Chaos Isn’t a Ladder. It’s a Lie They Tell You So You’ll Jump First.
“Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder.”
—Petyr Baelish, Game of Thrones
Petyr Baelish dropped this line like it was gospel—an apex predator’s guide to power: sow instability, exploit the confusion, climb unseen while others burn. It was seductive. Dangerous. Sounded like a cheat code for sociopaths in suits.
But here’s the twist no one likes to admit:
Littlefinger dies.
Spectacularly.
Not despite the chaos—because of it.
Chaos Doesn’t Make Space—It Closes It
Everyone wants chaos to be a kind of open field—a startup pitch competition with fire in the background. But let’s stop playing make-believe.
Chaos doesn’t create opportunity. It amplifies pre-existing dominance.
When the chessboard flips, the pieces don’t all start from square one. The Queen doesn’t lose her mobility just because the table’s shaking. She gets faster while the pawns try to remember what direction they’re allowed to move in.
Chaos widens asymmetry.
It doesn’t flatten it.
The illusion of the "ladder" comes from survivorship bias. For every Littlefinger climbing, there are 10,000 faceless corpses he used as footing. And spoiler: he’s one of them by the end.
Real Power Doesn’t Wait for Chaos—It Immunizes Against It
People who treat volatility like an entry point are always late.
Why? Because if you’re reacting to chaos, you’re already out of position. The real power players don’t “climb” ladders—they build floors before the shaking starts.
They own the land the ladder sits on.
They sell the wood to build it.
Hell, they lease the idea of the ladder to people like Littlefinger—ambitious mid-tier tacticians with a fantasy of control.
Power isn’t taken in chaos.
It’s insured against it.
The Survivors Are Boring, Not Bold
Let’s talk brass tacks.
When a storm hits, the people who “win” aren’t the clever iconoclasts in all-black shouting “disruption!” at the sky. They’re the ones with:
Redundant systems
Liquidity
Social capital
Calm
The prepper with cashflow and quiet influence beats the would-be warlord 100 times out of 100. Because the prepper doesn’t need the chaos to move.
Chaos Doesn’t Select the Bold. It Exposes the Delusional.
Every unstable environment has its prophets.
“This is my moment.”
“Everyone’s vulnerable—I can outmaneuver them.”
“I’ll thrive while others panic.”
Romantic. Dangerous. Wrong.
Chaos is not a strategy. It’s a stress test.
You don’t get to rewrite your playbook mid-collapse. You either had the leverage before the cracks showed, or you're furniture now.
And no, being “scrappy” doesn’t count.
Neither does “hustle.”
If you needed the chaos to matter, you didn’t.
The Real Game Is Before the Game
If you think chaos is a ladder, you’ve already missed the lesson.
Power isn’t about the climb. It’s about who still has footing when gravity turns off. The ones who win are:
Antifragile by design
Strategically underleveraged
Politically quiet
Obscenely aware
In other words, they’re not climbing anything.
They’re busy watching.
And if you’re seeing a staircase, it’s only because you’re still in denial about what game you’re in.