Shawn Ryan

And one thing that I have concluded that I just noticed as a kid... watching, you know, Katrina or in Iraq or in Pakistan where you see, like, things fall apart is that... everyone, you know, is so scared of...

war and violence and all that stuff, and oppression.

You know, I was always an Orwell fan, so I was like, you know, Big Brother's the scariest thing.

No, the scariest thing is chaos.

Chaos is the scariest thing.

Chaos.

And then later in life, when I read the Old Testament, I was like, God brought order out of chaos.

Of course.

I didn't even know.

I mean, I'm Episcopalian, so I didn't really know anything.

But chaos, I just noticed it, because I was in a couple, several times in the middle of what was chaos.

No one in charge.

You know, kids with rifles are in charge.

They have no goals.

They have no program.

There's no ideology.

My whole life, I've been understanding history through the lens of ideology.

There are these revolutionary peasants in Peru, and they're Sendero Luminoso, and they're revolutionary peasants in Vietnam, and they're the Viet Cong.

Like, everything was about, like, the idea.

And what I didn't realize until I saw it in person was...