I began a new bok today. It is called "Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Timeless Wisdom From the Science of Change" bu John Briggs & David Peat (1999). This is another of those books sitting on my shlves that I bought a few months ago that needs to be read.

Their earlier book on chaos, called The Turbulent Mirror, was spectacular. This promises to be lighter fare, with less mathematics and more Zen. The emphasis is on chaos theory as a metaphor.

Here are a few of my favorite things:

• "The scientific term "chaos" refers to the underlying interconnectedness that exists in apparently random events. Chaos science focuses on hidden patterns, nuance, the "sensitivity" of things, and the "rules" for how the unpredictable leads to the new." (p. 2)
• "... each of us as an individual is inter-connected to the systems of nature, society, and thought that surround and flow through us." (p. 4)
• "... we begin to envision the world as a flux of patterns enlivened with sudden turns, strange mirrors, subtle and suprising relationships, and the continual fascination of the unknown." (p. 5)
• "The idea of chaos opens up radical new ways of thinking and experiencing reality. ... Chaos as a metaphor has a built in humility. ... Chaoes ... is as much about what we can't know as it is about certainty and fact. It's about letting go, accepting limits, and celebrating magic and mystery." (p. 7)
• "... beyond and between our attempts to control and define reality lies the rich, perhaps even infinite, realms of subtlety and ambiguity where real life is lived." (p. 9)
• "Our habits of thought, opinions, and experiences, even the 'facts' of the world, are similar to negative feedback loops that go 'round and 'round to keep us essentially in the same familar place." (p. 20)
• "the tree we ordinarily see has no individuality ... it is only a representative of an abstraction" (Erich Fromm) (p. 23)
• "The 'self,' ... is essentially a social construction - a collection of categories, names, descriptions, masks, events,, and experiences - a complex ever-changing series of abstractions." (p. 29) [This is very similar to a statement by Proust!]
• "... a community as a 'web of small, seemingly unimportant things - perhaps little courtesies, or favors, looking out for others, a smile or a wave to people on the street, and all the other things people used to do. A nurturing, healthy community is a circle, even a basket, held together by mutual trust, respect, and interdependence." (p. 41)
• "Subtle influence is what each of us exerts, for good or ill, by the way we are." (p. 41)
• "positive butterfly power goes hand in hand with a need for basic humility, because we realize that the key to change doesn't so much lie in a single individual's action as in the way many different feedback loops interact." (p. 44)
• "From the perspective of chaos theory, it is less important to notice how systems are in competition with each other than it is to notice how systems are nested within each other and inextricably linked." (p. 62)