Chaos Is A Ladder

Image Credit: Game of Thrones HBO TV Series

One of the best players of the political game in the famous television series ‘Game Of Thrones’, Petyr Baelish, tells his equally strategic colleague, Varys, at a pivotal point in the story, that ‘Chaos is not a pit; Chaos is a ladder’. It is a powerful, metaphoric way of saying ‘Do not fear change: use disruption to transform your blocks into opportunities, into breakthroughs’. 

This television series appealed to the imagination of millions of viewers, and rightly so. Although it is set in a fantasy realm and a fictional era, we feel that the struggles of the characters are real. 

And that their progress towards their personal goals is complicated and put at risk by a myriad challenges, both external and internal. Just as it is, in real life. 

The politics of the Seven Kingdoms of fabled Westeros is a wonderful spectacle. Their history is still being written. In the last episode of the HBO series, a relatively learned man suggests that, ‘since a ruler is to rule everyone, the decision to choose that ruler should be offered to everyone to make’. The feudal lords and ladies around him find this amusing, disappointingly. But that is not a game, and it is not fiction or fantasy. It is a dream of greater inclusiveness, and better opportunities for all: a wider ladder, up from the pit of chaos. 

There was a wheel of cyclical chaos affecting the kingdoms in the world of Westeros. From our perspective, it is impossible not to see it as samsara, as a drama of egotistical dynamics, pitting themselves against each other. One of the major characters in the story was asked towards the end of her part in the story if she wanted to stop the wheel. People said it was impossible. It had not been done, in living memory. But she said she wanted to break the wheel. Going from one extreme to another may be colorful, but chaos does not result in progress. 

A billion dollar global self-help industry is based on transformational change. And it is a wisdom we can learn in our own lives, as well, in what so many people so often call ‘these troubled times’. 

Do you remember the childhood game ‘Snakes and Ladders’? As the dice rolls, you move your piece on the board, making progress forward, based apparently on chance: a fortunate throw will elevate you rapidly up a ‘ladder’; an unlucky one will plummet you down a winding ‘snake’ - to a lower position. When this happens, you throw again and try to change your luck. You take a long view - with the goal, the glittering prize at the end, in your sights. 

This journey is a fascinating one, applied to the timeline of our own lives; but even more so when we apply it to the progress and evolution of a country. In our actual lives, we can see that times of misfortune and even distress and despair can be opportunities for us to re-shape ourselves: to re-evaluate, to audit, to take stock and reposition ourselves, and our resources. 

The country in which we live has been plunged into chaos, since April 21st. But if we look at ‘chaos as a ladder’, we can see that the disruptions to our self-image as a nation, and the individual anxieties the crisis have unleashed in us, can be used as an opportunity to transform the shape and direction of our collective path into a more positive trajectory. 

We can see that this crisis has insight to reveal to us, if we refrain - as we have, remarkably, in fact, done, this time, to our great credit as a nation - from panic, terror, victimhood and survivalism; and resist the impulse to blame or hate or target others. There were other voices which made themselves heard, as an alternative to the ‘ancestral voices prophesying war’, and many people have listened to these alternative voices. Because these terror attacks were not immediately followed by more orchestrated and organic chaos, but by a tense space in which we could revision ourselves. The people as a whole put their best beliefs into practice. 

It is - perhaps - the most profound distillation of wisdom in Buddhism: learning equanimity. To not react, in a triggered way, to resist becoming a puppet in the hands of manipulators. But to choose the best course of action, and follow it: with determination not to be discouraged or dismayed by the disruptions along the way. 

This is not easy, given the famous volatility of our national character. But this game is not for a mere fictional throne: there is actually a more exalted state than kingship, and that is the freedom and peace of our sovereignty as a nation. 

The people of the country refrained from being stirred into race riots. The hate speech that we see on social media platforms and chat threads is daily exposed for the ugly rhetoric it is. The ladder we create in this chaos can lead us to make better choices, and revision the future we want. 

We make that ladder with our own hands. And break the wheel, in real life. And progress is made possible.