CONCEPT: Chaos

Chaos: Philosophers, poets and painters have, at least since the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (6th century BCE), held a categorical view of  the universe -- or indeed all creation -- as a unity, or Cosmos. They attached to Cosmos such attributes as good order, calmness and peace -- indeed, symphony -- despite the complexity of its many and diverse parts. Their imagined opposite for this clock-work verity or metaphor was Chaos -- meaning, disorder, disharmony, disconnect and even jarring noise (or cacophony). 

In the 19th century, Alexander von Humbolt re-imagined Kosmos (Cosmos) for the modern world as a vast, complex but interconnected and harmonious unity. And in the 20th century, George Santayana suggested that Cosmos had no empirical opposite. There was only Order, often too hidden (or too obvious) to casually see. He saw Chaos as a figment of the imagination, arguing that it was "a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds". That is, the order or complexity imprinted in discrete phenomena or processes observable "out there" in the natural and social worlds may appear chaotic, but only so appear, to the observer who does not have the wherewithal (tools, time, training, frame-of-mind or the like) to grasp their essential or 'below-the-surface' nature. 

Dutto (2000), on the other hand, has argued that chaos is "...the complex and unpredictable motion or dynamics of systems that are sensitive to their initial conditions". These initial conditions may include a system's initial size/magnitude, position, weight, direction or velocity. But he adds that "Chaotic systems are mathematically deterministic -- that is, they follow precise laws, but their irregular behavior can appear to be random to the casual observer." In a word, they are 'ordered', and their orderliness is out there for the well-prepared to discover. 

His examples of chaotic behavior commonly observable within systems include: measles outbreaks, heart rhythms, electrical brain activity, fluids, animal populations and chemical reactions. Even the highs and lows of the stock market may appear chaotic to the more casual observer (see William Dutto, 2000, "Chaos Theory", Encarta). 

The organismic view of society, such as is dominant in structural-functionalism, strongly suggests that social life -- indeed human society -- is founded on a certain 'order of things'. In other words, society cannot properly function and thrive without a preponderance of it. Public policy implicitly or explicitly labels it "Law and Order", a breakdown of which must be prevented from degenerating into civil disorder or anarchy -- or, yes, Chaos.

Conflict (or Social Change) theorists of various persuasions, on the other hand, generally argue that an uncompromising emphasis on Order weakens society by stifling needed short-term and long-term change. Further, they argue that labeling agitators for change or reform as agents of anarchy or Chaos is, deep down, a reflection of the rulers' self-interest and determination to preserve the status quo -- which is beneficial to them. From this perspective, then/too, Chaos is in the eye of the beholder; and Conflict (or Change, or Reform) is, potentially at least, transformative.   

READ "Chaos" Plato, Stanford University.



UPDATED: March 2nd and 8th, 2018

The Risk of Online Share Trading

Online share trading poses many risks to the investors, particularly on platforms with non-existent or rudimentary security systems. One suspects thatthere are plenty around in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.

Occasionally "testing the system" in order to ensure security is not sufficient to give 'bankable' assurance, and so does not give comfort to the savvy investor. From the start, Online Share Trading services are typically fully covered, through carefully worded disclaimers in small-print, against litigation by their client-investors who may be hit by fraudsters. No one will fully compensate the investor who loses assets through online fraud undetected in time by otherwise aggressive service providers.

One way to eliminate this risk is to stay out of online trading completely. Another, for the more tech savvy operating in vulnerable/hackable environments, would be for service providers to offer the opportunity to buy, but not to sell, shares online. Who would want to buy shares for me, secretly? There is no palpable danger there. But a byzantine underworld of hackers may easily plot and remotely execute fraudulent "sell" orders using stolen email and share-account passwords, accompanied by illegal and lightning (and irrecoverable) transfers of funds out of investors' accounts.

It seems to me that the safest sell orders will always require long paper-trails.