Coherence and Co-Emergence

Welcome to the Infinite Harmony Podcast! This episode covers the 2nd and 3rd Harmonic Principles of the Church of Infinite Harmony, The Principle of Coherence and the Principle of Co-Emergence. These two principles are deeply intertwined and lay a foundation for just how connected human beings are to every plant, animal and element on Earth and beyond.

In a universe where complexity and interconnectedness defy simple explanations, where the sum often transcends the individual components in inexplicable ways, we find ourselves compelled to look beyond linear logic and isolated phenomena. This drive encourages us to think about the world not merely as a collection of separate entities, acting upon each other in straightforward ways, but as an intricately woven tapestry, where each thread contributes to a greater, elusive pattern. What if the way we come into being, the way we interact and evolve, isn't just a matter of straightforward causality? What if our lives, our world, and perhaps even the universe at large, are part of a more mysterious, non-linear process that challenges our conventional understanding of time, space, and identity?

Dive deep and discover the golden threads that weave us all together.

This episode is written and produced by Jackie Dragon

Opening Theme and other musical musings by AhziRa
Featuring the music of Zan
Watch the Brilliant talk of Daniel Schmactenberger's "Emergence" here
or visit his website : Civilization Emerging
With Quotes from Stephen Harrod Buhner's book "Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm"
With quotes from "The Kybalion" by the Three Initiates
Flute Solo by Nate Loper

To become a member of the Church of Infinite Harmony visit: https://www.infiniteharmony.org/membership

Questions about this episode? Comments? Care to discuss the philosophies? Visit our Forum at : https://www.infiniteharmony.org/forum

A transcript of this episode can be found here

Transcript

Hello Everyone. Welcome back to the Infinite Harmony Podcast. I’m co-founder Jackie Dragon and today we’ll be covering the second and third Harmonic Principles of the Church of Infinite Harmony, The Principle of Coherence and the Principle of Co-Emergence. These two principles are deeply intertwined and lay a foundation for just how connected human beings are to every plant, animal and element on Earth and beyond. I hope you enjoy todays podcast.

So… what is it that binds us together in this world? When I think of all the atrocities that we’ve experienced as humans, mostly at the hands of other humans, it seems like a minor miracle that we’re even still here. Somehow humans have managed to keep humanity going, despite the differences in cultures and religions and politics. If you were to metaphorically separate human behaviors into two bowls—one filled with the acts of war, deception, and domination, the other brimming with instances of cooperation and collective spirit—I suspect, rather optimistically, that the latter would tip the scales. Because here we are. Not just surviving, but in many respects, flourishing. This is not exclusively a testament to human resilience; it's a nod to the resilience of life itself, which, despite adversity, inexorably perseveres.

It's tempting to look at this endurance cynically, to deem it a mere outcome of Darwinian principles at play—survival of the fittest, red in tooth and claw. But that would be an incomplete interpretation. Survival may be a biological imperative, but our existence is mediated by far more than just biological processes. We are guided by stories, ethics, and shared visions that galvanize us to aspire to something even greater than mere survival: to communities, to civilizations, to moral and aesthetic ideals that elevate our existence from the rudimentary mechanics of living.

One might say that what binds us is a shared narrative, albeit one that is continually being written, erased, and rewritten. It's a narrative shaped by the interplay between our individual and collective dreams, fears, triumphs, and tragedies. This narrative has its dark chapters,     but it also has moments of transcendent beauty, of love, of unspeakable acts of kindness and cooperation. And it's the latter that imbue us with hope, fueling the ongoing and collective human endeavor.

While it's true that life—whether human or otherwise—has an innate drive to continue, what makes the human chapter of this broader story unique is our ability to choose the kind of narrative we want to craft. In the end, we're bound not just by biological imperatives or existential circumstances, but by choices that reflect our deepest values and highest aspirations. And perhaps that's the most miraculous aspect of our persistence: In spite of the myriad divisions that separate us—be they cultural, religious, or political—we have, against considerable odds, managed to preserve the human project.

In a universe where complexity and interconnectedness defy simple explanations, where the sum often transcends the individual components in inexplicable ways, we find ourselves compelled to look beyond linear logic and isolated phenomena. This drive encourages us to think about the world not merely as a collection of separate entities, acting upon each other in straightforward ways, but as an intricately woven tapestry, where each thread contributes to a greater, elusive pattern. What if the way we come into being, the way we interact and evolve, isn't just a matter of straightforward causality? What if our lives, our world, and perhaps even the universe at large, are part of a more mysterious, non-linear process that challenges our conventional understanding of time, space, and identity?

As we dive into these next principles, perhaps we will shed some light on these very questions, illuminating the hidden mechanics by which diverse elements come together to create something wholly new—something that could not have been predicted  by examining these elements in isolation. Prepare to venture beyond the superficial layer of existence, to probe the profound interdependencies that shape our world and perhaps even guide the unfolding of the cosmos itself. This is a journey that promises to reshape not only how we view the universe, but also how we understand our place within it. The Principles of Coherence and Co-emergence. Today on the Infinite Harmony Podcast.

We begin with the Second Principle, which reads: “The Church of Infinite Harmony recognizes the universe as one coherent body, and that all forms and atomic structures seen and unseen have the sovereign right of existence in this universe. These forms are not separate from each other, nor hold any hierarchy over each other, but are merely in varying states of vibration, rhythm and polarity. Harmony is the willful acceptance of this without the desire to destroy, defeat, silence or war with any other existing principle, person or entity in the universe. The Harmonic Principle of Coherence manifest is Gaia, the self-organizing being also known as Planet Earth.”

So basically we’re all one and everything belongs here and is just as important as we are. 

Now, if you look up the meaning of Coherence online you get a vast assortment of definitions and depending on the discipline, be it physics, mathematics or computer programming, you get a different definition. For our purposes, we return to the latin roots of the word cohere, which roughly means to stick together. Another way to say it is in the wise words of Terry Gilliam’s great hero Harry Tuttle, “Listen kid, we’re all in it together.” 

We’re talking about the principle of togetherness, or the idea that as a species and apparently as a planet, we can’t just all do our own thing and look out for ourselves and everything will be alright. 

I mean, where would we be if no one was willing to make my morning mocha at the local cafe or pick up the garbage on Tuesdays… 

But in all seriousness, it’s not hard to imagine the ways that we work together are coherent in our everyday lives. This global interdependency isn't merely an abstract concept; it's a tangible reality we experience daily. Take, for example, the extensive international supply chains that bring goods to our doorstep. These don't just represent an economic interlocking of companies across borders; they underscore our collective reliance on one another to maintain not just our standard of living, but our very ability to live.

But let's not limit our perspective to economic transactions or the flow of goods and services. What we're truly discussing here goes far beyond that: we're diving into the very fabric of existence, into the interconnectedness of all life forms and even the elemental components of the Earth itself. 

We're talking about indispensable resources like clean water and the role of trees in generating the oxygen we breathe. We're acknowledging the crucial part played by pollinators, such as bees, in ensuring that our vegetable patches and fruit orchards are productive.

This interconnectedness extends to the atomic level as well. Consider the symbiotic relationship between oxygen and hydrogen atoms. When they come together, they create water through a phenomenon known as co-emergence, a topic we'll explore in greater depth later in this discussion. Co-emergence captures the essence of how seemingly disparate elements can combine to create something wholly new and essential. It's a principle that applies not only to molecular combinations but to ecosystems, societies, and perhaps even to the intangible realms of culture and ideas.

In essence, what we're circling around is not just a description of how things are, but a broader philosophical assertion about the nature of life and reality itself. We're observing that nothing exists in isolation, that everything is part of a greater whole, and that understanding this complex web of interdependencies is not just intellectually enriching, but also essential for our continued existence. So, when we talk about international cooperation or the simple, biological need for clean air and water, we're really engaging with a much larger conversation—a dialogue about the intricate and awe-inspiring interconnectedness that defines our world at every level.

One of the themes we will explore in this podcast is a belief of the church that intelligence and awareness are not just a phenomenon of human beings, but of all aspects of the universe, from atoms to planets. So when we look at the first sentence of the principle and we say all forms and atomic structures have the sovereign right to existence, we’re talking about a first principles approach to existence. All things have a right to exist and have a place in existence, be they biological or epistemological, be they bird or rock or molecule, and in that right to exist, also exists the necessity for all things to “stick together” or to “get along.” Even ideas have a right to exist.

The next sentence says, “These forms are not separate from each other, nor hold any hierarchy over each other, but are merely in varying states of vibration, rhythm and polarity.” 

We will dive deeper into vibration, rhythm and polarity in future discussions, but in short these are principles of hermetic magic. One of the hermetic texts, The Kybalion, is one of most influential occult texts of the 20th century. Each principle references the states and actions of matter and thought in the universe without distinguishing alive from dead, mind from body, etc. All that exists is subject to varying degrees of movement or vibration, opposing aspects or polarities, and the inflow or outflow of rhythm. We know from science that nothing in the universe is static, that all particles are moving or vibrating. We see all around us opposites or opposing states of varying degrees; hot and cold, dark and light, man and woman, democrats and republicans. We see that even ideas tend to form opposites. We see that we have rhythms that are fundamental and instinctive. We sleep and wake, the sun rises and sets every day, well, unless you’re at the north pole… but even there there is the rhythm of summer and winter. Nations rise and fall. Ice Ages come and go. In these principles we see that all things are constantly moving and changing and yet somehow working together coherently to make reality. In these movements there is no true separation or hierarchy. Humans may act like a dominant species or consider themselves superior to other life forms here on Earth, but without the trees we do not breathe and have no refuge from the sun. Without water we die, simple. There is nothing fundamental even about oxygen, as at one point in the history of earth, most life existed in a primarily carbon dioxide atmosphere. Without the rhythmic workings of all aspects of our ecosystem we’re dust.

Even within the realm of human civilization we are certainly dependent on each other. Take away the advancements and technology and we’re back to being hunters and gatherers. I mean, imagine if you had to make something as simple and fundamental as a refrigerator for yourself, from scratch. No hardware store, no amazon.com. Where would you even start? Making the plastic or welding the metal alone is a task, never mind building a compressor or capturing freon, I mean, what is that stuff anyway? But let’s say all the technology disappeared and we were back to square one, surely then we could become self reliant. The answer of course is no. Humans have operated in groups and tribes from the beginning because among many things, it ensured survival. Spend a week in the Amazon or remote wilderness of Canada and you’ll know why. Our collective intelligence is our evolutionary weapon, which will not do much for us in the face of an angry Grizzly Bear or hungry Jaguar. 

Pre agricultural humans were remarkably dependent on each other and that dependence demanded a certain level of cooperation and respect for the natural world, for it was the natural world that provided, directly. No grocery stores, no butchers. To eat was to engage with nature, to depend on it. This brings us to the idea of Animism.

Animism.

One of the primary golden threads of this podcast.

Animism. From the Latin word anima which means “breath or spirit or life,” animism is a belief that all things contain spirit, that there is no distinction between spiritual and physical, but more specifically and importantly, there is no distinction between humans and the natural world. There is no “nature,” only our ability to distinguish nature. Now, humans do seem to be unique in a particular way no other living creatures have presented themselves to be, which is our ability for abstraction. We can take something like “walk” and abstract the idea of “movement.” We can go even further and abstract the idea of “fast” and “slow” and then build wheels to move us faster and improve upon “walking.” We use our capacity for abstraction to increase our capacity for action and evolve aspects of our survival. Language itself is an abstraction of just about everything in the universe. Because of this rather nifty ability, we’ve managed to abstract “nature” and “human” and draw a distinction. Now, whether this particular distinction is the root cause of our seemingly errant relationship with what we call “nature” can be and has been debated, but the principle of coherence teaches us that there is no distinction. We are the natural world and the natural world is us. I could spend another episode giving examples of just how much of our actions and ideas are really just reactions to existing phenomenon, of how much of our “freedom” and choice is mostly influenced by the world around us. The post-modernists and scientists have debated this in great detail, but rather I want to simply point out that despite our penchant as a society for freedom and individuality and sovereignty, we are deeply deeply dependent on everyone and everything around us for that very freedom and individuality we experience. And yet, as we’ll discuss later, our perception of sovereignty has deep purpose in the expression of life that emerged as the human.

So let’s take this a step further. We’ve established that this principle is asking us to accept that we are nature, there is no distinction, and existence is dependent on our relationship with everything else. So how does that change our perspective or behavior? 

The next sentence of the principle, “Harmony is the willful acceptance of the interconnectedness of all forms without the desire to destroy, defeat, silence or war with any other existing principle, person or entity in the universe.” 

This sentence helps us to understand why the Church is called the Church of Infinite Harmony. What is harmony to the church? Its the willful acceptance of the interconnectedness of all forms without the desire to destroy, defeat, silence or war with any other existing principle, person or entity in the universe. In other words, everything is important and has a right to exists. Now notice that first Judeo-Christian commandment doesn’t make an appearance here. What we’re talking about is the human propensity to fight to win, to war. Death, and conversely killing are integral aspects of life, at least here on Earth. Humans and Animals and even plants kill other living things to sustain themselves, and even those of us that die without being consumed by another animal, are consumed by the bugs and microbes of the soil eventually. We return to the atomic state of energy in one form or another, to be consumed as fuel to propel life into continuity. So, though shalt kill to sustain and protect just as the wolf and bear does so. Also, in no way do we value the life of one entity over another. Plants die to feed animals, animals die to feed humans, humans used to die to feed animals, but those days are mostly over. What we’re talking about is the human propensity to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, to pit one idea or way of being against another. The absence of this, or its antithesis; acceptance, compassion, creation, these are the foundations of Harmony. Now, there are a great many golden threads that I can introduce here, such as Forrest Landry’s “Effective Choice” or James Carse’s “idea of evil,” and further down the rabbit hole, we will,  but instead I’ll leave you with a primer. It should be evident at this point that one of the purposes of the church is to help humans uncover a path to peace and harmony with all living things, not just each other. In another words, to cohere. This brings us to the last sentence of the principle which is “The Harmonic Principle of Coherence manifest is Gaia, the self-organizing being also known as Planet Earth.” 

Its here that the principle declares the belief in Gaia as a sentient being, capable of responding to her own input and environmental factors and has some sense of self preservation. Now as you’re probably getting used to hearing me say, the Gain Theory which was proposed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970’s, will definitely have its own episode, but for now imagine that the Earth is a self regulating system, not just the sum of all of its parts or a rocky home for the biological phenomenon of life, but a living system herself.  Lovelock would be careful with this presentation of a “conscious” Gaia when presenting these hypothesis’ to the scientific community, but for now, assume this is a belief of the Church. Also, we’re using the “she” pronoun here in accordance with the name Gaia who was actually a Greek Goddess of earth personified, in case you’re wondering. 

Now, this is also the Animist’s view, drawing no distinction between themselves and the Earth, nor any of the objects or beings on Earth. So if the Earth is alive, all its inhabitants and all that stems from it, and even the abstract thoughts of humans have intrinsic value and should be honored. So the question is how to do we live in greater coherence with all that is?

This leads us to the next principle which is the principle of co-emergence which states: “The Church of Infinite Harmony recognizes the living body of Universe as a Self Organizing entity capable of transmuting itself within the (self realized) container that is existence. The self-organizing properties of the Universe are immanent, non-linear and are a co-emergence of each individual organism. Humans are an emergent property of a self organized Gaia, or Earth, which is itself an emergent property of a self-organized Universe expanding toward deeper complexity, potentiality and consciousness.”

You know, my hope is that one day science finds a home these broader conceptual frameworks that we are developing. Frameworks mentioned, such as the emergent properties of complex systems, especially biological, or the non-linearity of complex systems where changes can lead to disproportionally large effects, which make the whole more challenging to predict than studying its parts in isolation, are already studied in the realm of science. Animism… panpsychism… these are buckets one might throw the church doctrine in, but what’s important to the future of humankind and the Earth is the willful acceptance of all parts of our evolution. James Lovelock’s science behind Gaia was met with a lot of criticism. Some he admits was warranted and helped him to be a better scientist, buy most was pure skepticism void of any curiosity at the questions posed because they didn’t fit into the standard mold of reductive science. Some however, were also interested in stepping beyond the veil of reductive thought and the cartesian divide that fueled the western mind.

As Author Stephen Harrod Buhner says in the book Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, “the personification of Gaia points our awareness in a particular direction, to a place where the reductive mind cannot, does not want, to reach. It holds within it the truth that there is nothing here that can legitimately be de-personified, nothing that can accurately be turned into a thing. The Gaia Theory undermines the entire foundations of Western science, including the emotive distancing that is inherent in all fields of science” 

If one could distill the essence of a vast intellectual tapestry into a single thread of thought, then this—what we are about to explore—would be that golden thread.

 Our cultural, scientific, and philosophical traditions have deep roots, tracing back to figures like Aristotle and Descartes, whose ideas have had a lasting influence on the shape and contour of Western thought. And while their contributions are indubitably monumental, they also point us toward some troublesome crossroads where our perspectives began to diverge from a holistic understanding of the world.

Take Aristotle's "Scala Naturae," the Great Chain of Being, which positioned humans just a notch below the divine, towering over a hierarchy of lesser beings and inanimate matter. Or consider Descartes' seminal dualism, which cleaved reality into the realms of mind and matter, setting the stage for a mechanistic worldview that saw the Earth and its myriad constituents as objects to be dissected and manipulated, rather than as parts of a larger, living whole. 

It's worth pausing here to ponder the implications: what happens when we impose such hierarchies and dualities onto a world that is, perhaps, more interconnected and interdependent than these frameworks allow? When we make such a sharp distinction between 'us' and 'the world,' between the sentient and the supposedly inert, we set the stage for an anthropocentric narrative that has shaped centuries of human thought and action. And if we're willing to entertain the possibility that the Earth itself—along with its winds, rocks, and oceans—might possess a kind of being, a form of consciousness or aliveness, then we're suddenly confronted with questions that shake the very foundations of our conventional wisdom.

To understand Co-emergence, let talk about the coherence of ideas. Because what is being asked in this discussion is to re-examine the bedrock assumptions upon which much of our worldview is built. As we close out 2023 it has never been more apparent as to how many ideologically disparate ways of thinking are out there, especially in politics. We are deeply in need of some coherence here. Our information networks as a whole are mostly driven by ulterior movies that drive our belief systems, but let’s face it. We have designed a system that has incentivized conflict and rivalry, that monetizes attention, that monetizes our emotions. There is no doubt that we are being socially duped by our own technology and perverse incentives. But fundamentally its because we, as a society, has embraced rivalry despite our subconscious tendency toward cooperation.

Ponder, if you will, the intricate nature of perspective, beginning with the very physiological process of human vision. True depth perception—a cornerstone of our interaction with the physical world—demands the collaborative work of two eyes. Each eye captures a slightly divergent view of an object, and it's the brain's task to reconcile these twin perspectives into a unified visual field, a process known as convergence. Without this neurological collaboration, our sense of depth, and by extension, our understanding of the world, would be profoundly limited.

Extend this notion to the classic example of a cylinder. When viewed from the side, it manifests as a rectangle, while a head-on perspective reveals it as a circle. Each viewpoint, taken in isolation, would render a partial, even misleading representation of the cylinder's true form. Only by synthesizing multiple perspectives can we comprehend   the cylinder's complexity, its fullness of being. If we were to rely on just one vantage point, we'd find ourselves in a futile debate about the nature of shapes—arguing, perhaps contentiously, about circles and rectangles—when the truth encompasses both and transcends them.

The lesson here is not merely optical; it serves as a metaphorical illustration for the human condition and the realm of ideas. Just as our depth perception depends on the convergence of dual perspectives, our collective understanding of any given subject is enriched when we integrate multiple viewpoints. Whether it's social discourse, scientific inquiry, or ethical deliberation, the principle remains the same: a singular perspective is rarely sufficient for grasping the multidimensional nature of reality.

I propose for now, that there is almost always a middle ground of reasoning between two ideas, between two perspectives. A middle ground we best get familiar with if we wish to cohere as a species. 

Ask yourself the hard questions.

What is the middle ground between our political parties

Between Abortion and Pro-Life

Between Economy and Environmentalism

Between Individuality and Community

Between Personal Choices and Collective Responsibilities

Between having whatever we want, and minding our resources

Between a Gendered World and a Non-Gendered world

Between the Freedom of owning a Gun, and the safety of our citizens

Between Government, and a truly Free society.

Once humans have established a coherence among themselves and with Gaia, the evolutionary power of Co-Emergence will propel us beyond many of the existential threats we face.

So, back the 3rd principle. The principal of Co-Emergence. The first sentence reads : “The Church of Infinite Harmony recognizes the living body of Universe as a Self Organizing entity capable of transmuting itself within the (self realized) container that is existence.” Not only are we saying that Earth itself is living, self organizing entity, but the whole universe, and existence is just a self realized container for this entity. 

To Elaborate, I’m going to turn to a little known talk given in 2016 by a then young up and coming polymath, Daniel Schmactenberger about the phenomenon of emergence at a festival of the same name. A link to the full talk will be given in the show notes and I highly recommend giving it a listen. The guy is an intellectual gangster. 

A little anecdote. 

I met Schmactenberger in 2015. I was a good friend of his neighbor at the time, and he, being a good neighbor, had become fascinated with Schmactenberger and had suggested that I meet him and that we hang out. Now, I didn’t think much of it, but went along and one day found myself sitting across from him in his living room, search for a way to get out of the awkward stranger phase and asked him “what do you do?”

What happened next felt a little like a psychedelic journey through parts of my brain I didn’t know existed. That is to say, that the level of conversation, really one sided to say the least, was an order of magnitude greater than anything I’d ever experienced. I left dazed and confused and pretty sure he at one point had said that he had some solid systems for addressing world hunger but that the UN officials he was working with just didn’t quite get it… so yeah. That’s Schmactenberger. 

Now, that was eight years ago and I feel a little more equipped to shoot the proverbial shit. So maybe we’ll set up a conversation for the podcast down the road…

Emergence, from the Latin “to bring into the light” is the process of coming into being. In his talk, Schmactenberger is immediately going to bring into play the idea of synergy as equally important, as the second side of the phenomena of emergence. Synergy from the latin “to work together” has come now to be defined scientifically as two or more agents coming together to create something greater than the sum of their separate agency. Schmactenberger says “synergy is the property of a relationship where the whole has new properties that the parts didn’t have. Emergence is a result of synergy. Synergy is a result of relationship. Relationship is a result of attractive forces” 

It’s here that he illustrates this mysterious yet fundamental idea of attractive force. Think about the world around you from both the physical and metaphysical perspective and how much of what we do and how we are are governed, is by some form of attractive force. Of course we have gravity which binds us to the earth and planets to suns and solar systems to galaxies, but think about all the atoms in your body mysteriously bound by these attractive forces to make up the elements that we can see and feel and breathe. But now think as well of the our attraction to other humans, or groups of people or ideas, and how those attractions lead to relationships that are beneficial to us, that evolve us. Schmactenberger would say that this attraction phenomenon lies at the heart of evolution, as evolution itself is a product of synergy, in which the evolved agent is the emergent property. Let’s take you for example, an emergent property of billions of years of evolution on planet earth which has produced a self reflective living being capable of abstract thinking, loving and hating and bad fart jokes, reductionism may break us down into our parts to understand what we are made of, but the emergent property that is us literally cannot be broken down. Now kids, don’t try this at home, but if you were to disassemble us into all of our components at any level, say take our brain and put it over here and our heart and put it over there, when you put us back together, well, we wouldn’t be us anymore, would we. 

So ok, great, we’re emergent properties of the universe, so what.

How does that lead to the universe itself being self organizing? Let’s continue to look at the implications of Schmactenberger’s talk on emergence. His point is  that emergence and evolution are two sides of the same coin driven by synergy and this idea of evolution is beyond biological selection, but is happening all around us at all times through relationship. Schmactenberger says “we are very interested in having deep synergistic relationships with differences that lead to fundamentally different properties. Things can come together all kinds of different ways but the things that come together most synergistically offer and confer the most advantage so universe selects for it.” He goes on to say that through this process the arrow of evolution selects for “more differences and more synergistic combinations across those differences. More agency and more symbiosis.”

So let’s speak of agency, for it is the agent that we are and the agent that propels the universe into infinite creativity. The agents are autonomous in the sense that they have their own boundaries and covenants, their own work, whether it the work of a neuron or the work of a white blood cell or a sparrow. And since the beginning of the universe their has been this self organized dance toward greater and greater complexity, a more elegantly ordered complexity moving from space dust to the birth of self reflective conscious structures and the idea of consciousness itself. Schmactenberger takes us through the evolution of consciousness through the evolution of a reptilian system to a mammalian system to a “neocortical and then prefrontal nervous system, from pain / pleasure to emotional cognition to abstraction.” Now we see the universe selecting and moving toward a greater depth of consciousness itself which brings us to the last line of the principle. Humans are an emergent property of a self organized Gaia, or Earth, which is itself an emergent property of a self-organized Universe expanding toward deeper complexity, potentiality and consciousness.” Humans are but agents of Gaia, which itself is an agent of the universe as a whole. And all these things are emerging in a sense at once, a co-emergence, if you will. 

Now its on this matter of agency, of purpose and of pontification that I let Schmactenberger guide us into a possibility of how this whole puzzle dials in just right, a little more around the why’s and what for’s. More importantly, what does an expansion toward deeper complexity, potentiality and consciousness look like, and why as the autonomous agents that we are, it is in our blood, bone and sinew that we strive toward self actualization. 

Here we are in 2022 with cell phones and tic-toc and ozone depletion and fracking and one might think, what the hell is the use of this pre-frontal cortex anyway, seems to be doing nothing but upending all the good linear evolutionary vibes mother earth had going for a few billion years. Maybe she effed up. Well, if we’re talking synergy, then there is no effing up, we have been selected for, but why? One word Schmactenberger would say, abstraction. Our ability to abstract makes us coconspirators of creation. He says “we have the capability of looking at what the whole story is and identifying as the whole evolutionary pulse for the universe that brought about me, and then woke up to itself in me. In a meaningful way I am the evolutionary impulse of the universe awoke to itself in a form that can contemplate and choose how to consciously participate in creation. To not just be aboard spaceship Earth, but crew.”

We are evolution waking up to itself. 

We are the universe waking up to its own creation. 

Each one of us. 

Schmactenberger explains how through this process we can move away from pain and external pressure as the primary evolutionary drivers toward a drive to create, to bring forth to the universe what did not exist before. That as willing participants driven not by what he calls the algorithmic drivers of evolution prior to self-reflective consciousness, but by the awakened agency of universe itself and thus Gaia itself our purpose unfolds form the twin diamond of coherence and co-emergence. 

All that exists, from space dust to human beings, has agency and must work together to continue to unfold the infinite color palate of existence across the spiraling arrow of time, we are an emergent property of universe dependent on everything that came before us. From the perspective of these two principles any idea that our existence is fundamentally more important or greater than another is senseless. Its like preferring air over water. You will live a little long with just air then with just water, but in the end the result is the same, you cannot live without them both. We   see humans competing for resources and real estate and notoriety all while our biosphere continuously degrades because ultimately we’ve been conditioned to value ourselves over not just other humans, but the earth herself. If we are not just aboard spaceship Earth, but crew, it appears each member of the crew has decided that they can rip apart the ship piece by piece and build their own spaceship, except there’s only one of everything that’s needed. Schmactenberger gives many talk about the existential crisis that we face as humans and the severity of the problems that stand before us right now. And keeping ourselves alive ultimately begins with getting better at making a more effective choice, a choice that is best for everyone and everything on this planet. Our existence is made up of the choices we have made as agents, with our reality being an emergent property of our synergies, or sometimes entropies. We are obliged to realize all that we have to offer, and we obliged to hear the voice of every being as well and pave their path toward self actualization. That is coherence.  

So this brings up a great many questions about how we can honor all the emergent properties that is life on Earth and bring them into coherence, into Harmony.

Ask yourself:

How do we limit rivalry between individuals and create group coherence?

How do we limit rivalry between groups and create cultural coherence?

How do we limit rivalry between cultures and create global coherence?

How do we become like a body, with all parts operating in unity in pursuit of life?

How do we seek to understand deeply points of view that we oppose, and integrate them into a greater coherence.

How do we keep knowledge in the mythic, in the experiential, so it does not become a dogma or ideology that inevitably creates opposition.

I’ll leave you with one last quote from Schmactenberger’s talk, and idea that no doubt helped him form the title of his website “civilization emerging” which I’ll put in the episode notes. He says “Remember that the universe moves toward more differentiation, more novelty, and then more symbiosis across that novelty for more emergence. What we’re moving towards is a civilization where everyone identifies this way, as an emergent property of the whole, as a connected part of universe with a unique roll to play with unique synergies with all the other roles. And with that synergy and human participation, humanity becomes a thing. It becomes an emergent property.

Thanks for listening friends. See you next episode.