Chaos theory is a fun thing to say, a scientific idea that carries the weight of mystery in the word Chaos. It implicitly sounds dangerous, but what is it really? What are all the interactions that cannot be mapped out ahead of time because they're so numerous? Your chaos theory is my meaningless Contingency.
When science steps in and with its all knowing glance takes a look at Contingency and removes meaning by making all things objective and equal it computes chaos theory. A theory that seems to be limitless and unable to be calculated merely because of the not-knowing of all the factors that could and will and do apply to a single event. Still there is no anxiety in science, science is not worried about the not-knowing, it is less of an issue than one would think when postulating a great all knowing theory. When the all knowing sweeps aside the not-knowing in order to know, we do not have a scientific problem (for science has never cared for what it did not know, only for what it does not-yet know), but we have a problem for Being.
Contingency is chaos theory with the full not-knowing included. The not-knowing is what gives meaning to Contingency. I do not know what will happen to me tomorrow...on the way home tonight...this afternoon...or in the next ten seconds. Like science Being also tries to do away with the not-knowing, and therefore render the power of Contingency impotent. The grand idea is Illusion. Illusion is what allows us to not-know, and not-care. Illusion strips meaning of Contingency, and Illusion's power is so great that it only fails at the greatest, seemingly most powerful, moments of Contingency.
When I am in a car accident on the way home from a boring day at work, a boring day in which I only wished to go home and relax and all day I saw myself sitting on my couch at home and watching 'Dancing with the Stars', suddenly Illusion is rendered powerless as it shatters the World around us and Being is confronted with its Contingent existence. When Illusion falls away, its most powerful falling-away is when it is quick, like a mirror breaking in front of us. It is still powerful, yet less noticeable, when it melts away like a fading photograph, for we are given time to build up new Illusions while the old one is melting away, and by the time the old one is gone we have completed construction on its replacement that it simply fades away into. When we are not prepared with an Illusion-at-hand for the destruction of out current Illusion, then Contingency and its meanings are laid bare, ugly, anxious and deathly....but also full of meaning giving Being.
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