Chaos Theory

As some of you know, I'm pretty active on Twitter. The 140 character nature of tweets is great when I only have a few minutes at a time during the working day, night, weekend .... well, my whole life.

On Twitter I follow over 500 people, picked semi-randomly. Most have some connection to survivalism/prepping, or pagan/wicca/witch issues, or guns, or environmental issues. Some I follow because they are members or staff of Stompernet, some I follow because they are locals. Some I follow because they are long time friends. Some I've followed almost at random. I'm not at all sure how I started to follow @ChicaJones, for instance, but I'm sure glad that I do.

I like the people I follow, even while I know that some amount of what we ALL post on Twitter, like all we do online, and in life) is a persona we affect.

It's like a far more intimate form of people-watching, for they add their own comments about t heir lives and what's happening in their world. For some their world is very intimate, for some it extends to all people/animals/the ends of the earth.

Sometimes I regret folling a person. Not because their tweets angered me or shocked me - anger is an instructive friend of mine, and I don't particulary shock easily. Not over politics - I comfortably follow folks on the far left, the far right, and all inbetween.

I unfollow because of how they handle chaos.

Chaos happens to all of us. Sudden thunderstorms wash out picnics. People forget that they were supposed to call us at a certain time. Children get sick or act ... like children. Sometimes we run our lives in ways that increases the chaos. We intend to pay bills, but don't manage to (even when we have money) and the phone is turned off. Some folks have repeated failed relationships with the same type of person, over and over. For whatever reasons, chaos happens.

I've noticed that I cannot emotionallyhandle watching people who feel that chaos is inflicted on them PERSONALLY by the world/others. The person who says she wants to be a writer, and planned to edit 11 short stories last month, but in fact only wrote 3 and edited none. Who is sure that it's the fault of all those around her for not supporting her, helping her, not being reliable. Who spends her free time tweeting at pop stars, playing Sims, napping, or vegging out when her toddler naps, is down for the night, or at her father's.

Or the man who takes someone messing up his name personally, or thinks that someone forgetting to cal him is practically 'enemy action' (enemy inaction????)

Not surprisingly, I find that I value Tweople who handle chaos well, who do NOT take it personally, who work hard, play hard, and surf the waves of life lightly.

Chaos Theory is a branch of mathematics which studies the behavior of certain dynamical systems that may be highly sensitive to initial conditions.

I think it's also a description of human function. Or, to quote the Magical Aphorism:"As above, so below - as the universe so the soul. AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT." (Emphasis mine, duh).


Frondly, Fern