Philosophy: Ordo Ab Chao
“Ordo ab chao”, order from chaos, appears as a journal section heading on September 16, 2020, at the beginning of Steven’s Séroplex recovery. It is a Freemasonic maxim, which makes its use notable given his father’s later Freemasonry, though Steven may not have made the connection consciously.
The context of use
He has just emerged from six months of depression. Rather than framing the chaos as failure, he retroactively assigns it a constructive function: “j’aurais creusé très profond avant de me trouver cette fois-ci et de dire stop… j’ai quand même, assuré et construit des building blocks (mainly sociaux) qui me seront je suppose plus qu’utile par la suite.”
The depression produced something: depth, certain social formations, a forced encounter with himself. It was not wasted.
The pattern it names
Ordo ab chao is a recurring structural feature of Steven’s life. Collapse precedes construction, and the collapse is typically proportional in depth to what gets built afterward.
- California 2018: mental breakdown → “no one is coming” realization
- Ipso departure / COVID lockdown → depression → Séroplex recovery → Paris social integration, Arthur meeting, COVID Tracker work
- Post-Arthur collapse / ESN firing → Shadow rejection → full breakdown 2022–2023 → ADHD/autism diagnosis → 2026 turn
Each descent is not simply followed by recovery. The descent is the mechanism. He cannot self-inflict a breakthrough. He has to hit the actual floor.
He was aware of this as early as 2020: “C’est comme s’il avait fallu que je me fasse comprendre à moi-même les choses.” He needed to make himself understand through experience what he couldn’t accept intellectually.
The limitation
Ordo ab chao has limits as a personal operating principle. It works retroactively. Chaos that has already produced order is recognizable. It does not work predictively. Chaos in progress looks like chaos. It can also be used as a rationalization for not intervening in self-destructive patterns: if the chaos will produce order, what is the urgency?
The 2022 to 2025 period tested this. The chaos lasted significantly longer than the 2020 depression. Whether it produced proportionally more order, including the diagnosis, PartnerNote, the 19th apartment, and Dimitri, is an open question.