Steam is rising from the cup of coffee sitting on the table
My sleepless eyes are staring at the computer screen
Hands are on the keyboard, not moving
This state of inaction is eating me alive
What am I going to write?
How am I going to explain what collectivity 3.0 is?
When I don’t know even what it is...
This or that? Now or later? Aiming for laughter or tears? Truth or fiction?
A sip of coffee might help.
Holding the cup
It warms my cold hands
Meanwhile, I’m making the coffee colder
We exchange our heat - the third law of thermodynamics
Entropy is rising
The universe is dying
And many ideas in my mind nudging me into different directions.
I cannot write like that.
I need a decision. I need a rope to follow. I need an order. I need-
A break.
So I get up and do what I always do when I cannot write
I make my bed, organize my clothes, sort the books in alphabetic order
Anything, really, that keeps me away from this unbearable sense of chaos
How long has it been? 15 minutes? Half an hour?
I sit back at the table.
A sip of coffee.
It’s lukewarm now.
As I was working to put things into order, entropy was at work, too
Diffusing coffee’s heat into the room.
No matter how much I try, I am surrounded by chaos- Well, that’s frustrating.
The story of the tower of Babel
Wikipedia
Genesis 11:1-9
“Following the Great Flood, after Noah died, the whole earth was one language and one speech. Everybody was getting along fine. In their homogenous tribal organizations. And they arrive at a land called; Shinar (שִׁנְעָר). There, they agree to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.”
This story affirms my biggest fear- Except a rat biting my ass when I sit on a toilet bowl; the possibility of God being a jealous, control freak with anger issues.
Why would God not want harmony among humans?
Why does everything always have to go into pieces?
Why can’t we just be one group with set values and...
No no
I don’t mean uniformity.
But diversity in a
Controlled chaos
In a confound-
I don’t know what I mean
I cannot write like that.
So I get up.
And I clean the kitchen, match my socks, brush my hair, pluck my eyebrows,
I put all the waste, everything I don’t want, I don’t need, I want away from my apartment out to a garbage bin. I leave it aside, and listen to a podcast.
Someone is talking about Dunbar’s number. Psychologist Robert Dunbar found a correlation between the size of the neocortex (which is responsible for language) and the size of the average social group. The larger the neocortex is, the larger the group size becomes. By applying his findings to humans, he arrived at a cognitive limit for the amount of complex, mutually affectionate social relationships a person’s brain can handle. One hundred and fifty.
One hundred and fifty is the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.
After that number is exceeded, human groups tend to fractionate.
Is that why the tower of Babel stopped working?
Is this Biblical story actually point out what happens once a group gets too big, too ambitious, so the balance between chaos and order doesn’t go well anymore?
Was it like:
Once the human race was one homogenous group, then it got bigger and bigger so it had to fractionate, and divided into many smaller groups and that became the foundations to tribes, then those tribes turned to villages then to cities, empires then national states, and then corporate companies, and now we don’t even know who our neighbors are, but we’re still trying to find connections somewhere and somehow so that we have Facebook groups about anything really, because we are all searching for our tribes
Because we seek unity, we search for order, yet still crave for our individuality to be reckoned.
A fine balance between chaos and order- is that what we need?
Is it because once you stop mending things, anything; like your relationship, your apartment, your eyebrows things get messier.
Oh humanity, why do you have to be such a pain in the ass?
Why can’t things just be simple?
Why can’t we just be one group with set values and...
No no
I don’t mean uniformity.
But diversity in a
Controlled chaos
In a confound-
I don’t know what I mean.
The smell from the garbage bin reached my room.
It’s time to open the door and get out.
Whatever I do, entropy will always win.
I take the bin and go out, and when I’m back I face the truth:
The house is clean.
All the shirts are folded. All my socks are matched. I have silky hair with no knots and spectacular eyebrows.
There is nothing left but to welcome the chaos and to write.
So I sit at the table.
Take a sip of coffee. It’s cold now.
I just put one word, then the other.
With each sentence, I give an order to the chaos. Organize their environments with commas, and points. And then I do it again and again and again, and again, and I take a break.
I brew a new cup of coffee.
Yes, entropy is rising. Yes, the universe is dying.
But maybe it’s fine, and maybe there is something about that that can teach us about collectivity. Because if history showed us one thing it’s that don’t try to take God’s seat - that dude is unpredictable,
and trying to find order within one big group and try to make everything homogeneous is just not a good idea. So as trying to write a perfect article in one sitting.
You just have to split it. First, you write one sentence, then the other, and as you type words, remember: Your coffee is growing cold. And the universe is dying. But that's no excuse leave your eyebrows go wild. Pluck them bitch. In this chaotic universe, you are holding the reins into order. And a tweezer.