Wrangling Chaos

By always assuming the unexpected may occur, we’re better able to redirect our efforts quickly to achieve our objectives or take advantage of an even better opportunity.

What I watched: “The mind-blowing chaos that underpins the world” by Brian Klaas for Big Think.

A friend recently recounted to me some hardships he was going through. It didn’t appear he had done anything wrong or planned badly. His luck just happened to be bad right now. When he relayed some of what had transpired, all I could think of was that none of it could have been predicted. It was to me essentially a clear demonstration of chaos in action. A few unexpected events happened and suddenly his life was sidetracked in large part because he wasn’t expecting the unexpected and prepared to adjust.

My friend’s story was a micro version of a larger phenomenon that takes place in our lives all the time, the invisible pivots that can change the course of history on any scale.

Political scientist and author of Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (paid link), Brian Klaas, alludes to these unseen and not obvious pivot points.

When we look back at our lives, when we look back at social change, we think about these big obvious pivot points. What you don't think about are the invisible pivots. We're told to ignore the noise and focus on the signal. It's a huge mistake. The noise is where many of the most important and consequential events in life take place.

Our lives are full of contingencies, or flukes to use Klass’s terminology, Such flukes can be small changes that end up having a profound impact. The impact might be a drastic change in world history, but it can just as easily be a drastic change in the course of our lives.

Often, we think of planning and living our lives by focusing on convergences, ordered things that work more or less as we expect them to. Much of self-help and motivational content is focused on these types of convergences because we have some control over how they happen even if occasionally there’s a temporary derailment.

Flukes can appear to be elements of luck or chance. When we reflect on something that’s happened on a bigger or smaller scale, we often eliminate these flukes from the story.

The flukes of life reshape our world, and yet we often write them out of the models or the imaginations we have when we tell the stories of why things happen.

Klass believes the best way for us to think about change in both our lives and societies is “contingent convergence” – living and existing somewhere between order and chaos.

We're somewhere between order and chaos where we have these moments that may seem consequential, may seem completely invisible to us, that do change our path. But then once we're on that path, there are forces of order that do constrain the way that change unfolds. And I think these ideas of contingency and convergence allow us to structure our thoughts to understand the different extremes of how our lives can radically change or not change that much with every individual decision that we make.

This is profound. This is important for everyone to understand because while we can indeed plan for and manifest our destiny to some extent, there are also things that will happen that can change that path in major ways.

Roman philosopher Seneca is reported to have said “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” and this is contingent convergence in a nutshell as it might play out in our lives. We can prepare as best we can (convergence) so that we’re ready to take advantage of luck or chance (contingence).

When I was in college and unexpectedly a dance major after entering college as an accounting major destined for a later law degree, it is the contingency (fluke) that an esteemed visiting dance teacher pulled me aside one day and told me I had a future as a professional dancer if I got out of college immediately and just went for it. The convergence part of that was I ended up leaving college and studying dance quite seriously afterward and aggressively pursuing a dance career that lasted for a few glorious and happy years.

When I stopped pursuing an entertainment career in my 20s and took a temporary job at a bank, it was a fluke (contingency) that a new computer showed up in the office they had bought simply because they had budget that needed to be spent. It was convergence (opportunity meeting luck) when I asked who was going to operate it. When they said they had no one identified, I studied the computer’s manuals night and day for a week and was later given the job after demonstrating I could run it, thus starting a long software technology career.

Why is this stuff important?

You’ll often be told about the convergence part of what you should do, how you should plan your future, and so on. What you’re not told nearly enough is that there will be lots of flukes along the way and if you don’t take advantage of them, you could be missing out on big positive changes in your life.

You can wrangle the chaos (flukes/contingencies) in your life if you’re well prepared and disciplined (convergencies).

This is also why I decided to “Stop Dangling Carrots” so much and hold on to goals and objectives lightly so I can better take advantage of the flukes that inevitably come along.

Goals also limit us. They constrain the playing field, and we end up navigating toward our goals only within the confines of that mental space.

Plan well and work hard. That’s the convergence part. But also, constantly keep your awareness tuned into the flukes (contingencies) that pop up all around you and be ready to take advantage of them.

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