Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3139

Typed transcription by Spencer MacCallum of random recorded conversation with Heath.

February 1955

 

 

 

THE SAVING GRACE OF RELATIVE DISORDER — ITS INSTABILITY

 

In all human affairs there is order and there is disorder, just as there is light and there is darkness. But as darkness is never absolute, so is disorder never complete; it always has at least one saving grace. That is its instability. If chaos were a stable state of affairs, it would be absolute and permanent. The truth is that our world is a cosmos and not a chaos, and its parts and degrees are to be distinguished only by the lesser or the greater order manifested in them. And moreover, what distinguishes order from relative disorder is its relative stability, its tendency to persist. The lower organic forms have the briefest span, the fastest turn-over and replacement by successors and the least probability of being replaced.

                      “As regards span, though,                                  Popdaddy, how about the tortoise                               and the elephant?”

But what else have they, in motion — they have sacrificed their velocity of motion in favor of mass and time.

                     “Is that any less life, however?”

Yes, because life involves motion, one of its essential elements, ingredients. If motion is sufficiently reduced, then no amount of mass and time will make life.

In line with what I said about the bacterium, the short, individual life tends to the impermanence of the life form. Those which live longest have the highest probability of permanent succession.