Organized Mess
Another way of talking about the web
Is that there are different levels of magnification
For example, supposing you take a piece of embroidery
And here it is, obviously, in front of you; an ordered and beautiful object
And then you take out a microscope, and you look at the individual threads
At a certain point, as you turn up the microscope, you’ll get a hopeless tangle
Which doesn’t make any sense at all
The wrapped fiber that constitutes the thread is a mess
Hasn’t been organized, nobody did anything about it. But at the level of magnification at which you actually see it with the naked eye, it’s all been organized
It’s all been organized
It’s all been organized
It’s all been organized
Alright, now keep turning up that microscope
Take one of those individual threads in the fiber that seems to be so chaotic, and go into the constitution of that
And again, you’ll find fantastic order
You’ll find the most gorgeous designs of molecules
Then, keep turning it up
And again, at a certain level you’ll find chaos again
Alright, keep going
And at another level you’ll find there’s marvelous order
Now, you see, order and randomness constitute – in other words, the warp and the woof
Where everything is in order, everything’s under control; in randomness, it’s all
[Chorus]
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
But we wouldn’t know what order was
Unless we had messes
It’s the contrast of order and messes that order itself depends upon
And so in exactly the same way, it is the contrast of on and off, there and not there – in other words, life and death, being and non-being – that constitutes existence
Only, we pretend that the random side of things, the disorderly side of things, could possibly win in the game of competition or I would rather call it collaboration between the two
When you lose sight of the fact that the order-principle and the random-principle go together
That’s exactly the same predicament as losing sight of the fact that all individually delineated things and beings
Are connected underneath
You know, just like mountains stick out of the Earth and there’s a fundamental Earth underneath them, so all of us, as different things, we stick out of reality
And there’s a continuity underneath but you ignore that, you see?
That’s the thing that’s left out
[Chorus]
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
It’s all been organized
But it’s a mess
See? I’m just giving you many examples of the same principle