Chaos As Social Order

trajectories of practice representing various mixtures of the exogenous and the indigenous.

            An application of chaos theory to social issues, as exemplified by Taiwan and Interior Alaska, supports the findings of historical linguistics that there is no simple, inevitable path from older, more complex to newer simpler languages, or vice versa.  It also supports the findings of social science research that the increase in options for attitude and behavior is one of the main events in the complex changes in social order of the last century collectively known as modernization.  This is not a linear decrease in options until some point after which new, more plentiful options can be and are introduced.  Rather, there is a decrease in certain kinds of options which releases cultural energy for a simultaneous increase in other kinds.

            This crucible of contact with exogenous power which constrains and liberates, represses and releases, and destroys and amplifies indigenous power contains the interactions whose unraveling in theory will determine what kinds of predictability, if any, are possible in such spaces.  It seems unquestionable that a strong correlation exists between the availability of culturally unbound or unencumbered power, either coming in from outside sources or released from inside sources, and the appearance of chaotic cultural regimes.  Whether the culturally free power takes the form of guns, drugs and money, or communication, transportation and production technologies, it does not automatically and smoothly reproduce indigenous practices and patterns.  Its introduction becomes an intervention that induces interference patterns.  The interference patterns fold, bifurcate,

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