Impure Chaos

On order in the unforgiving universe.

I was watching a show yesterday in which a character casually remarked, in response to another character’s assertion that there was a larger plan to our lives, that the universe is “pure chaos.”¹ Both characters in question were, ostensibly, crazy. But the statement got me thinking—is this statement true? Is the universe really nothing but randomness, pure unforgiving chaos?

Of course, no one really knows the answer to this question. We may intuit an answer, deep within ourselves, but these answers are subjective, and may speak more to what we wish were true than what actually appears to be so. However, despite the unknowable nature of this question, versions of it pop up everywhere, so it appears to be a pressing issue that deeply affects our consciousness. It is often brought up explicitly, like it did in the show. It is sometimes asked in different ways: “Why are we here?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” “Is there a God?” All of these questions are addressing the same issue: are we living in a state of order, or chaos?

If we look at the world around us, it certainly seems disorderly, and a lot of popular conceptions about the nature of reality support this assertion. Take the “multiverse” theory. Consider, for a moment, that there are multiple universes which exist simultaneously, all stacked on top of one another, and that there are an infinite number of these universes, meaning that every possible eventuality is expressed somewhere. Conceptualized this way, the universe really is chaos. Infinite possibilities all exist at once, everything that could possibly happen is happening somewhere. If considered in its totality, this picture is a mess. And where do we fall within this mess? If there are so many different places and versions of ourselves, why has our consciousness wound up here? Is it just blind chance? Fate?