on man's historical involvement with randomness
Or
the evolution of perception
a lecture presented by r.l. mcintosh
to r.l. mcintosh in dreamstate on april 8/9 1996 boston, ma

you see, life on earth would not have been possible had it not been for the random/chaotic principle...the laws of chaos (the term always cracks me up...it's like "chaos is predictable"...a paradox...funny!) well anyway, the laws of thermal dynamics governed that some random carbon atom in the primordial ooze that was planet earth some gazillion (check fact) years ago, slam into some other integral atom... this in turn created a massive chain of chemical events that produced our atmosphere, our water, our DNA...all by chance...crazy!...sure, if you think about it, all these same gases were present upon the billions and billions of other gaseous masses floating around the cosmos... so the probability does exist that evolution as we know it would have to occur on at least a few of these freshly spewed space chunks; yet, if the gases that were present on our newly formed planet had been stable...if entropy had not began it's inevitable process...if chaos did not exist... i would not be standing here now delivering this speech...funny!

so chaos has been with us since the beginning of our earthly existence...it has been man's calling, as a sentient being, with the all important opposable thumb (hehehe) and being intelligent enough to "reason" instead of operating off of the sheer instinct to ferret for food and mate (oh...we've come so far...) nevertheless...as man began to encounter chaos in his everyday life, he sought to understand it...now i'm not talking chaos theory as we've come to know it at this point in the late 20th century...i'm talking, the unexplained...things that were just beyond mr. human's* grasp at any given co-ordinate on the space/time continuum.. just like chaos theory is to us now "it's all relative") believe someone once said.

now, in order to better understand how chaos has effected and affected human development it is imperative that we not do the 'ol judging of history by our current standards of perceiving/comprehending late 20th century reality....what i mean is this: if you're trying to predict the weather (classic example of trying to get a handle on chaos theory) whether you go about it by throwing bird bones on an altar or by looking at satellite imagery, the point is: each procedure is just as real within it's own context. because we are speaking from a point in history in which we believe in technologically based divining tools does not make our assessment any more valid than any of the other "primitive" methods...let's face it, both techniques require a specialist...a soothsayer or a meteorologist...the average person can't just look at this stuff and know what's going on...and there's such a margin of error that what it really comes down to is this specialist's subjective and personal assessment of the data presented...so, it could be tea leaves, bones, runes, lines on graph paper, lists of numbers, or digitally enhanced images...these are all just divining tools devised in response to how we humans choose, al any given point, to collectively pull from the chaos in which we are enveloped to create a gestalt of reality which is understandable and comfortable for the majority...we therefore believe that our specialist can and will predict the nearly unpredictable. because we believe it as a group it becomes truth.

with that said, let's continue with the discussion of man's interaction with the random or the chaotic (at this point i will be using one word for or in place of the other and since this is not a treatise on the nomenclature of either word it should not be upsetting within the context of this general discourse...big picture, people!). as we all know, man has a limited number of organs through which he can connect his mind/brain to outside stimulus. it is by the continual gathering and monitoring of outside stimulus that the mind/brain creates the individual's reality... colors, sounds, tastes, etc....all create electro-chemical charges/changes within the brain...these big-chemical occurrences in the brain work to affect the psychological interpretations of the mind and vice versa. repeated stimuli eventually becomes identified and "understood"...for it is human nature to categorize and impose structure upon the random...the gestalt theory is proof of that...the mind/brain has an innate need to "order" things so that it may understand the individual's place within the existing environment, so that the individual can function. if the mind/brain is confused, very often the individual is left at an impasse...no longer functioning...this may be on a mechanical or psychological level. in order to avoid this, man seeks to create an understandable reality...which if you think about it, is actually one which he has tailor made to suit his experiences...however, since man is a communal creature, much of this reality will be shared and in alignment with the rest of his community.

now, since man has this innate need to understand, various scenarios have and will be devised, accepted as truth, and played out as reality...that is until someone comes along questioning the premise of the prominently accepted truth...exploring areas of the unknown, i.e. the edges of chaos...testing and creating a new paradigm for reality...a new scenario is devised.

take for instance, once again, early man and the weather. what the hell made that work? (remember we're still asking that question today) it was unknown...chaotic...seemingly random...then someone came up with the brilliant deduction that it must be a god controlling the skies. something so powerful it could control something man had no capacity to control. (that's what all this comes down to really...an overpowering need to feel in control...chaos is lack of control.) so the paradox exists that to examine man's involvement with chaos (which as i alluded to earlier is defined by the context of the historical period...for chaos is everything that exists outside of our human construct of reality...and as our constructs change, new and different edges of chaos are explored, absorbed and "understood") we have to examine man's quest for order. The introduction of the idea of a god...a being outside of the human realm...not only gives the unexplained an explanation, it instantly creates a hierarchy...god more powerful than man, man more powerful than animals, animals more powerful than plants...ugh!...you get my point...regardless of whether this more powerful being was considered a "god" as we in our time period understand the term or more like the term we understand as "nature" we will never know...but, you know what? it doesn't matter...the introduction of hierarchy is incredibly important for it acted as a kind of philosophical strange attractor. the idea set into motion an entire chain of events surrounding humankind's perceptions of reality and their place in it.

for instance it is not hard to make the jump from hierarchy to sequence.. just on a practical level, if there is a being more powerful than you, you want to keep it happy...there are probably ways that you have found through trial and error that seem to keep the god or gods satiated...a ritual...a sequence of events that the powerful one finds agreeable. through ritual, the learning of sequence, man stayed functional and involved, as well as feeling somewhat in control of his environment.

LOOK FOR THE CONTINUATION OF MS. MC INTOSH'S LECTURE IN THE UPCOMING SABOTAGE! EPISODE OF ENTROPY PRESS