Games or Values?

When we were kids we played a game called Fiddle Sticks. The primary action was to toss the bundle of fiddle sticks into the air and let them come down on a flat surface higgledee piggledee. For those not schooled in this term, think ‘every which way’ and you have it on the nose!

The point of the game was then to create order of the chaos. Sticks were in a variety of colors and players were to pull their color sticks from the pile without disturbing others. The person gathering all of their sticks first, won the game.

Today’s circumstances in much of the world are like a game of Fiddle Sticks. Russia certainly has its chaotic array of issues complicated by a lack of financial resources. Much of Africa is riddled with nations of varying size, much of them individually in chaos while all of the African nations taken together are a hodge podge of chaotic troubles.

Far East nations – Japan, Philippines, Malaysia and many more – have their issues as well. China alone has a lot of issues in play. So too the Koreas and, as a result, the rest of us who wish to keep peace in a tinderbox region.

America has its trumpet times which attempts to redefine everything into as yet unknown terms. Sort of like what the United Kingdom is dealing with following its exit from the European Union – if it actually happens. And then, of course, there is all of Europe which is dealing with the Euro’s value, the European Union’s stability, NATO’s identity crisis, the rumbles of military mischief from Russia and the current instability of Europe’s relationship with the USA.

Fiddle Sticks and chaos. All in a mess. Everything up in the air.

Well, this has bothered me. It addles my thinking. I pull on one thread of thought (just one colored fiddle stick, remember!) and see where it will take me. But there are so many other sticks in play I cannot let my focus veer too far from the central issue: Order in all things. Order.

The mind seeks order. It normalizes the odd thing or two, and then the many. It must. Without order chaos reigns and muddies process and outcome. In fact outcome becomes accidental rather than intended. That disturbs orderly minds even more!

So we seek order. I do. Hopefully others do as well. Do you?

Governments do. That is their job. Making sense of disorder and bringing things back into focus. The world community despises disorder and imbalance. Like the economy in each nation, equilibrium is sought moment by moment to create stable values upon which we all can rely. That is how currencies get their value and retain them with some sense of orderliness. Stability. Trading partners seek stability. So too do diplomats as they manage toward calm and peace. Disorder creates tensions that disrupt and distract.

Well now, maybe we are getting somewhere. Putin distracts with military exercises. Those rattle the Scandinavian countries, and by extension, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Estonia, and all the other small former USSR nations. They are now free of the USSR but they still fear and dread Russia. Putin knows this and intentionally rattles former allies to unsettle the world community.

North Korea does the same but for their own paranoid purposes. Philippines is led now by an unstable leader who is a distraction all unto himself; but his actions destabilize former relationships throwing future relationships in doubt. More distractions. More realignments in store?

The Middle East is as it has been for centuries, a stew pot of horrors and instability. Kingdoms and religious fiefdoms vying for power among brother nations in a mud puddle of oil interests and frayed economics. Chaos to be sure.

I have not touched on South America but we all can imagine the regimes of power in each nation that attempts to manage the varied tribes of regional leaders throughout the continent. How stable is all of that? Few know the answer to the question.

Let’s just say that what is normal today is not normal by past standards. Everything seems to be up in the air.

This is uncomfortable for those of us who seek calm and order.

There is a large ‘however’, however! And it is this: Disorder creates the tension necessary to properly define what we want. What we expect. What we value. Forget the fears of the unknown. Focus instead on what matters to you and your loved ones. Focus on what is near and dear to you and then expand that idea to everyone else.

If all of the people in the world value much the same things, then we have a common focal point to work with. Just imagine what we could do with that one golden nugget of an idea, of a value. Why, we could build upon that an order of peace throughout the globe.

The mind staggers at the enormity of this concept.

I just wonder when we will get to the point of distancing ourselves from the chaos to consider the common value? That’s where our attention should be.

Or does a game of Fiddle Sticks still have too many of us engaged in a game?

February 8, 2017