Here's a section from The Different Drum, pages 90-95 (this time no copy & paste):
CHAOS
The chaos always centers around well-intentioned but misguided attempts to heal and convert. By and large, people resist change. So the healers and converters try harder to heal or convert, until finally their victims get their backs up and start trying to heal the healers and convert the converters. It is indeed chaos.
Chaos is not just a state, it is an essential part of the process of community development. Consequently, unlike pseudocommunity, it does not simply go away as soon as the group becomes aware of it.
In the stage of chaos individual differences are, unlike those in pseudocommunity, right out in the open. Only now, instead of trying to hide or ignore them, the group is attempting to obliterate them. Underlying the attempts to heal and convert is not so much the motive of love as the motive to make everyone normal - and the motive to win, as the members fight over whose norm might prevail.
The stage of chaos is a time of fighting and struggle. Frequently, fully developed communities will be required to fight and struggle. Only they have learned to do so effectively. The struggle during chaos is chaotic. It is not merely noisy, it is uncreative, unconstructive. The disagreement that arises from time to time in a genuine community is loving and respectful and usually remarkably quiet - even peaceful - as the members work hard to listen to each other. Still, upon occasion in a fully mature community the discussion might become heated. Yet even then is is vivacious, and one has a feeling of excitement over the consensus that will be hammered out. Not so in chaos. If anything, chaos, like pseudocommunity, is boring, as the members continually swat at eachother to little or no effect. It has no grace or rhythm. Indeed, the predominant feeling an observer is likely to have in response to a group in the chaotic stage of development is despair. The struggle is going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. It is no fun.
Since chaos is unpleasant, it is common for the members of a group in this stage to attack not only each other but also their leader. "We wouldn't be quabbling like this if we had effective leadership," they will say. "We deserve more direction than you've been giving us, Scotty." In some sense they are quite correct; their chaos is a natural response to a relative lack of direction. The chaos could easily be circumvented by an authoritarian leader - a dictator - who assigned them specific tasks and goals. The only problem is that a group led by a dictator is not, and never can be, a community. Community and totalitarianism are incompatible.
In response to this perceived vacuum of leadership during the chaotic stage of community development, it is common for one or more members of the group to attempt to replace the designated leader. He or she will say: "Look, this is getting us nowhere. Why don't we break into small groups of six or eight, and then we can get somewhere?" Or "Why don't we form a subcommittee to develop a definition of community? Then we will know where we're going."
The problem of the emergence of such "secondary leaders" is not their emergence but their proposed solutions. What they are proposing, one way or another, is virtually always an "escape into organization." It is true that organizing is a solution to chaos. Indeed, that is the primary reason for organization: to minimize chaos. The trouble is, however, that organization and community are also incompatable.
The proper resolution of chaos is not easy. Because it is both unproductive and unpleasant, it may seem that the group has degenerated from pseudocommunity into chaos. But chaos is not necessarily the worst place for a group to be.
EMPTINESS
"There are only two ways out of chaos," I will explain to a group after it has spent a sufficient period of time squabbling and getting nowhere. "One is into organization - but organization is never community. The only other way is into and through emptiness."
More often than not the group will simply ignore me and go on squabbling. Then after another while I will say, "I suggested to you that the only way from chaos to community is into and through emptiness. But apparently you were not terribly interested in my suggestion." More squabbling, but finally a member will ask with a note of annoyance, "Well, what is this emptiness stuff anyway?"
It is no accident that groups are not generally eager to pick up on my suggestion of emptiness. The fact that "emptiness" is a mystical word and concept is not the deterrent. People are smart, and often in the dimmer recesses of their consciousness they know more than they want to know. As soon as I mention "emptiness," they have the presentiment of what is to come. And they are in no hurry to accept it.
Emptiness is the hard part. It is also the most crucial stage of community development. It is the bridge between chaos and community.
When the members of a group finally ask me to explain what I mean by emptiness, I tell them simply that they need to empty themselves of barriers to communication. And I am able to use their behavior during chaos to point out to them specific things - feelings, assumptions, ideas, and motives - that have so filled their minds as to make them impervious as billiard balls. The process of emptying themselves of these barriers is the key to the transition from "rugged" to "soft" individualism.
