[World Building] Fractal Chaos

Math reflects everywhere in our world if you know how to look for it.  Once you know what a Fractal is, you see it reflected everywhere and it is SO cool.  I'm not going to explain what it is here, look it up.  But the REASON you see it reflected everywhere is because it is in some ways the mathematical representation of cycles and opposing forces.   Nature and circles are reflected all around us, and they have to.  Cycles are the nature of life, birth and death, seasons, breath, etc. 

At some point we may break this cycle through technological immortality, but that won't stop the cylces for everything, and life without death had better have a lot of room to expand, because a species that does not reproduce will die.

But what I'm talking about is a way to make your world BETTER...and its a pretty simple principal.  You don't have to be a master sociologist to know some of the simpler rules of sociology and you don't know need to be a master biologist to know some of the rules about life.  Apply a bell curve, and understand that there will be opposing factions.

In other words, anything you create, ANYTHING, that isn't the borg, that has single minds will have factions in those minds, particularly humans, but I would argue, any intelligent species.  What that means is, if your society, whether it is a far and distant alien world, or simply a slightly different 20th century...or even the real world with a slice of life mentality, understand that while stereotypes exist for a reason, people rarely fit into equally pegged holes.

Indeed, just because people might act like cartoon characters with the simplicity of their actions, doesn't mean they usually THINK of themselves as such.  If your world, or your village or your setting doesn't have a compassionate end of the curve vs a cruel one, and having them both conflicting with each other on some level, then you're really not reflecting nature, and your writing will come across as such.

Living is conflict, whether that conflict is verbal, physical or otherwise.  In a bell curve, there are going to be the most brave members of a society, and the most cowardly.  Now, your story can be about one of those, both, the guy in the middle that thinks the brave and cowardly are both stupid, or all of the above.  But your setting requires in any natural situation with time, differentiation and conflict.  It could be a very one sided conflict, where the brave tell the cowardly what to do and the cowardly just do it...but they will still need to TELL them to do that.

In other words, shades of gray for shades of gray itself are pointless, but differentiation and conflict make a world real.  When does this even matter?

I think a really good indicator is a series I like a lot that upplays the specialness of the non humans by making humans by and large bland and cowardly sheep, while making all of her supernatural monsters some aspect of humanity.  I like this series but this really annoyed me because it didn't seem natural, and it wasn't.  Sometimes making flat characters in the background can make your main ones seem to have more depth, but it shows holes in your world.

I argue that one reason for the success of Game of Thrones is that people sense the realism of the world.  Part of that is because there are heroes, villains, bastards and people in between but there are also factions.  People do not exist in a vacuum.  The 'other' probably have reasons we haven't seen but all of the human factions have things that make them tick.  There are good Lannisters and bad (or at least stupid) Starks.  Shades of gray exist, but there is a REASON for each of them, even if that reason is that some one has slacked off and they just don't care any more.

Apply the bell curve to any species or society...if you can, apply multiple bell curves.  You can adjust the middle...for example, elves may AS A WHOLE, be weaker and more cowardly than humans, but there is still a variety within them.  Failure to have this makes that part of the world as dead as a downtown city block with no people in it.