Chaos As Social Order

currently, the destruction of human living spaces and places, from rain forests, to living sites, to old sections of cities, involves the destruction of old information and the creation of new information.

            Combining these two operations of oppression, we see the human bodies of survivors, born and bred close together, then moved, mixed, and clothed so that, when observed later, no traces of their initial conditions–their indigenous or native states–remain.  The old information about the former identity of the displaced persons or of the destroyed places is replaced by new information resulting from actions upon the persons and the places.  If we add to this the repression, disuse and disappearance of unprivileged languages and customs, then the image of uniform mixing, or, mixing for uniformity, becomes clearer.

            Third, sensitive dependence on initial conditions in both numerical and physical experiments involves amplification of small initial differences into larger differences later.  Twins, siblings, and neighborhood or village cohorts often develop lifeways that not only put out of focus their initial conditions but also differ from one another in ways that are not susceptible to deterministic, linear calculation.  In the case of groups of ethnically homogeneous refugees crossing a border into another country, individual lifeways can diverge beyond linear reckoning over time.

            From the standpoint of social power, the actions of such people are worked on by the actions of social operations that “mix,” “fold,” and “stretch” everyone.  At one and the same time, contemporary, industrial, urban society functions to stereotype everyone while making

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