Relentless Classification

Let me start by postulating the following:

If the natural order of the universe is chaos*,

then the tendency of humans to put things into categories, to order that chaos, is Sisyphean, a lost cause*.

*it isn’t

Writing, good, clear writing, requires the author to collect up her thoughts on a subject and arrange them in such a way that another can come along and see not just the endpoints, each jangling individual detail, but the connections between them. The cohesive network that is the greater Thought. The same can be said of any kind of making: music, for example, is not simply the revelation of each note but for how long and in what order. The music then is not really the notes at all, but the relationship between them. Painting, even abstract painting, is a closed set of colors and textures and some hint about form, altogether alluding to an idea or feeling, which no one element would convey.

Science, like a sermon, is constructed from observations made by an individual, an observer of the natural realm, the social realm, the world as a whole and our experience of it, and no matter how glamorous a package these collected observations come in, how revered that initial observer is at the time they made their observations known, the work of both the pastor and the scientist only holds up under the scrutiny of time if the observation was solid.

The world around us is so very far from chaos it is astounding. The fact that we don’t wake up every morning with no more idea of what the day might hold, moment by moment, than a child who wakes up with truly no scheme of the patterns and rhythms of this world ought to indicate how much supposed chaos around us barely qualifies as uncertainty. So much stays the same in fact, that most adults have stopped looking around themselves, even when the situation they are in demands it. When anything briefly draws their eyes, be it crisis or hiccup, they look around suddenly and remember possibilities for a brief moment. But they are so unaccustomed to it they assume it is bad and resist it, and settle so quickly back into their routine, like zombies on a tightrope. People actively, hungrily want to dismiss insight. I am routinely floored at how many systems human adults have constructed to protect themselves from ever being jostled, from having to look up.

When I worked at the library in Fairlawn there were a series of colorful mobiles throughout the building, hanging from the very high, bright white, exposed industrial ceiling, including one above the entrance, where patrons would wait in line. Only the children ever saw them; it was almost as if the mobiles were cloaked in invisibility to adults. I had a few nonverbal conversations with various children about it, they would look up and be delighted, and look from person to person to see who else noticed the swaying, swirling colors above. Siblings or other kids in line would take the cue and look up, and also be in awe, sometimes spinning around and giggling, like you would under a tree. Once a girl started tugging on her mom’s hand when she spotted the movement above her head and said “Mom, look!” and pointed straight up. The mom looked straight ahead at the desk at the staff, to her right at the door, and to the left into the building, and finally back at the girl. “I don’t see anything.”

Classification, good, clear classification is a matter of deep observation. The classifier makes a grave error when they attempt to impose structure from outside. Perhaps the grand sum of all human error can be attributed to miscalculations, to misclassifications, to a general lack of observation, or to a bad one. Any border drawn by a third party is a testament to the dangers of ignorant classification, the defining of a territory one does not understand.

What could remedy this? Perhaps a lack of borders, of classification altogether. But further observation reveals that there are systems at work outside us, natural forms, lines and patterns and organically appearing groupings that can tell the curious so much about true order, about how the world works independent of themselves but also, always, including their own self.

The natural order of things might not be how you would order things, might not give you the upper hand in controlling things, might not even make you feel particularly in control of your own destiny or mercifully absolve you of responsibility. But a beautiful, working order can be observed by those individuals so inclined to look, can be named and even emulated by the meticulously curious.