Explorations in Chaos

Essays exploring the Chaos Map and ideas mapped within it.

Everyone believes in personality types

Personality maps

The perils and progress in how we personality-type each other.

Why most meetings are a waste of time

Fieldnotes

In this field note, we’ll apply a few ideas from the Chaos Map to sketch a clearer picture for where meetings fit and don’t fit in creative, collaborative work.

The problem with the news

Fieldnotes

The "news" is a powerful, narrative pattern that brings seemingly chaotic events into our narrative order. But how much should we pay attention to it?

The My Work Myth

Fieldnotes

Great creative work is fundamentally collaborative and evolving not individual or static.

Mark the level of conversation you want to have

Fieldnotes

Conversations are more enjoyable, productive, and less confusing when we can picture what level talking from: galaxy, forest, or the trees.

The rocky downhill slope of creative work

The Chaos & Order of Creative Work

An exploration of the less dramatic - but every bit as essential - second half of creative work: the part that feels the most like "work."

Creative work is like fighting a dragon up a hill

The Chaos & Order of Creative Work

Creative work as the bridge between chaos and order. This essay we’ll explore the uphill part of “figuring it out.”

The past is never done

The Chaos & Order of Creative Work

An ancient and more humane way of looking at what’s already “done.”

The future operates in a different kind of time

The Chaos & Order of Creative Work

An exploration of the futility of attempting to put the future on a schedule along with an ancient anecdote to our modern view of time.

How we miss the forest for the trees & the trees for the forest

How to see when language fails

Charged words like “violence” and “racism” reveal a gap in our language. In this essay, we’ll explore ways to bridge a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between perspectives that few see and almost everyone stumbles into.

The language gap between the heart and the head

How to see when language fails

In this essay, we’ll explore a hazardous gap in our language that’s only grown wider with the increasing power of the disembodied written word.

How to turn conflict into progress

How to see when language fails

In this essay, we climb a three rung ladder of conflict: from our ugly I.) Default Combat to the rare II.) Win-Win Sparring and finally to rarest, III.) Innovative Synthesis.

How to tend to our invisible operating system

The language of the conceptual world

The hidden concepts in our mind – knowledge, systems, and ideologies – empower everything we live out in real world relationships. In this essay, we'll explore how to vertically evolve our hidden OS.

The language of the conceptual world

The language of the conceptual world

A dive below the surface to explore the mysterious, hidden conceptual world.

A path from relational order to chaos

The order and chaos of relationships

A guide to various types of relational order leading to the edge of chaos.

Relational chaos, death, & progress

The order and chaos of relationships

A futile attempt to describe the expressive, unstructured world of relational chaos.

Relational order is the foundation of any group

The order and chaos of relationships

An exploration of the social norms and power structures that order our relationships.

Concepts transform our identity by reshaping our relationship with ourself

The war & harmony between the relational & conceptual worlds

While much of our self-concept forms from mimetic connections with others, the most transformative connections come from connecting profound concepts to our relationship to ourselves.

Mimetic patterns form our Identity & relationships

The war & harmony between the relational & conceptual worlds

Our identity and worldview are shaped more by others than ourselves.

The strange & wonderful relational world

The war & harmony between the relational & conceptual worlds

How the strange and wonderful relational world generates human progress, art, and moves in harmony or war with its conceptual roots.

When the chaff burns away

When order moves to chaos

What survives and thrives when the old order collapses?

The tyranny of order in decline

When order moves to chaos

How order fails even in good times, why we need sacrificial leaders, and what makes order tyrannical.

Who to listen to when order moves to chaos

When order moves to chaos

When order suddenly moves to chaos, our social fabric and systems formed over generations strain and break. Worse, we lack reliable patterns to employ as we attempt to repair the wrecked order we know and love.

Three ways I use the Chaos Map

I use the Chaos Map as a mental surface to think about all kinds of things on. In this short essay, I'll share three ways I've found it most useful that I hope are helpful to you as well.

An animated introduction to the Chaos Map

A 7-minute flyover of The Chaos Map that briefly covers each component. It's just enough for most people to start asking questions, but probably not enough to answer them.

Introduction to the Chaos Map: chaos & order

By visually mapping the optimal ways people relate to one another within any human system, we can make them more stable, creative, and harmonious.

© Copyright, 2021 • Paul N. Johnson