The Power of Emergents

The earth’s atmosphere with watery clouds was established about three billion years ago. When creatures emerged with eyes around 100 million years ago, they probably beheld skies something like this. While researching the evolutionary timeline for this information, my attention peaked at the word “emergence,” defined by science as a process where something is coming into being. Among the insights gained from that investigation is that everything comes from something prior. And for us, the process of becoming is a story within a greater story.

The universe is not a place, it’s a story or an irreversible sequence of emergent events. It’s an ongoing creative event. The universe as a whole, and each being within it, is permeated with the power of emergence. 

                                 Brian Swimme, Cosmologist

In the book, The Universe Story, co-authored by cosmologist Brian Swimme and ecologist Thomas Berry, the observation was made that the challenge before us is to discover our personal story within the great “epic of being—the universe story.” The authors reminded me that our personal realities are a construct, that we’re the authors of our experience, particularly in how we respond to what’s happening around us, and the choices we make.

Expanding from a personal perspective and allowing a little imaginative perspective, if the individual stories of human beings going back 40,000 years ago were to be represented by blips of light, and the intensity of each was determined by its contribution to the whole, an animated video of human evolution would begin with dim flickers in Africa that accelerate, spread, and burst into a globe of light far brighter than the nighttime images of the planet from space. A large contributor to that light is the result of human”creativity” and “innovation.”

In whole-systems science and positive-change theory, human innovators are sometimes referred to as “emergents.” They literally emerge from the status quo but they’re not satisfied with it. Having experienced the dysfunction of no longer workable ideas, structures or ways of living, these people dream of something better. And as soon as possible they create or move toward it. For example, the Great Resignation movement, a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, is characterized by people developing a new story for themselves, like valuing a flexible lifestyle and working at home over a regular paycheck and being tied to a desk.

Emergents are often people who place a high value on health, personal growth and spiritual development. They can see themselves as social engineers or agents of positive change. In business and industry they’re working on alternatives to carbon-based energy, sustainable ecology, responsible forest management, animal and watershed conservation, health promotion, nutrition, applications of nanotechnology, energy-efficient transportation, artificial intelligence and the commercialization of space. These and others like them are recognized as visionaries, authors, life-coaches, globally-consciousness individuals, motivational speakers and teachers who champion authentic living, personal, social and global coherence, human potential and positive developments in every field. These people are easy to identify—in person and on the Internet—because they are already walking their talk, setting integrity to their values over fame and fortune.

Less obvious, but equally deserving of the label emergent, are family members, neighbors and everyday people who are quietly living moral, ethical and socially responsible lives, people looking for ways to work smarter and kinder with consideration for all and love of the planet. These people do a good job and take pride in their work, no matter how menial it may seem to others. Typically, they’ve opted out of the status quo and popular culture, at least in part, preferring the more quiet and substantive values of personal enrichment, fulfillment and service to others.

The coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital, and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to affect it in themselves, to lead others to it, and to make it the recognized goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed and to the degree to which they carry this evolution, the yet unrealized potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future.

Sri Aurobindo, Indian mystic, philosopher

Because the contributions of emergents have evolutionary survival value for the planet and all its inhabitants, I see them as paving the way toward a positive and more sustainable future. As the vanguard of whole system’s flourishing, they give us hope. And they deserve to be acknowledged, encouraged, and supported—by all of us, including the mass media.

After a talk at the World Future Society some years back, I identified emergents and their initiatives as part of a panel. An elderly woman commented afterward that she felt inadequate compared to the people I’d mentioned. “It’s just not in me to do that kind of thing,” she said. My response was to suggest she identify someone whose work she admires—whether or not she knew them personally—and support them however she could. It seemed to encourage her.

Each in our own way can shape our life-story to contribute to the whole, if even to pray. Actually, just be being alive we are contributing. Every day. The only question: What will be my contribution, and to what?

Change the story and you change perception; change perception and you change the world

           Jean Houston, Author, Author, human potential emergent