How to survive the Culture of Chaos

Chaos or Chaotic is a good word to describe what is happening in the transition from an old era to a new one. Looking back to the 1990s, the appearance of the Internet remarkably changed the entire world. It gradually removed the physical borders among nations and societies. It turned the world into a flat space where information is shared widely among many users on Earth. From that,  we, human beings, approached the remarkable I.R 4. o (Industrial Revolution 4.0), which opened the door to the Digital World! Complex pros and cons began from this revolution.

Daily Influences on An Individual

The Social Ecological Model theory indicates that Individuals can be affected by many factors such as Self factors, Social Networks, Community, and Society.

(Source: https://guidelines.vsdvalliance.org/social-justice-principles-core-concepts-copy)

Let’s imagine that we are the individuals in this scenario and then start observing all possible factors influencing us every single day and in all kinds of interactions. We will learn that:

• Social networks like our partners, friends, family, colleagues, and managers pay considerable contributions to our every thought; they somehow consciously and unconsciously influence our viewpoints and decision-making process. To make it clearer, when we were a child, we interacted with our parents most; they were our first friends and teachers in life. We observed them and imitated what they did. Day by day we repeated those actions and adopted all of them to form our habits. The habits came to us naturally like we daily breathe in and out. We never question why and find out the logic in all the actions we have been doing for years. When we grew up, our social networks expanded, and we made friends with many other individuals, and interacted with people from different cultures and with dissimilar behaviors. Contradiction appears, and we wonder about the accuracy of what we did and believed. Is it right? Chaos initially ignites.
• Community refers to another level of social interaction, we meet and work with diversity and uncertainty. The appearance of teachers, neighbors, colleagues, managers, and customers significantly impacts our behavior change and information processing. Chaos grows bigger and bigger over time. If we do not have strong opinions, we will be drowning in personal thoughts and ideas. What is right? What is wrong? Black or White? – These questions might haunt you unstoppably.
• Society is the most powerful factor, it directly affects and directs our thoughts and behaviors every day, every hour, every minute, and even every second of our lives. Some considerable factors like social norms, economy, education, health, and technological development, directly and indirectly, control our daily activities and then form general characteristics of us and people living in a certain society. When life in general changes, we feel uncomfortable, struggle to adapt, or give up on those changes. Chaos in this scenario seems the biggest one, which causes great obstacles to conquer.

After all, we can learn that changes happen every single; they do not slowly find us, but rapidly and dramatically instead. Chaos is the unavoidable consequence that “Changes” bring us!

“I SEE IT” versus “I SEE”

In Vietnamese, there is a compound word “Nhìn Thấy” which can be separated into two single words indicating 2 different but important concepts. The first is “Nhìn”, and the second is “Thấy”. In English, “Nhìn” is equivalent to  “Seeing something or being aware of something’s physical existence”, and “Thấy” is interpreted as “Recognizing something with its extrinsic and intrinsic attributes. What is the problem that people commonly encounter and deal with regularly?

First of all, let’s define the word Chaos. According to Cambridge Dictionary, it is defined as the state of disorder and confusion. If we put the two words Disorder and Confusion in the context of The era of Booming Social Media, we will see the insights of these factors.

• Disorder means a state of untidiness and lack of organization. Obviously, when social media becomes the talk of the town, people are advertising things, selling things, buying things, sharing things, and commenting on daily & social things more easily than ever. As for advantages, the development of Social Media helps you approach and get updated on daily occurrences not only in our society and country but also around the world just in a win of eyes. Along with the comfort and convenience of fast information exchange, controversial personal opinions exist. From that, we can witness endless verbal battles of many involved individuals. To some extent, we find it hard to call it Right or Wrong. Chaos gradually appears and covers all the social media platforms.
• Confusion refers to the commonly seen drama of Who is Right – Who is Wrong. Social Media Users freely and negatively show and defend their personal opinions about something. They advocate for and against something without considering the logic of their arguments or the origin of stories; they are ready to show their tantrums to others and insult others just to protect their points of view and insist that others are incorrect.  And other users easily get confused and misled by variations of the original story.

Living in a world with Chaos significantly and greatly challenges us. What are we supposed to do to survive the Culture of Chaos?

Being misled, gaslit, or confused by chaotic information is the result of low cognition, lack of experience, and the need to prove one’s expertise. Normally, when dealing with a problem, we prefer Thinking Fast to Thinking Slowly; we prefer Taking Action to Having deep and serious consideration; we prefer Leaning on our Expertise and Similarity to Finding out other perspectives related to the issue. All our favorite options divert our solutions to Personal and Subjective than ever.

Do you want to be blind to your surroundings?

The radical solution should be to train ourselves to be well aware of things surrounding us with their true insights. And the true insights normally come from what lies beneath the iceberg such as Patterns, Structures, and Mental Models. 

When encountering any problems, the majority of us will solely pay attention to the events on the surface e.g. evidence and symptoms. Based on the evidence and symptoms, some of us jump to subjective conclusions. From that, they might cause endlessly controversial conversations and debates.

Seeing things on the surface is like Judging a book by its cover. Everything happens at the surface level, which means that we are simply aware of their existence no more and less. In other words, we are promoting the Fas Thinking Habit. Normally, Fast Thinking might work on simple and familiar problems or issues; whereas it doesn’t work well on complex ones. Obviously, it is not enough, and we should acquire more than that to sharpen our viewpoints.

Once we drill down to the underneath layers of a problem, it requires us to deeply understand the rules & practices (Patterns), organizations & relationships (Structures), and then recognize implied values & beliefs (Mental Models). 

To avoid being blind to our surroundings, we are highly supposed to follow this thinking pattern to get wiser if we want.

Now, choose one commonly seen example like One’s Success.

Success Requires More Efforts than You Think

If you are interested in reading news on Social Media, you will easily catch some common occurrences like Student A getting IELTS with 9.0,  Farmer B successfully cross-bred a plant, Country C effectively controlling their inflation, etc… The headlines and article titles indicate the daily events. Positive comments will appear and widely spread on Social Networks, and they are multiplied dramatically. If you stop some of them and ask them how those agents can succeed. The common answer is that it’s because they are excellent, wise, talented, and so on. Every single day, people are promoting shallow thoughts and cliches, and are also willing to combat if somebody disagrees with their opinions. Chaos happens and never ends.

Success or Failure of an individual comes from the rules or practices they strictly follow daily, and how they structure their resources; all of them are based on their values or beliefs. If a person believes that working smart can bring him/her better results, he/she will value that thought and guide himself/ herself toward that goal. That belief and value constantly drives him/her to make good use of his or her current resources, and then come up with a set of practices. Practices are done and enhanced continuously until he/she becomes successful. The way leading to success requires more intelligence than we can see on the surface.

When saying It’s easy or It means nothing, please consider what lies beneath the surface of events. Especially, when receiving or reading any comments on something, just keep calm and separate layer to layer the mentioned issue with its Pattern, Structure, and Mental Model.

By doing that repeatedly, we can help ourselves survive the Culture of Chaos.