I have a strange topic...
Spirals and fractals.
I have seen this pattern in the universe on most of my forays into nitrous oxide. The curious thing about it is that on each occasion, i seem to have had an unwilled question that i received an answer to. This is me trying to make sense of my Goddess experience. I do not have the tools to explain it in entirety, but understand that there is not one uberstructure, but as many as there are variations of fractal - everything changes based on the perspective you take.
Each person is a little spiral unto themselves, but even the smallest arms interact with everything else, however gently. A spiral from one perspective may not even exist in another (ie. human to lava). Sometimes it's just a light wind, sometimes a maelstrom. As everything swells and merges in the sea of information that is society(and ecosystem), order forms between similar structures.
Larger fractal complexes form and echo onto the Rest(being everything Not-self). As all things are connected, each set pushes against each other in it's own way. We can see these effects as mundane as a neighboorly feud, or as wide ranging as religion and politics - or even as broad as a society wide paradigm shift (ie. global warming).
I have always theorized that luxury is what led man out of the trees. A horde of nuts here, and understanding how to cull without exterminating - led the mutant apes to take time out from hunting/gathering and look up at the stars. Suddenly your sated and bored youngsters are collecting bones on vine, dressing in their kill's skin, and wielding sticks at each other.
Enter war, fashion, religion and agriculture. Personification and Invocation (or Acting as it's known today :) results from recognising the common aspects in oneself and the outer world.
Being connected simply by information, not distance - we see groups of like minded people getting together and thrashing out a true stance on issues and lifestyles previously relegated to the town nut, and the restless teen.
Rebel, Goth, Emo, Anarchist etc. These are the names for those exposed to enough information to have an anti-hope, a sense of futility in their actions - so much that their actions become extreme, spirals search for paths where they can branch out into new territory.
Attraction to the path of least resistance, which is an aspect of the most vibrant forces in the universe, is also present in Us. It's a consequence of how we exist and where we came from.
Unfortunately, as with the earth's crust, enough time and pressure can lead to a catastrophic outcome. Be it as quiet as self harm, or as overt as a school shooting, this complex will rise again and again. It is routine already, caused and perpetuated by a shared, unfulfilled dream.
****
Humans, as Mrs Garrison put it, are retarded monkeys. The satire is brilliant. Developmentally speaking, we are infant apes - so far as our set of Hox genes goes. With more information each generation grows up a little faster, and yet stays young longer. As with the apes, this will lead to our next evolutionary step. Our outcasts are doomed to be our future, and they know it.