Built to Beat Chaos

CHAPTER 3All Chaos Is Not Alike

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

Genesis 1

My four grandsons, ages seven and under, spent the weekend at our house, and it was fun but chaotic. They argued for 20 minutes about which movie to watch, and then, five minutes into the movie, they were ready to do something else. After an hour, they had started 10 different games and finished none of them nor put them away—all normal but still chaotic.

We use the term chaos to reflect circumstances that are unpredictable and outside our control. There is even a field of mathematics that attempts to describe the unpredictable. Remember that the creation narrative in the Bible starts with chaos—“void and without form.”

In this chapter, we will break down chaos into three classifications to make it easier to describe their differing aspects. We will also broaden the discussion to the benefits and the progressive nature of chaos.

Natural Chaos

From childhood, we discover things that happen in the world beyond our control. Insurance companies use the language “acts of God” to classify such events—weather, earthquakes, hurricanes. I refer to this category as natural chaos.

In 541 AD, the Justinian Plague killed 100 million people, estimated to be half the world's population—the deadliest plague in history. Transmitted by rodents, the plague spread rapidly. And it created economic, social, and political chaos for hundreds of years.

However, even though ...