So what exactly do we mean by chaos anyway?

I just had to put this in

 

The key part of that statement is "has little use for laws and regulations"...

That about sums up a chaotic archetype for a game, regardless of Good, Neutral or Evil alignment.

They aim to misbehave

 

I believe that there is a direct connection of Chaos to the plight of the Player Towns that wish to become autonomously considered separate from the rest of the Kingdom, or becoming a part of it only through Federalism...
~Time Lord~

 

I found it funny that someone wants to define chaos. This idea can only come from the side of order, because you can't define something which don't have border. So we can only define order. But you can't say everything outside is chaos. Chaos just is to quote Amber.

 

"As the High Priestess of Chaos Amber Raine Rules Supreme" !
~Time Lord~

 

To go deeper on my view of chaos and order.

Order is part of chaos. Chaos and order follow the same rules like the law of cause and effect. The only difference is, that for order exist only some valid rules which are right, for chaos every rule is right. That is why there exist no good or evil in chaos. In chaos one cause can have several effects, the same cause don't lead to the same effect. This is diffenrent for order. One cause will always have the same effect and if not it is false.

So a follower of chaos accept that his opinion of the univers is not absolute. He/She has to be openminded. We don't plan on expected results, we live in the moment and don't fear the future which is chaos. The order lives in the past to create rule to predict the future.

 

*clap* *Clap* *nod* *nod* YES! my sister in Chaos.. Exactly!

 

Will admit it made me laugh

But well... The Paragon of Chaos rules Supreme, and as much as I would stand to question his thoughts when he sees to 1 dimensionally directly before him and not in the other directions all around him. I am not above him, nor shall I ever seek to be. I give my life inservice to him and have no issue driving my spoon through the skull of anyone who should stand against him. Mind you, it is not often needed to go to that extent, but i have no hesitation if i need to

And before anyone responds "thats not chaos" - to hades it is not. Order takes orders and does as they are told to those they follow without question, like automations. I follow and i question equally.

 

Why weather is unpredictable - in those neat little orderly models of weather prediction lie the seeds of Chaos.

 

Yet....

It's a temptation that can't be avoided....

Plus, if chaos truly has no definition, the title means nothing. A word is used because it means something. If the word means nothing it's not a real word and makes just as much sense as the following... grak abls proom.

Most people use the word chaos because it means something.

You have to admit it's a real conundrum.

 

Chaos can be described but you can't define it. That is a big difference.

 

Defining something does not impose order onto it. It imposes context. Language exists to facilitate communication between individuals, but it is a flawed vessel. When I speak of an idea, the meaning of the word idea is very personal to me; I have no way to know that, in all the history of the world, anyone has ever taken the meaning of the word in exactly the same way I do, just as I have no way of knowing when I call a color red that, even though you also call it red, the color looks exactly the same to both of us, or that the color you see, though you call it red, I might call blue. That's because you've learned to call a color red by seeing the same shade of the same color over and over and over again and calling it red, not because what you call red actually is red in any sense that can be separated from your own way of seeing color. When I offer an explanation of what Chaos is, I am demonstrating that the concept is communicable--not that it is orderly. Fortunately, I can do this successfully with most people because language is external to the subject being described, just as you can successfully talk about the color red because the color you call red is external to your description of it as red.

While some degree of constancy is necessary between your mind and mine for what I say to be understood, as I've said a number of times already, chaos and order, in these senses, are social constructs: they rely wholly and completely on interactions between people. The soul that favors chaos is not inherently heartless, evil, daft, or plain. To believe so, you must mix unrelated definitions for order and chaos. This is another problem of language: context. When we talk about order here, one of three things is meant depending on the topic of conversation and the intent of the writer:

1. Structure or organization as a property of a system
2. Respect for the structure or organization of a system (as defined in #1) as a property of a person
3. Capitalized, Order, being as yet a loosely affiliated group of people as defined in #2 who share the common goal of imposing order (as defined in #1, except of a specific type--i.e. a reasonably well defined system of governance) on the society or societies to which they are exposed

Realizing this, it's not hard to see how confusing talking about this can be because we're using the same word (with either chaos or order) to talk about three subtly but distinctly different ideas. If the first definition for chaos is:

1. Lack of structure or organization as a property of a system

Then it becomes quite easy to see how a person who belongs to the group called Order and who respects the idea of order (2 is part of 3 and respects 1) can understand what chaos is (1) without actually respecting it (2) or simultaneously belonging to the group called Chaos (3).

Sorry to be pedantic, but these different contexts seem to be a hangup for the conversation of late. I just want to be clear, and sometimes that requires being overly comprehensive, even if it's just in case.

 

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

-- from the Tao Te Ching

I have some sneaking suspicions about those ancient Taoists

 

Not a big difference when they are considered synonyms. We're into tennis now.

 

I hear if you're truly chaotic, you can do anything you want, including defining things, because chaos has no rules.

 

Whoa, now. Let's not get too crazy here.

 

No this is precisely what is needed. There are two questions afoot: what is meant when someone calls themselves a chaos devotee? and can you even describe/define it in the first place. Your distinctions need to be made and they can help in furthering what I am to understand when someone says they are a chaos devotee. So far, all it sounds like is chaos is whatever the individual defines it to be, which means the tag itself is worthless and I just have to ask the person. Hence:

You are forgetting an important point though. Language is not subjective, it is intersubjective. Two people have to agree for a word to be able to be used in communication. Maybe you learned red by yourself, but I learned red because mom and the teacher pointed at things of the same color and said "red." Whether they see exactly what I see is not important. We have agreed and are able to communicate so that when my mom says, "do you see those red flowers in the vase?" I know exactly the ones she is pointing to. Language is not simply for personal definition but for the primary purpose of getting thoughts and ideas from one brain to another.

If it devolves into people saying chaos is what I define it to be, and I can't figure out exactly what that means, then it will communicate nothing to me. If people want to do that in the game that fine. If it's all purely your own definition than I will even call myself the "Completely and Unashamedly Darkest Lord of the Deepest Chaos." But if chaos is something people want me to consider, or understand, or follow, or choose, or even move away from, avoid or fight against, it better have a definition that survives the leap from one brain to another. Otherwise to chaos, the only proper response would be, "so what?" And then other words will be chosen to convey actual meaning.

 

Two people only agree on the meaning of a word at a very high level, though. If you pay close enough attention, you'll find that it's very rare for two people who don't know each other very well to have a conversation about anything at all without an implicit level of misunderstanding between them. That's because language is as much informed by individual experience as it is by shared experience, and there's a complication there. You might understand generally what I mean when I tell you something, but you cannot know exactly what I mean because you aren't me. That's neither here nor there, though, because what's at issue here is interpreting the terms "chaos" and "order" in their proper contexts.

Ok, I guess it is a bit more here than there. Anyone can define either order or chaos, but definitions will vary unless they are sufficiently abstract. This is because of what I said earlier: our understandings of the meanings of words are informed by our own unique perspectives on those ideas. Most anyone can give you a very high level definition for chaos, as I did just a bit ago, but of course the more specific you get about the waysin which a person respects or does not respect the principles of order (or order [or Order]), the more discrepancies will arise in comparison to another. That's because the second context I suggested above--being one who respects the principles of order or chaos, respectively--can be further expanded into a full-on belief system. There isn't really a conflict here because even if two people share an identical understanding of order in the first context, they might have very different ways of practicing that understanding, even such that they might both affiliate with the same group called Order.

However, most people won't have the exactly the same understanding of order and chaos even in their first contexts. That depends on how specific you get, too. I think most people would agree that order describes the organizational structure of a system, but as to exactly what kind of organizational structure is the best (as such), no two people are likely to agree, which, if they are both quite elaborate in defining "order," might cause them to provide very different definitions. The same is true of chaos. This is actually quite a good example of how language is imperfect and not always adequate to the task at hand.

 

I think Chaos means you have to eat your cereal with that crazy spoon with a hole in it!

 

If chaos has no rules than this is a rule. Busted.