Chaos Theory and History

All species have fundamental patterns of thought that direct the activities of the race. This is most evident in animals, where a certain birds will fly thousands of miles, knowing instinctively where to nest; or the movement of salmon, who know the place of their birth and go back to hatch new eggs for the coming generation; or whales, who find their way to breeding grounds hundreds of miles through the sea. It is suspected that the magnetic field of the earth is in some way responsible for the actions of birds, but no one really knows how this happens, and there is no valid scientific explanation for it, so far as I know.

The human race also has fundamental, underlying patterns of thought that direct the actions of our species. I have been intrigued to notice that these patterns resemble the attractors of Chaos Theory. An attractor has an attracting basin (or basins) that, like gravity, traps a set of states or outcomes (or ideas) toward a certain pattern of evolution.

Simple attractor with two attracting basins in a state of equilibrium. Start anywhere on this diagram and you will just go around in circles forever.

I see the thoughts and belief systems of mankind rooted to a certain attractor, in which human events repeat over and over again, never exactly the same way twice, but always rotating around certain fundamental, powerful memes that attract the thoughts of human beings into it like a black hole. This system of thought and belief long ago found an equilibrium state in the human psyche and has been around for thousands of years.

complex (strange) attractor. First there may be scarcity of a resource, which leads to greed and fighting, and then war, and then a peace process, which then cycles around to the lack of something else, and then the cycle repeats... our thought patterns are never able to escape from the old memes, which are held in place vibrationally by the force of the attractor.

Ironically, the attractor is created in the first place because we choose these memes and belief systems, generation after generation. We say that “human nature” is inherently greedy and selfish even though we constantly make free will choices to continue the self-destructive pattern of thought! So, even though the circumstances are slightly different, human history repeats in a self-similar fashion. In chaos theory and in fractals, self-similarity is prevalent. An object is said to be self-similar if it looks roughly the same no matter how much you magnify into it or away from it. Here you can see self-similarity in the fractal fern:

The famous Mandelbrot Set is a very complex system with repeating, self-similar patterns:

Image by Danielkwalsh - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119582611

Human thought is self-similar at any scale, small or large: the individual, a small or large group, a nation, a culture, or the entire species. Like a hologram, an individual’s thought patterns reflect those of humanity’s as a whole (we struggle individually, in organizations, in nations, and collectively with similar problems).

What would happen if a change in our fundamental beliefs occurred? Well, a new attractor would be created that could, for example, entrain thought around cooperation and prosperity instead of fighting and contention. A new version of “human nature” would be established, with a new set of behaviors that would result in a permanent change in our reality for the better.

This is not such a wild idea, because life, nature, and human systems are very sensitive to initial conditions. This concept is illustrated in the famous Butterfly Effect, in which a butterfly's wings in Brazil create a cascading pattern that eventually causes a tornado in Texas. When Edward Lorenz studied weather patterns back in the 1960s on his computer, he used numbers with accuracy to 6 decimal places. But then he decided to cheat a little. and used numbers with three decimal places. So instead of a number like 12.345809, he used 12.346. But when he plugged his numbers back into his computer, he discovered that the weather system he was studying went off in a wildly different direction!

Sensitive dependence on initial conditions

For some reason, Nature loves the idea of experimenting with new approaches. Nature uses a “trial and error” system in evolution. Some evolutionary attempts work out, like the advancement/mutation from primates to homo sapiens. Other natural experiments, like the dinosaurs, weren’t so successful. But, like Lorenz’s weather modeling, we know that new starts always reward us with different results that we can learn from. So it is possible to move out of the old attractor with its negative ideas, and into a new one that will attract more positive outcomes. In order to do that we have to change our patterns of thought, and if we do, a different result in guaranteed! How difficult is it to change the way we think?

Individuals want better lives, but our belief systems tell us that it’s too hard to change human nature, and that the more things change the more they remain the same, so why bother. That has been true in the past because humanity has not recognized the power of its own thought and intent. The property of “sensitivity to initial conditions” is behind us, if we will only change our thinking a little bit.

It is my belief that the earth’s massive population increase over the past century is accelerating our progression toward a “tipping point” in consciousness. Our societies are in a chaotic period right now, in which the thoughts and beliefs of our species are demanding positive change. The opportunity to choose the old ways still exists, and some of us are doing that. These are the folks who want to maintain the old ways and the old energies, and who are desperately trying to hold onto power with corrupted institutions that use coercion, violence, and intimidation to physically enforce the old ways of thinking.

These people are a small minority, but presently occupy positions of power. That power is dissolving in the new energies generated by the shift in human consciousness around the planet.

We’re seeing the collapse of the Old Order on our screens every day. The current international financial crisis is leading to a potential breakdown in the distribution systems that carry food and manufactured goods from one place to the other. The breakdown in our institutions and social structures are exposing the dark underbelly of human society. It’s really ugly, but a consciousness shift breaks down the old and begins again with a fresh start. That process doesn’t happen all at once, unfortunately, so there’s a period of unrest and chaos while the system settles into a new, higher pattern.

While the old paradigm rants and raves, the rest of us can get busy creating a new attractor based around peace, prosperity, and cooperation.

Each and every one of us has the power to redirect our own lives, but also contribute to the overall progress toward the new attractor. All individual choices contribute to the whole, and choices based upon the higher aspects of human potential are more powerful than those based on the old memes.

Every choice you make is important!

Every decision you make that goes toward the light breaks the old attractor apart and creates a better one based around ideas that will allow the human race to reach our full potential.

Click Here for more information