Fractal Hierachy

Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of “fractals” is pretty familiar by now. The simplified sense in which GA utilizes this is that the micro level reiterates (or is reiterated by) the macro level. If you zero in on a very small part of a coastline, which looks smooth from a distance, you will see patterns (articulations of angles and shapes) very similar to what is seen on the coastline as a whole.

The observation that micro-relations that seem smooth and undifferentiated from a distance, and can therefore serve as a contrast to more obviously differentiated large scale social relations, are in fact just as differentiated and broken up as the larger institutions seems to me a very productive hypothesis.

For example, you can apply it to so-called “egalitarian” relationships in small groups, which are often contrasted, for utopian or anarchist purposes, with the pervasive “inequalities” of our squalid everyday life. Following the concepts of “firstness” and “centered ordinality,” it becomes possible to assert that, looked at more closely, supposed egalitarian relations are just as riven by inequalities as large scale institutions. In any conversation, even an easygoing one between close friends, someone dominates or sets the agenda for the conversation; at the very least, one is talking and one is listening, at any given moment. These are “fractal hierarchies,” and since they are pervasive and constitutive, we can also say they are not bad, and thereby shift our attention from devising schemes for eliminating inequalities to designing more orderly and beneficial hierarchies.