God created the universe in six days. On the seventh, he took Rest. By looking over his creation, a question rose in his mind: “By what laws shall this universe live and breathe?” God closed his palms together, creating two sides of the whole and uttered silently “Let there be…”

Balance

As melodramatic as I am in the beginning of this article, the idea that I have expressed is truer than most people realize. In order for you, my dear reader, to improve in anything, it’s important that you understand not just tips and tricks or fast ways to get rich, but universal laws that have an effect on literally everything in the universe. Let alone your life.

Chaos and Order

One of those laws is the “Balance Between Chaos and Order” and if you understand what it is, you will be able to control your progress to a much higher degree. But first, lets explain a few things.

Chaos can be expressed simply as “constant Change”. Whereas Structure or Order is the “Solid”, “Static”, “Constancy”. Contrary to popular believe, both are needed to an extent and this extent depends on the current situation or surrounding factors.

Let me give you an example:

Political spectrum. Right and the Left. Conservative to Liberalism. Two sides of the same coin. As in, Chaos and Order.

Conservatives want everything to stay solid, religion, economics, borders. Liberalists on the other hand want the opposite. They perceive all those things as barriers, as chains. Thus, they want to remove them, to escape.

Liberalism is Chaos. Conservatism is the Order.

As it goes with any spectrum of people, both sides fight against each other. But what is the reality? What can be considered good or productive? One or the other?

The answer is… Both. There is a delicate Balance between those two that needs to be established in order for the society to be “Stable” so to speak.

If you create borders in a country and close them, what will happen? Nothing new comes in and out and the progress becomes stale and slow.

If you erase the borders and let Chaos in, what will happen? Everything inside will cease to be, influenced by the outside forces.

Same goes for your Mind, dear reader. Same goes for your entire Body and processes like Learning.

If you close your mind to new information because of some false beliefs or dogma, you become stale. You will encounter difficult situations and you won’t be able to adapt to them.

If you open your mind to everything that goes in, your opinion will change on a whim and nothing of substance will emerge. Thus, you will destroy yourself in the vertigo. Especially considering the modern age technology that will kill your Focus if you let it.

How to Balance Body, Mind and Spirit

So how do we do this? Is it 50/50? Is it 10/90? How do we Balance these two?

Now, that one is actually a tough cookie to crack. In Maps of Meaning, Peterson argues that individuals must navigate the “knife-edge” between Chaos and Order, avoiding the extremes of rigid control or overwhelming disarray. While Peterson doesn’t quantify this balance, you can estimate an optimal split based on his ideas and insights from complexity science’s concept Edge of Chaos. A reasonable heuristic is 60% order and 40% chaos in peace time.

“Wait Nick! You said in peace time. What do you mean?”

Yes, little Jimmy, because the situation can change. And it will. Fear, Death, Misery. All are a part of our lives and those shake our foundation to its core. And in these cases, you must choose between closing the borders of your mind or open them.

When you meet your own mortality through, let’s say, a car accident, you learn the fact that you will eventually die and fade from this world, what do you do?

Exactly. You seek answers as to who you are, what you are and what the purpose of your existence is. You open your mind wide open and the ratio of Order and Chaos changes. You go out and search for a Structure (Order) to explain it. Some get lost and adopt a dogma, some seek salvation in religion. The facts are the same. The foundation has been shocked. Answers must be found. Balance must be reclaimed between the Known and Unknown.

Mindful Takeaways

This, my dear reader, is a valuable lesson not only what those two powers are, but what happens if you do not act upon them. As one saying goes in one of my favorite strategy games, “Adapt, Evolve.”. Nothing is truer than that.

In the next articles I will deepen this universal law further, because it’s such a huge part of everything we are and are doing. Without it, there is no improving in any sense of the word.

So, look for them in the main tab. Or you can subscribe to my newsletter. I promise not to spam or any of that sort of thing. Only article updates, some further topic related goodies and some hot chocolate… Just because!

See ya.

PEACE!