Chaos University / by Alexander Lyadov

Stanley Hall, 1954

I have a folder called “Survival” where I save videos of encounters with Chaos:

First and foremost, this is the world's best university — and it's free.

I enrolled while learning to ride a motorcycle. A couple of close calls convinced me there had to be a better way to gain experience. It turned out YouTube was full of first-person crash videos.

Watching it was unpleasant, of course. But afterward, on the road, my body would send a signal in advance: "Hey, this looks like that video. Get out of the way." Thanks to other people's experience, my situational awareness quietly grew.

Getting acquainted with Chaos was too valuable to limit to motorcycles — it has countless faces. The unknown lies in wait everywhere, especially where we least expect it.

Useful as it is, the further I go, the more Chaos fascinates me. It becomes clear just how colossal the forces are that hunger for contact with us — in nature, in animals, in society, in other people, and most of all in ourselves.

You can naively ignore them, then react with resentment and outrage. Or you can study them patiently and even choose to enter into a conscious relationship with them.

Chaos evokes what the German theologian and religious scholar Rudolf Otto described as:

“A mystery that is at once terrifying and fascinating.”

(Mysterium tremendum et fascinans)

Dial the risk down to an acceptable level, and this mystery becomes worth exploring.

Sincerely yours,

-AlexanderSincerely yours,

-Alexander

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