Order and Chaos: Neutral Opposites

Let's talk about one of the most misunderstood symbolic dichotomies* in literature: Order-Chaos.

Order-Chaos is not like Good-Evil or Light-Dark (both of which deserve their own posts and may get them one day). Many people believe that Order is good, and Chaos is bad. A few might say the opposite. In reality, Order and Chaos are opposite, but neutral.

Both Order and Chaos are necessary. Without Order, we could never understand the world (as incomplete as our understanding is). Without Chaos, the world could never change (as unpleasant as change may be). Innovation requires Chaos. Stability requires Order. We need both Order and Chaos in our lives. We need to find a happy medium, or, to draw from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, the Golden Mean.

I learned in my early teens that there are two kinds of tyranny: the Tyranny of Order and the Tyranny of Chaos. (How did I learn this? Mostly by reading.) Take the political spectrum as an example of this: if you go too far either Right or Left, you will find Tyranny--Mao's China on the Left and Hitler's Germany on the Right. To use less-extreme examples, Order correlates with Right because Right typically wishes to preserve the past, and Chaos correlates with Left because Left typically wishes to make changes. Neither impulse is good or evil unless taken to an extreme. Some of the past is worth preserving. Some of the present is worth changing.

That is why Order-Chaos is frequently misunderstood: We forget that Order and Chaos exist on a spectrum and are not discrete objects. We forget, in our Chaotic zeal or Orderly steadfastness, that change and preservation are both natural and necessary. A worldview problem has bled through into literature. Thus, writers must be all the more cautious to remember that some dichotomies, such as Order-Chaos, are not as black and white as we think.

*And what is a symbolic dichotomy, you might ask? Well, it's a pair of opposed forces that are frequently used in literature, generally as symbolic or thematic elements. The five major symbolic dichotomies I'm choosing to cover in this series are Good-Evil, Light-Dark, Order-Chaos, Justice-Mercy, and Creation-Destruction. And yes, I may have invented this term five minutes ago... but when the word or phrase you need doesn't exist, you make it.