Chaos is mayhem and destruction? No.

Posts relevant

"The stage is set"
"The end of free-market fundamentalism"
"My first lecture in Berkeley!"
"The End Of Free-Market Fundamentalism"
"Not recommended: frantically seeking escape from a chaotic situation, we find ourselves in."
"Throwing overboard relentlessly whatever is remotely connected with what is not agreed now."
"Imperfect kinds of consciousness"

If once more, I hear or read on chaos and chaotic conditions or situations in that manner I will explode.

Referring to chaos as synonym to mayhem and destruction and ignoring the fact that, this is a result, of our limited perspectives, every human individual's limited perspective. We should not attribute as chaos, what our obvious inability to asses any situations in their widest breadth and furthest depth ever, brings forth.

An inability which even comes out from the comment of Philippe, in the post 'My first lecture in Berkeley!'of 'Au bout de l'ouest / Running out of west' website,

"If you look at the quote by Poincaré (arguably the person who introduced the concept of chaos without naming it that way) I put in the text, it's clear that he takes an epistemological point of view compared to Laplace's "omniscient being" point of view (which is not that much useful for the actual practice of science with finite means of inquiry)."

Human individuals obviously suffering from an "omniscient being" syndrome, which drives them to assume the product of their senses and the information gathered, limited as is, as an absolute and unequivocal view of the world and ignore that as individuals, we have 'finite means of inquiry', which is even reflected in the way we practice science.

That, what we take as chaos, it is merely apparent, as our brains can not take in, everything there is out there. What is described and taken as chaos is a result of our very limited views for almost everything that unfolds around us.

Whereas, as it is pointed out in the same comment

"Another way you can see it is that if you believe the world is deterministic, "randomness" doesn't exist per se. True randomness would mean, for example, that the state of some object in the future is totally uncorrelated with its present state. Chaotic systems give the appearance of randomness, because there is a time in the future where our uncertainty in our knowledge of the present (no matter how small it is, as long as it's larger than 0) will prevent us from seeing any correlations."

the randomness which is a common theme, in the view of chaos as mayhem and destruction, 'doesn't exist per se', as states of objects, any object, are correlated with their states in the past, and the future states are correlated with their present states. That chaotic systems give the appearance of randomness, exacerbated by the enormity of objects around us, building up a complexity that our minds cannot fathom, a complexity out of countless processes and objects, which we can only 'see', understand, make it meaningful to us, a very limited portion. What is referred to, as 'our uncertainty in our knowledge of the present' which 'prevent us from seeing any correlations'.

Assuming such a stance towards chaos, accentuates helplessness, reduce ourselves, our capacity to provide solutions to any problems, to whatever size or implications in every aspect of our lives, our societies, the world at large.

Or even drive people, in groups or individually, to seek just another saviour of humanity whereas the only saviour that exists, is the very own human individual, himself or herself. An endeavour which dilutes and weakens the strength of any messages passed to wider circles, or any goals sought for, despite how worthwhile they might be.