And then, what is she really saying TO US and our role and responsibility in this world?

Here are some excerpts from Chapter 5 that I pulled out

This world did not materialize from plans, conspiracies, or randomness: it came from life’s process of creating new and more complex systems. Emergence is how change happens on this planet,

emergence, the creation of new properties that do not resemble the parts and that therefore can never be understood by dissection.

the result of multiple interactions, an emergent phenomenon.
Emergence is how life changes, never from just a single cause, but from a complexity of many causes and parts interacting.

account for the complexity of causes and contexts that came together to emerge

Anytime we focus on discrete behaviors or work to create cultural change by focusing on individuals, we’re bound to be defeated by emergence, just as geneticists were. The world does not change “one person at a time.” I’d like to abolish that phrase— now applied to just about every- thing— because it misrepresents how change happens. To understand emergence, we need to shift our attention from the one- at- a- time to the whole, to the varying dynamics and influences that are clearly visible in individuals but that do not originate in the individual.

At the beginning, each part is acting in isolation, making decisions based on its own needs. But as separate elements start to connect with one another, emergence begins. Individual actions that were insignificant start to have new consequences because they are interconnected. At some point, a system will emerge with new and surprising properties that, from that point on, will profoundly influence the behaviors of the individual parts. What emerges is always surprising because it is so different from the parts that created it.

Working this way requires a great deal of awareness, constantly curious to see how the larger system is interacting with our project, what other dynamics are in play, how people are reacting.

Emergence is a process whereby interactions create something new and different that cannot be changed. Once something has emerged, it’s here to stay. The only way to create something different is to start over, to begin again.

Emergence demands a different relationship with life, where we’re curious, open, alert. The only thing we can predict is that life will surprise us. We can’t see what is coming until it arrives, and once something has emerged, we have to work with what is. We have to be flexible and willing to adapt— we can’t keep pushing ahead, blustering on with our now outdated plans and dreams. And it doesn’t help to deny what has emerged. We need to be present and willing to accept this new reality. This is what it truly means to work with emergence.

We do notice what’s going on, with sadness and despair. But then we go back to our work, still believing that if we focus on our part, if we fix this and that one at a time, that we will be able to change the way things are. We work harder; we amplify the importance of our cause; we intensify our efforts. We know the world must change— it simply must. We renew our conviction that we will be the ones to change what has emerged.

Well, we can’t. The global culture, with all its tragedies and injustices, is an emergent phenomenon. We have to accept this terrifying fact. It came to be from the convergence of many forces and now possesses characteristics that weren’t there until it emerged. It has become a world where the values of greed, self- interest, and oppressive power emerged at a global scale and now supersede all other values. Many of us, most of us, don’t want it to be this way. We still aspire to work from values of justice, community, compassion, love. And we need to keep on with this, absolutely. But no matter how well we embody these values, no matter how important our work is, we have to hold it differently. We will not change what has emerged. We are starting over, basing our work on values and practices that are distinctively countercultural, so outside the norm that most people can’t understand what we’re doing. We need to continue to persevere in our radical work, experimenting with how we can work and live together to evoke human creativity and caring. Only time will tell whether our efforts contribute to a better future. We can’t know this, and we can’t base our work or find our motivation from expecting to change this world.