The Art of Chaos

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” ~Alan Alda

It seems strange that logic should function to supplant intuition, as if intuition were not to be trusted, as if it were the effect of some illness in the mind or body. Intuition is the work of experience, contemplation, examination, discovery and change. It is the consciousness learning from what it perceives, awareness wandering the landscape of the mind. Intuition is unquantifiable because it cannot be measured through any kind of conventional means. It cannot be tested or controlled, because it has no specific location, it has no coordinate in known space or dimension. Yet, the depths of intuition are multi-dimensional. We use intuition, not as a lens through which we perceive the world, but as an instrument by which we engage in and with the world (the world as our environment), whether that world be natural or synthetic, for intuition works in either. Intuition need not be regulated in order to motivate, it need not be enforced in order to move, it need not be frightened in order to utilize caution. Thus, the intuitive being does not fit very well in a routinized society.

“Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.” ~Alexis Carrel

The common connotations of chaos define it as confusion, but I disagree with this assessment. To me, chaos is more like a thought process that is fluid, ever-changing, always evolving, growing, becoming; and does this through a reciprocal and co-operative relationship with its environment. It is like a dynamic organism. The flower needs rain, sunshine and dirt in order to thrive, to live to its fullest potential. Seeds need sunshine in order to release the enzyme that brings them to life. Man needs water, sunshine, living foods, and the absence of distress in order to remain alive and healthy. In other words, life depends upon its environment in order to sustain that life. Also, in the areas not seen by the naked eye, subtle changes within that enviroment can cause catastrophic repercussions within the dynamic organism. If the soil does not contain the necessary levels of nutrients, the flower does not thrive, despite the rain and sunshine. If Man is bombarded with high amounts of constant distress, he cannot thrive and begins to suffer nervous and neuronal breakdowns. So, life is sensitive to changes within its environment, however subtle or major those changes may be. Factors within an environment are numerous and incalculable, for any and all possibilities are infinite, therefore, any occurrence can happen, depending upon the events which preceded it. This continuous exchange is what I mean by chaos.

“Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.” ~Johann Kaspar

Reprise Intuition. Intuition is that part of a conscious being which processes those constant changes within an environment, which can be aware of those incalculable factors. What’s more can interpret, assess, and comprehend those factors, a kind of calculation (albeit, one that does not involve counting). Intuition can do this faster than the mind can think, and even more rapid than logic can compute. Why then would I depend upon logic? Why would use it, instead of intuition? Why even accept it as reliable? Logic is limited, therefore, finite. More, it is flawed, because it can only compute either/or, it cannot perceive a dynamo of information (i.e., factors and variables) simultaneously, all extending from separate directions. Logic, that is to say linear systems, regulates an environment, and in that regulation transforms that environment into a static environment, the reduction of infinity to the finite. Intuition, on the other hand, embraces chaos without fear of punishment or failure. So, the intuitive being chooses life and health, imagination, its wild nature, exploration, and experience. For this, the intuitive being is uncontrollable, incorrigible, impossible to regulate, and non-linear. If art is its chaos, then life be its canvas.

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” ~Albert Einstein