Picture: Public Domain
R: Will you test me as my Fool, so that all may understand?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Jester, if none else will criticize?
C: I will.
from “The Insubordinate Ritual”, Liber Kaos by Peter J Carroll.
Chaos and disorder are to be embraced by Governments, Bureaucracies and Businesses who seek to become ‘Antifragile’. This, according to a new book, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Antifragile: Things that Gain From Disorder. Disinfo towers awaits its complimentary copy. In the meantime a particularly interesting review has surfaced in The Daily Beast where, The Goddess Discordia, is celebrated in all but name:
Taleb maintains that living things and complex systems are all antifragile to some degree. Our bodies, for the most part, thrive as a result of regular interaction with stressors in the environment just as “firms become weak during long periods of steady prosperity devoid of setbacks” and “[s]mall forest fires periodically cleanse the system of the most flammable material, so these do not have the opportunity to accumulate.” The process of biological evolution, technological progress, and economic growth all rely on some sort of messy, undirected trial-and-error process that is fueled by regular exposure to uncertainty.
Philip K. Dick’s innovative science fiction is best-known for its portrayal of characters trapped in Gnostic false realities which they may unravel by way of divine or god-like helpers, mystical experiences, and active paranoia. As his career progressed, his novels became increasingly bizarre—and increasingly autobiographical. By the time he died in 1982, he had come to regard his collected work not as the production of his own fertile imagination, but as a kind of Scripture; the novelization of essential truths revealed to him in a series of visionary experiences with a higher intelligence.
