12:40 p.m. OK, now I'm ready. My desktop (the wooden one) has looked better, in terms of organization, but it has also looked much worse. I got to thinking about this when I booted up my laptop and noticed that I had nearly 100 icons showing. Ridiculous! No wonder I have trouble finding stuff. So, I organized the desktop (the one on the computer this time), and am feeling inspired to deal with the mess you see in the photo.
Nature can be seen as organized chaos. Depending on one's background and beliefs, the emphasis might be on the "chaos" aspect, or it might be on the "organized" aspect. I spend a lot of time responding to nature scenes and events. A sense of wonder always occurs, but then I find myself trying to organize my feelings in order to convey them to others. I start parsing words like "sunrise" and "sunset." These words are remnants of an earlier cosmology in which the sun travels around the earth. Or, at least rises in the East and sets in the West, which only implies where it spends the night. I get more excited when I relate to a more recent cosmology in which the sun stands still and the earth's spinning gives the illusion of the sun traveling around us. If I chose a different frame of reference, say a spot on the moon, then the motions of the sun and earth would seem quite a bit more complicated. Does the sun go behind a cloud, or does a cloud pass in front of the sun, or, better yet, between me and the sun?
So, is the biological activity outside my office (much less the Amazon or Congo jungles) best represented as organization or chaos? Those who see it primarily as chaos generally have the urge to tame it, or approve of others doing so. We who see it as organized are reluctant to tamper with it to satisfy humans' short term needs and wants. I wonder how this question will play out in the newly-elected Congress. I'm nervous. Maybe organizing the wooden desktop will make me feel better.
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