Chaos Is a Flower

This is chaos.

The shape of this flower is chaotic, asymmetric, seems to follow no rules. But I, and maybe you, think it's beautiful, in contrast to what we fear in chaotic situations: Energy unbound and unpredictable.  

There's a particular thing to notice about nature:  Entropy, the tendency of things to become randomly disordered. Add a single droplet of red food color to a glass of water. You can easily distinguish the swirling shape of the red color as it gently and slowly twists and twirls in the water, but then it disperses and becomes less and less distinguishable in the water. Finally, the liquid is uniformly pink.  

Random movements of the molecules of red liquid disperse it throughout the water molecules into which they were dropped. Molecules are, in effect, jiggling all the time, and as they jiggle they bump into other molecules, ricocheting off of them and toward others in their proximity. They jostle and bump until they all establish a random state of order. Which is chaos, utterly disordered.

Pink liquid doesn't look very disorderly and chaotic, but it is technically that. The molecules are jostling and have not formed a recognizable shape or visible order. They go everywhere inside the glass and would go further if the glass were not holding them in check.

The flower's petals are curved this way and that, some catching the light and some shading their neighbors. Every petal is a different shape and size, but we recognize the shape as a flower just as the liquid is a glass of pink water and coloring. So?

Chaos feels frightening on a human scale. Disorder and randomness represent threat and insecurity, sometimes death. But also, possibility and potential. What about that? It's a law of nature; it happens all the time, everywhere.

Think of the red droplet beginning its dispersal in the water. There's no real stopping it once it starts. It goes to its natural conclusion, which is perfect randomness, ultimately pink and fully chaotic.

But can we see war that way?