in this talk we will discuss a new approach to the problem of emergence in hydrodynamic systems of collective behavior. the problem seeks to establish convergence to a flocking state in a system with self-organization governed by strictly local laws of communication. the typical results in this direction insist on propagation of flock connectivity which translates into a quantitative non-vacuum condition on macroscopic level. with the introduction of small noise one can relax such a condition considerably, and even allow for vacuum, in the context of the corresponding fokker-planck-alignment equations. the flocking behavior becomes the problem of establishing hypocoercivity and relaxation of solutions to the global maxwellian. we will describe a model which does precisely that in the non-perturbative settings.