Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival Paperback – 1985

This book makes a compelling argument that all institutions are the real-world manifestations of our mental "ego boundaries." Hence any allegorical glitch living within the human psyche has a parallel and tangible existence outside the mind and within the institution. The book also describes a few of the mental mechanisms related to "ego boundaries." For example, the book to some extent answers the question of how the transmission of ego boundaries occurs, e.g. projection. (A good projection example being scapegoating...the allusion here being the one where Aaron from the old testament confesses all the sins of Isreal over the head of a ceremonial goat and then sends it into the wilderness)

Though this reader gives few psychological theories much weight (believing nearly none in the realm of scientific knowledge, i.e., the sorts of ideas whose basis can all too easily be refuted), the notion of institutions as manifestations of ego boundaries is something that this reader finds highly probable. It's something that could be well-tested if it hasn't already.

Logically, one could deduce that any brilliant wonder (faith, spirit, etc.) from the human psyche would also have a parallel and tangible life within the institution. This particular author does however argue--more or less--that only an actual relationship could ever manifest something such as faith or spirituallity since institutions are inherently weak no matter how carefully someone orders or improves upon them.

After all, what is an institution? It isn't your mother nor your father nor your brother nor sister, not even your friend. It's not clear that this author believes the following, but it's logical that he should: The institution, if it is to exist and be competitive, must be secondary to relationships. Otherwise, the wonders of the human psyche can never manifest themselves in the real-world and the institutions without the healthy attitudes about relationships will die.

"Calculated Chaos" truly is an unsung gem. Shaffer discusses the dangers and threats to peace, both globally and locally, posed by the various institutionalized authorities, belief systems and entities that now run our lives. He also addresses the counterintuitive mental habits into which we have fallen and the myths we have acquired along the way to our present condition. Specifically, he shatters the deeply-ingrained notion that humans need the state and related institutions in order to maintain a successful, orderly and peaceful society. After all, the state is legitimized through conflict, without which, it would no longer exist. Therefore, it is always in the state's best interest to propagate conflict, regardless of its misleading declared institutional objectives, which are intended to convince us otherwise. As a result of external institutional dominance and conditioning, we have misplaced our ability to understand, direct and take responsibility for ourselves.

In addition to discussing the way we have been conditioned to identify our egos with, and subsequently legitimize, institutions and their respective agendas, Shaffer points out that, whenever we seek to enforce our will or preferences upon others through formalizing and systemizing "beliefs" and unyielding answers to abstractions, the enslavement of either ourselves or others is inevitable, regardless of how noble our objectives may have been initially. It is interesting to note that movements inspired by innate questioning and searching nearly always go awry when they begin to institutionalize formal systems of belief and absolutist thinking. Countless well-intended movements born out of constructive critical examination and questioning have ended up contradicting their very foundations as a result of formalizing absolute answers and then seeking to gain control over others through various institutional means. Shaffer presents feminism as a great, poignant example of this. Rather than maintaining a focus on individual paradigm shifts within human consciousness, such movements are eventually hijacked by those seeking to use the coercive tools of the state in order to foist a particular belief system upon others. (Simply put, this is the natural state of a democracy, in which the notion that others have a fundamental right to impose their personal preferences upon others by virtue of being the loudest and most demanding is the principal premise. Naturally, this generates endless conflict.)

Over the course of time and largely as a result of our rationalized, segregated organization of both knowledge and society, humans have become obsessively driven to seeking, expecting and internalizing the absolute rigid answers dispensed, via formalized belief systems, by institutions of all kinds. We have tossed aside the value of questioning, in favor of demanding absolute answers, regardless of the severe consequences this expectation has upon our well-being and growth, both personally and collectively. From childhood, we are indoctrinated by well-conditioned parents, teachers and media to think within these pre-designated, polarized boundaries and we are chided each time we travel too far outside of them. No matter where we turn, this kind of binary thinking dominates virtually every aspect of our society. Shaffer does an incredible job of addressing this, encouraging readers to adopt new, open-ended habits of thought and to take responsibility for our own intellectual and spiritual growth. Only when we, as individuals, can address these issues within ourselves and relearn how to be internally-directed people will we be able to reclaim our humanity.

There are three books that have caused a paradigm shift in my life: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Ran; Democracy: The God that Failed by Hans-Herman Hoppe; and Calculated Chaos by Butler Shaffer. I will always be grateful to Mr. Shaffer.