We all have the hope that we live ordered lives. Life might, at least at the surface level, have that appearance. Humans generally have a strong desire for safety and with it certainty. In the absence of disturbing news it is possible to perceive of life as a 'calm sea' the waves gentle breaking on the shore. We can ignore the possibility of the storms which exist beyond the horizon.
We often talk of people as living in their own 'bubble', seemingly oblivious to risk, to cause and effect. The force of those storms still exists even though we can't see them. There may even be indications on the horizon. The signs might be there. Do we pay attention or ignore them?
There will be information present; a pattern which is discernible. If we stay alert we can prepare, or we could find ourselves surprised and unprepared. Sometimes we read the signs but read them wrongly. There was nothing there after all. We feel a little foolish. (But perhaps it was better to be safe rather than sorry?)
The potential for us as humans to experience the possibility of chaos is ever-present in our lives even if we live a life oblivious to it.
Human beings are a species that have the mental abilities to 'be' in the past, the present and the future. 'Being' in any of these states is far from perfect, however these abilities have enabled us to build on our collective memories to create the world we live in now. At the level of the individual we have a facility with memory but we know that memories fade. With regard to the future, our ability to plan is dependent on our ability to predict the future. We can see the potential for future events to happen and can, to a certain extent, plan for them. That is, until the unexpected happens. Even trying to live in the present has issues. We can spend too much time hanging on to past experiences to be able to be 'in the now'. Also we could instead be fixated on fear of the future and not be properly alert to what is currently happening around us. Taking a much wider context, at the level of community, it is quite obvious that these present, past & future skills have given us immense powers. Whether we have used them wisely or not is another matter....read on
