Destroying symbolic hierarchies produces chaos, not liberation.

Evidence

Darkness, red light, gadgets, tranquilizers, nothing works. In birds there is a hierarchy of access to food - the pecking order. In these conditions of overpopulation, the last in the order is never able to get to the food. One thus wished to break the pecking order and democratize access to food through another system of distribution. Failure: the destruction of this symbolic order brings along with it total confusion for the birds, and a chronic instability. Good example of absurdity: one knows the analogous ravages of good democratic intentions in tribal societies. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 424

Categorization

• SEED: The pecking-order experiment is a ready-made essay hook: the limit case for when ‘democratizing’ an order destroys the very stability it meant to fix.
• XREF: Extends the reader’s earlier thread on social capital and the role of institutions — here a strike against naive leveling of established orders. — connects to: Disillusionment with failing paradigms does not free people from them. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1037; Deliberate administrative chaos absorbs opposition and enables rule without visible change

Broader Connections

• Disillusionment with failing paradigms does not free people from them. #corroborates (0.82) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1037
• Deliberate administrative chaos absorbs opposition and enables rule without visible change #complicates (0.75)