Chaos and Order

One thing that has done the most damage to us as individuals is the current system of education. The funny part of this is that a lot of us do not understand how bad it is. Now, I want you to know that I am not one of those people that believe education or schooling is a bad idea. I believe strongly in education and schooling. However, I am against the current system in operation.

The one area the school system messed up is failing to teach us the importance of chaos in the world today. By chaos, I do not mean bombing, war, and all of those very terrible things. Rather, I mean friction, obstacle, problems, etc.

The school taught us order and orderliness. They lied to us that if we do everything we are told to do, we will be successful. So, they made us cogs as in a machine, doing everything we were told. We where told what to read, what to write, what to say, what to think and what to do. You were not allowed to innovate. More so, they stole every opportunity you had to solve problems on your terms.

Think about writing for instance. Writing was limited to what they wanted you to write about. e.g. Write a letter to your Uncle, telling him that you have changed school. Please, which Uncle? Which school? Then they gave us word limits, number of paragraphs, how to structure these paragraphs, etc. No room for innovation, exploration of interests.

If you follow through with these instructions, you sure would get a good mark but if you try to innovate, you are going to pay for it. This is a basic example of how order and orderliness was enforced.

However, in the real world, order is not necessarily the pathway to success. Look at your life for instance. List out the most memorable events and see how much chaos you had to face to be victorious. Look at how much work one has to put in to get a blog post up. How much work it takes to get a business running. How much work it takes to build a software. How much work it takes to make things happen.

The difference between Chaos and Order is fear. The fear of the unknown. Order shows predictability and control. Once these two are set, we have nothing to be afraid of. Once we can predict an outcome and control the process, all is good.

For instance, your teacher says 1 + 1 = 2. During exam, if you write what your teacher said, it is certain you will pass. Simple, right?

But chaos is different. You have no control neither can you predict the outcome. You are not in charge. You can spend months writing a book only for it not to sell. You can spend days preparing for a speech only for people not to receive it well. You can spend years working on a business model only for it not to scale.

You can run from chaos all you want but if you want anything so badly, you better be ready to be friends with chaos. Chaos forces you to take risks. To find solutions to problems. To be creative and innovative. But order teaches you to wait. To hide. To do as you are told and to play it safe. A lot of us left school and we were clueless about life because the kind of life painted in school is totally different from the real.

In the real world, chaos is your friend; order is your enemy

ps: this is not a post on productivity