> My thought is, if you peel back the first layer of music theory, you discover a chaotic, lawless world.

That's because some people think the theory comes first, and the music is based on it. But music is just art, like any other art. The rules are soft and broken and hardly gospel. And music theory is an attempt to have some way to communicate about music using ordinary language. It isn't math, it isn't science, it's just some basic terminology and observations, none of which have much to do with the actual artistic act of making music.