“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

 “City “City of God”… what a name for a place which could not be so radically different than a paradise. This movie (Cidade de Deus) is brilliant in many senses. It shows the favelas in Rio de Janeiro through the eyes of internal observer. Who lived there. No preaching, no moral judgement’ quotes of high or middle class. It just unfolds the reality of living there, self-organized structure which appears when people are pushed beyond conventional social system and its values. The violence, love, hopes for a better future, survival…

According to Wikipedia most of the current favelas began in the 1970s, as a construction boom in the richer neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro initiated a rural exodus of workers from poorer states in Brazil. Heavy flooding in the low-lying slum areas of Rio also forcibly removed a large population into favelas, which are mostly located on Rio’s various hillsides. According to movie, government pushed unemployed and rural people into the “City of God”.

All chaotic systems tend toward self-organization. This one as well. But beyond social norms, the structure built up itself upon violence and cruel dominance of Alpha male. Since all were new, no clans of old gangsters were present. So the first ones were kids, younger than 18 years…

The last scenes really shocked me. The kids, no older than 12 years, took dominance over the favelas. it was joke for them, like they were shooting on PlayStation. lots of fun. But than, what kind of kids that  social structure beyond social structure can produce? According to some sources, those kids still have control over favelas today … http://www.davidalton.com/brazilreport.html

It seems to me that  our capitalistic society is ruled by the same principle, just on more noble and sophisticated way.

Vietnam, FED, Bilderberg group, September 11, Irak, ….alpha males, drug trafficking, weapons trade, civil causalities in the name of power and $$$ ….order within the order, order which orders all or strange attractor? When after many iterations you can recognise pattern.

Rocinha – the largest and most complex favela of Brazil. This favela holds 150000 people within 1 square mile.

Can Chaos theory  as theory of dynamic systems explain dynamics of social behaviour?

Chaos theory offers an explanation and description of the transformation of social tori and other strange attractors from quasi-stability toward deep chaos.  The short version is that when the periods of a system bifurcate the third time, they are in a situation where another very small change can produce great numbers of possible endstates toward which a person, a group, a business or a society might go.
The operative point to keep in mind for a theory of deviancy is that this great increase in alternative ways to behave is a feature of the whole system not just the single, acting person; punishment of individuals for trying to cope with such emergent conditions is an exercise in folly if not in mean-spirited vengeance.  And, for those in social philosophy generally, it is good to remember that even in deep chaos there is a great deal of order.

And, even in deep chaos, it is possible to obtain an uncertain stability.  A. Hbler (1992), of the University ofIllinois, Urbana, has shown that, if one can model the key rhythms of chaotic displays, one can control chaos even in the most uncertain regions of a bifurcation map.

An important point to note is that, in a sea of disorder, there are pockets of order. The emergence of such pockets of order is entirely unpredictable.  Ilya Prigogine (1984) won a Nobel prize for setting forth the principles by which new order emerges out of disorder.

Watched today similar movie The Departed  regards structures within the structure, voilence with its own rules. Well done (of course Scorsese), great actors (Di Caprio, Nicholson, Damon, …). Music as well: Roling Stones, Pink Floyd,..  Won 4 Oscars, excelent Scorsese’s movie piece.  It just hasn’t touched me so much as City og God where the players were mostly amateut actors. And where reallity heavely strikes you.