I saw the movie i (heart) huckabees tonight, and it proferred an intriquing exisistentialist look into several of the main dualisms in this world, and ended with a note that the key is in the balance. Similarly, the Oblongs is back on Adult Swim tonight, reminding me of its short-lived satirical look at some of these same dualisms. I have to love philosphizing on a Sunday, and I missed Church, so I'll portray a smattering of my random consciousness here in the open to perhaps intrigue, educate, or infiltrate someone else's conscious thinkings.
I guess it wouldn't surprise too many that know me how long I've been involved in philosophy. I've talked about it some about how odd a kid I was, and how I've realized that the one temptation in my life is a serenity to solipsism. It's funny, but Huckabee's portrayal of nihilism as a crazy, yet seductive, mistress resembles my own metaphors about solipsism. So, as cool as Huckabee's was, it was merely a rejourney of one of those old wartorn paths I've traveled.
But, it reminded me of the importance of balance. LoadedMouth has today, yet again, commented on the lack of balance in news. It irritates me that the balance is so obviously shifted to the Conservative, how Liberals obviously have such little control in any media, and yet everyone from shitheads to friends' uncles can't see it. The James Guckert/Gannon story alone is a big huge example of how bad the situation is, and how little people are actually listening to or paying attention to Liberals.
Maybe I feel so angry about it, because I am the eternal observer. I don't truly connect to either side, but I do have a favorite.
There is a reason the Chaos Corporation influences and touches almost all of my story worlds. Meta-War was the first time that I included not only employees of Chaos Corp. (two onstage, even!), but its sister "corporation", Order.
Chaos is largely the embodiment of the Liberal spirit. Its employees only care about it for those 9-5 shifts, and then they go home and play with their kids (particularly on such holidays as Fish Day). Chaos fights for diversity, and the future, challenging the norm and enabling change, not just for change's sake, but often so that through darwinian selection the better can be culled. Chaos knows there was no golden age, no perfect era in the past, and the only place such a thing can occur in is potential, in possibility, in some sort of future, or alternate future. I know that somewhere in the dense structure I had built up as a part of my Azeroth worldscape during my tenure at DRAGONzine, that several of the key elements involved this, even if I can't recall now how they might have played out.
On the other hand, the Conservative element, Order, is, like the ideal principles of Conservatism, about stagnation and returning to some ideal. Order, I have to admit, is very akin to Terry Pratchett's Auditors from Thief of Time, but isn't cunning or intelligent. Order is a tornado that attempts to move things back to the earliest state of purity and unchange (that theoretical point, before the big bang when there was everything, but it did nothing). In my Meta-War portrayal, I took the assumption the universe only branches "forward" and made it that the Order "Sprite" (I think one of only a panoply of such demons, although I've yet to devise any further) manipulated the probabilities of the universe akin to an "advanced aging process", quickening that return to dormancy postulated in "The Great Cool" (in which the universe eventually expands until there is no heat 'left', one of two competing theories of the universe's end, the other being "The Big Crush", in which the universe implodes in on itself ending in lots of heat and a potential new big bang). ((On the other hand, one could theorize that moving backwards could in fact be a "forwards" possibility, but that would be too much to try to deal with in a simple short story. Easier to contemplate branching of a tree than figure eights on a cyclical graph.))
The fun irony of my yin-yang Chaos Corporation and Order is that there is those splotches of the other in their midsts. Chaos is a Corporation with 9-5 workdays, employees, a hierarchy, and other rudiments of boring, ordered, organization. Order is a chaotic manifestation of "nature", tornadic and ineffable.
I think that's part of why the Chaos Corporation holds such draw for me: I'd love to work for the Chaos Corporation. The key is in the balance... as much as I love change, it is nice to know that you've got steady pay and steady hours regardless of change.