When chaos is experienced, a failure of reason has already occurred. In chaos we encounter realities our reason is not equipped to order and make sense of. This is the experience of perplexity, where we relive the horror of birth.

The only people in the world perverse enough to find meaning in such meaninglessness are philosophers. Wittgenstein said it best: “A philosophical problem has the form: I don’t know my way about.”

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We prefer to believe the world is discovered bit by accumulated bit in a vacuum of space and knowledge. We want to believe in a world that is created ex nihilo. What is we have is established, and what isn’t is nothing.

We hate to believe in a world that is articulated from chaos, because we hate the consequence: the order we have lent to the world which has made it familiar and predictable could suddenly recede and  shock us with raw alienness.

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This possibility — that the world can be revealed as strange — that makes people hate their neighbor. It is the neighbor, with his strange views, peculiar habits, and outlandish tastes, who jointly holds the potential to defamiliarize the world. The potential, though, is only actualized voluntarily by ourselves. Each person holds the power either to open the door to the neighbor, or to bar it. If the neighbor is invited in, if his views are seriously entertained, the two gathered in such a spirit of hospitality and truth are in a position to recognize that reality and our idea of reality are not identical. In some deeply disturbing and inexpressible way, reality transcends idea. Without the disruption of the neighbor, idea eclipses what is beyond idea, and becomes idol.

But the door can be barred. We are free to abide in the mind. “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell.” By withholding the status of “neighbor” from all but the like-minded — those who ditto our opinions, who agree with us that the details of reality that appear to contradict our views (or more subtly the exclusive validity of our views) are irrelevant (if not outright deceptions), who share our antipathy toward our non-neighbors and agree with us that entertaining their ideas is fruitless at best (and possibly corrupting) — we find willing partners in reducing the world to pure idea. The impurity rejected is that of reality who transcends mere idea.

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We stabilize our sense of reality through a variety of intertwined methods. One of these methods is by successfully observing and describing the world to ourselves. Another is to reliably anticipate or predict events, or even better to influence or control them. But perhaps the most important method for creating a solid sense of reality is to find agreement with others. This last method can compensate for the absence of the others.

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[Solipsism] “is rare in individuals–but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.”

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When a group agrees with itself that whatever appears to be an anomaly is mere noise, or error, or deception, or irrelevance, it is able to avoid (or at least postpone) confrontation with anomalies, which are the sparks of chaos, the pinholes in our knowledge. Anomalies remind us how much more there is to things than we possess as individuals, or as members of a particular group.

It is easier to love the reality we have made for ourselves — our own sense of truth — than it is to love reality. Reality challenges us, makes claims on us, changes us. If we think of ourselves as discrete, unchanging, self-consistent beings, reality threatens our mortality. If we think of ourselves as connected, evolving, expanding creatures, reality offers us perpetual natality.

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We hate the possibility of the situation that requires the aid philosophy, so we deny that possibility and we deny the use of philosophy. Philosophy is a waste of time at best, and most likely corrupting.

But perhaps there’s some validity to the suspicion. Like generals thrive on outbreaks of war, and doctors thrive on outbreaks of disease, philosophers thrive on outbreaks of disillusionment.