The Comfort of Control and Chaos

It’s weird to think about how much control people crave. Not the kind you see in a political rally, shouting and waving signs, though that's part of it too. I mean the quieter stuff – the need for order, the rigidness of routines, the feeling that *everything* has to be just so. My dad is like that sometimes; his study is arranged with such precision it feels less like a workspace and more like a museum diorama. A misplaced pen can trigger a sigh, a shifted stack of papers, a whole lecture on “efficiency.”

I’ve always felt… a little antagonistic towards that kind of control. Maybe because I'm the only kid – used to navigating carefully around my parents’ expectations, which felt less like encouragement and more like pre-determined paths. It wasn't malicious, but it definitely created this constant low hum of needing to calibrate everything I did against their unspoken standards. Music helped, always has. Finding a song that was messy and beautiful, chaotic in the best way possible, offered a temporary release. Phoebe Bridgers’ lyrics are brutally honest in ways that feel like permission to be… complicated.

There's this new study looking at how personality traits – specifically those considered “antagonistic” - might connect with beliefs that favor strict authority. It isn’t what I expected; it kind of blows apart a lot of assumptions about why people gravitate towards those kinds of ideologies. The idea was always that needing to feel dominant, wanting to be *in charge*, fueled the desire for an orderly world enforced by someone else. But this research suggests something different—that some people with tendencies toward things like cynicism or a need for control might simply use these beliefs as a way to regulate themselves.

Think about it: if you’re someone who needs things to feel predictable, structure can be a comfort. Believing in a system that demands obedience from everyone else – even if that system is flawed – offers the illusion of stability. It's a strange kind of self-soothing, like wrapping yourself in layers of rules and regulations so you don’t have to confront the messiness inside. Like my dad organizing his study not because it actually *helps* him work better, but because the order itself provides a feeling of calm.

It makes me uneasy, this realization that something we often consider a positive trait – self-regulation – can be twisted into an ideological weapon. It isn't about emotional weakness; it’s about finding a particular way to manage anxieties and frustrations. My mom, bless her heart, always encouraged me to "be strong," which I interpreted as needing to bottle things up rather than process them. The idea that those suppressed emotions might then latch onto something rigid and controlling… that’s unsettling.

The separation between *feeling* something – sadness, anger, disappointment– and the ideas you adopt to explain or justify those feelings seems crucial here. You can be incredibly disciplined in your habits, a paragon of orderliness, and still harbor deep anxieties. But if your discipline becomes fused with a belief that others need to be controlled too, it’s not just about personal stability anymore; it's projecting that need outwards onto the world. It’s weaponizing control.

It makes me wonder what role something like my little blog plays in all of this. National’s show at the Kent State Fieldhouse was a moment. Suddenly those words felt less… small. Like they could exist somewhere beyond my bedroom and our town’s limited internet connection. That initial bump – two hundred people from a Tumblr reblog—felt strangely validating, but also slightly terrifying. Could writing be a way to both express disorder *and* reinforce it?

Maybe the best we can do is keep looking for those messy, beautiful songs. Find ways to acknowledge the chaos within ourselves and in the world around us without demanding that everyone else conform to some arbitrary standard of order. That Phoebe Bridgers show was about recognizing something real – a vulnerability that doesn't need fixing, just understanding. And maybe, just maybe, that’s more powerful than any rigid belief system.