substacks published trying to unpack our unprecedented times (a term I love to hate). A feedback loop of search and answer for grounding anchors… but I’m going to offer up an alternative… A Jorge Luis Borges short story.

In Borges’ “Library of Babel” – there’s infinite hexagonal rooms, dimensions, and endless books with only a set number of characters. But this structure is purely incidental. Noise. And unimportant.

Surface-level readers want to suspend belief there is stability and meaning out there in our universe. Within the story, they’re characterised as “librarians” – people who trust the dimensions and perceived rules. Ideologies.

The “librarians” have different ways of working and sense-making systems – belief in something more – for the library and content to exist.

I think, what drives the “librarians”, drives all of us.

Spread so far apart, we’re right in the thick of unstable manifolds within this attractor. Our unprecedented times.

Yet we’re burning to see a better half win. We’re currently going mad to surface what is pure, true and grounded. And with more search, there’s more circular content created, consumed and lacking meaning. Diluted and synthetic versions of functionally useless information. Torment. Not enlightenment.

Rooms and books keep going in the story, beyond a librarian’s lifespan.

Sounds like AI, right?

“Library of Babel” was first published in 1941.

iii. the real provocation is a lack of reason

There’s a bigger question at play.

Have we always been this illogical?

As a new cat owner, I can’t help but observe their behaviour with keen interest. The way cats need to control their environment. Stalk the perimeter so they have freedom within a framework.

In a household of Bloomsbury aesthetic, (yep ok, it’s careful and deliberate), the cats are an escalation.

On the surface, a huge question mark of faith.

Trust in who I am.

Trust in my decisions, or P’s.

We’re a clean before the cleaner comes couple.

It’s dramatic to have not just one, but two kittens have free reign on the furniture. I had a couple of people wish me luck.

Is this, on the surface randomness, or a hidden order within the chaos?

…

Simultaneous to the cats, my kids started milestone years at high school and primary school.

On the surface, they are taut, polite performers. And at home, when we can all unmask, we’re a family of vigorous yelling as forms of talking to one another. Boisterous. Loud. Matched energy with the madness of Derek and Stephen. Regulating one another.

Stability within the strange attractor.

Js