Is there a human need for a certain amount of disorder?

I don’t think there is a human need for disorder so much as there is a natural inclination toward disorder.

Riots are a good example for your question. not the civil riots because of a government law, but, riots of students, after winning a big game, like The World Series or The Super Bowl.

This does not occur all the time, but it does happen. a celebration that becomes out of control and the property damage begins. the students are “letting off steam” and their celebration now is a direct violation of the law. and yes, the beer has something to do with it.

I thing it varies from person to person. I do not consider myself prim and proper, but if a food fight breaks out I am leaving the room. I have no desire to be in the rowdy crowd getting pushed and shoved after a ball game. I do not consider myself orderly in general, well at least not when it comes to filing everything away in its place, or making sure my clothes are picked out the night before, but I guess I am orderly when it comes to physically interacting with others. I do think about consequences, like I might get hurt around a bunch of drunk hyped up people in a crowd, and I don’t have that thing/draw that others have wanting to witness to tragedy. I will never understand computer viruses or vandalism, screwing with someone else’s property, especially people you don’t even know, who have never done anything to you. To me that is just pathalogical.

I’m going to answer your big Q first: Is there a human need for a certain amount of disorder? by asking a related Q from a different tack: Is it possible to live life among complete order all the time?

And I think the answers are pretty obvious: “yes” to your Q and “no” to mine.

Even if you look at something as tranquil and orderly as, say, a Japanese Zen garden, composed of stationary rocks and carefully raked sand, the sand itself represents a certain ‘disorder’ of the seas around islands. A lawn that looks perfectly ordinary and unchanging only looks that way because it’s alive and it grows. The growth is naturally “disorderly”.

Your example of the pie in the face to the prissy and disapproving matron in a film is different: that’s a calculated “disorder” that is carefully scripted to appear to be disorder. So that’s an unfair example, I guess.

But apart from scripted cinema, I think we more or less expect people to “get their comeuppance” in somehow predictably unpredictable ways, such as pie in the face at a formal awards banquet, for example, or tripping on a formal gown on the red carpet at the Oscars ceremony.

I don’t think it’s certain that we “need” these things, but we have grown accustomed to expecting to be surprised… in somewhat unsurprisingly common ways. I’m not thinking well enough yet this morning to do better than that.

I think people always need some element of balance, even if chaos merely serves to put more value towards order, whether on a grand scale or an individual one.
We live by routine, but this needs a break too, hence the worshipping of weekends.
As for specifically breaking the law and going all anarchist, I’ve often figured that such a thing wasn’t a conscious desire for chaos, and if it is fuelled by the concept of balance, then it’s often veiled by perceived necessity or mutated emotional outflow. I mean most criminals or people causing riots and whatnot have their reasons to do it, instead of just foing it for the lulz.
But then the examples are almost endless, I wouldn’t know where to start…
But yes, I do think we always need to flip the coin every now and then.
I always wondered if things like teenage angst, falling in love or middle age crisis was something pertaining to this kinda thing.

I was just thinking of a line I use all of the time, “organized chaos.” I use it to describe NY City. I use it to describe my office which my husband thinks is total utter chaos, but I know where everything is. Disorder has a lot to do with perception I think.

I hope not. I believe the majority of people want order in their lives, not chaos. They do enjoy seeing it with others however, on occasion and in controlled venues (ie tabloids, big screen). But when it touches home, no one wants disorder —unless they are clinically bored with their lives and would welcome any catastrophe to shake things up.

In general I think most people want some disorder so they can feel they’re going to get their shot at “making a difference” or “making something happen”. I believe most of us have a want to create and to see changes we can attribute to ourselves.

@JLeslie you reminded me of a term I coined in my freshman year of college almost 40 years ago to describe the ‘near-perfect-but-not-quite’ (and for that reason, sometimes, even “better than perfect”) look that certain coeds (and guys, too) affected:

“carefully disheveled”

The girls with the slightly windswept (but never ‘messy’) hair, and a little bit of extra color from having just come in from the sun; the guys with the ‘barely frayed’ jeans, slouchy and worn Topsiders, and a ‘comma’ of hair hanging over their foreheads (Ian Fleming coined that phrase describing Bond in one of the early 007 novels). Better than perfect.

@CyanoticWasp Carefully disheveled, that is fantastic!