Chaos and Order
I am a huge fan of Batman, the Dark Knight trilogy is one of my favorite series. Do you know what Christopher Nolan wanted to depict from the movies? The trilogy is focused on one central theme, the relationship between chaos and control. Bruce Wayne, after losing his parents, is shattered and Gotham city is subjugated by the evil with the collapse of Wayne foundation. So Bruce makes it his mission to protect the city from the chaos that surrounds it and do everything that is possible to make it the best city. And through doing so he starts to find clarity in his own life. I think that this is the main message of Nolan’s trilogy, that Batman is interlinked with Gotham.
To maintain order in the city, Batman needs to overcome five antagonistic forces that are standing in his way, Scarecrow, Ra’s al Ghul, The Joker, Harvey Dent, and Bane. Each villain represents a thematic idea that Bruce needs to overcome in order to balance chaos and order in his life. Scarecrow represents his fear for being responsible for the city, with Ra’s al Ghul he faces the problem of too much order. Contrary to this, with the Joker he needs to combat chaos. Harvey Dent personifies hatred, so he needs to overcome hatred and in many ways his own flaws. And finally, with Bane, he faces pain, both physical and emotional. All these enemies wanted to create chaos for their personal motives and Batman is battling to maintain order.
I can go into more details, providing meaning and purpose of each character, but let’s leave it for some other post. Now, all these chaos and order can be observed in our daily life. Everything tends towards disorder, life always seems to get more complicated. Strong relationships degrade, life becomes cluttered. Similarly, wall cracks, roof leaks, and building degrade.
Chaos is not a mistake; it is our default state. Order is always artificial and temporary.
Disorder is an important aspect of our life, it is inescapable. Even if we try to ignore, we may end up in even more mess. We cannot expect things to stay the way we leave it. They say, ignorance is bliss but not in this case. To maintain our health, relationships, careers, it requires never-ending effort and wariness.
We were taught in our school regarding entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. The law states, “The total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time.” That means the level of disorderliness in the universe is steadily increasing. Systems tend to move from ordered behavior to more random behavior. But is this worrisome? No, this provides meaning to our life. This is the reason we strive daily to create stability in our life. In this crumbling world, we can provide stability by putting some more efforts. Life starts at your every step, a sincere effort in your work, in your relationships, in yourself can result in great things. Otherwise, entropy is always there.
In the end, if things matters make an effort, put your energy to improve the future. Most of us thrive to make the world a better place, we all make our own efforts to reduce disorder. This chaos is what keeps us on our toes. Therefore, they say we need to have a balance between chaos and order.
