Kaos Drains: What the Cancellation of the Provocative Netflix Series May be Saying About Our Distaste for Disorder

With the recent canceling of the Netflix series Kaos, starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, it led me to speculate about what this says about our human nature and its distrust of the un-formed chaos.

Though the series itself will likely prove to be largely forgettable, its cancellation indicates a deeper point of what I hope to be a truth being revealed about human nature and our inherent desire for Form. Humans, because we are formed in the image of He Who forms everything, naturally desire to participate in form. We cannot help it. In fact, even defining the word “chaos” as its own existing thing is actually working against the formlessness that chaos implies. How does one know if something is chaotic unless there is a clear definition of what chaos is, unless chaos itself is formed. 

One learns in Philosophy 101, or at least should learn, that Aristotle introduced us to the Four Causes of being. I begin the year with my students introducing them to these causes. Very simply, these include the material cause, the “stuff” of the substance in question, the formal cause, the “shape” of the substance, the efficient cause, the “agent” behind the substance, and the final cause, the “purpose” of the substance. As I said, a very simple introduction. 

I tell my students that the “shape” does not necessarily mean physical shape, because the formal cause applies even to non-physical things. We form something by giving it limits, or defining something (de+fine meaning “of limits”). Though young people bristle at the idea of limiting something, especially themselves, I tell them this is the only way to know what something is, so that it does not disintegrate into the chaos of nothingness. It must be formed by its limits. They want to know themselves or discover who they are, that will necessarily include limits.

The first three causes, the material, formal and efficient, are all meant to work together in order to serve the final cause. This is why a hammer is made of iron and not gold, it must hit other hard things, like iron nails, and keep its shape. The hammer must be formed to have a handle and a head so that it can be swung to hit nails. There must be an agent to swing the hammer to hit the nail. Apologies for the tedious point belaboring, but notice how the material, the formal and the efficient causes all serve the final cause of hitting the nail. This is not accidental but an essential relationship between the four causes. This is true not just of hammers, but of actions, persons and communities. The material, formal and efficient causes of everything are all ordered toward and conditioned by the final cause. 

We can, however, fight against this form. In fact, we do, all the time. It is called sin and it is literally de-formed. This is not just a pejorative to tear another person down. It is what sin, understood as a privation by St. Augustine (City of God, Book XI.9) and St. Thomas Aquinas (ST I-II. Q 75. A 1), literally is. Because sin is a willful thwarting of an action’s, the substance in this case, final cause, it necessarily will undermine the form, and vice versa. It is an action that is starting to lose its form. When a substance has been redirected from its final cause, it is beginning the process of being deformed. When it is deformed, when it loses its limits, it begins the process of disintegration into nothingness. This deformation can occur in actions, in persons and in communities. Chaos, as a de-formation, undermines the purpose of a substance. Chaos in a mind would undermine the intellect's purpose of finding the truth. It is not hard to imagine how chaos in a human community would undermine the purpose of the common good. 

There is sometimes an argument to be made for upending unjust political regimes, but even this allowance implies that there would be a formation of something just in its place. St. Thomas Aquinas makes this point when considering those opposing an unjust government, but he also notes that it cannot be at the expense of the community at large (ST II-II. Q 42. A 2. reply obj. 3.). Here again one sees that any de-formation that might occur cannot lead to an even greater de-formation. This situation requires prudence, it does not allow for chaos.

My hope in the lack of popularity of Kaos is that audiences are recognizing the emptiness of…chaos, of a truly de-formed human society. When we root for the good guys, it is not because of what they destroy, but because of what they hope to build afterward. I am reminded of the Chesterton quote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” Love, as Aquinas shows us, is the “form” of all the other virtues, including patriotism (ST II-II. Q 23. A 8.). The virtue of love forms the other virtues because Love Itself, or Himself, is Form (as a brief aside, I am not saying God is formed as in God is limited, but Form, that which limits everything else, kind of like how everything else is contingent but God is necessary in Aquinas’s “third way”). When we lose form, we begin to lose our capacity for love, whether we realize it or not. 

The best, most prophetic storytelling is that which is prognostic, it can tell us where we are going, largely because it is diagnostic, it tells us where, and who, we are. While many entertainment writers would be quick to agree that Kaos is a very diagnostic allegory of where we are now as a culture, it is not aimed at anything resembling a final cause of human nature or community in general. This is because it largely misses the transcendent reality of human nature that we are both formed and form-ers, imitating the One who formed us. When we are expected to invest in storytelling whose very basis is un-formation, it seems we largely ignore it, with good cause.