This is a lovely meditation from Sarah Perry on the meaning of mess. I don’t think that I agree with her conclusion (I agree that ‘high-entropy’ isn’t sufficient, but maybe something like Murray Gell-Mann’s effective complexity would work?) but it was a joy to read.
Watts observes that elements of the natural world – clouds, foam on water, the stars, human beings – are not messes, though the nature of their order remains inscrutable, and Watts doesn’t try to pin down its precise nature. Mess seems to be somehow a property perceptible only in the presence of human artifacts. Is this the result of some kind of aesthetic original sin on the part of humans, uncanny beings severed from the holiness of Nature? I hope not. “Humans are bad” is a boring answer.
We can learn something about order from the mystery of mess. We start here: a cloud is not a mess, but an ashtray full of cigarette butts is a mess. In tracking down why this is so, we will find, through the lens of the mess and the non-mess, a clue to the hidden orders in our minds.