Researchers hoping to obtain new crystals from solutions, much as ice crystallises from water, have found that it can be maddeningly difficult. Yet as soon as a crystal emerges for the first time, a chain reaction appears to start up. Crystals emerge elsewhere until the procedure seems simple. Nobody understands why. The explanation usually given is that microscopic dust particles are carried to other solutions, ‘infecting’ them – a typical example of the way in which implausible ‘natural’ explanations are accepted, rather than have the door left open for unexplained action at a distance.
This stood out to me because I saw this once in a waking vision–I am always dreaming–and it hit me that this is a good metaphor for Emergence. It is as if from entropy a latent order crystalizes. In the case of culture, it emerges from what we focus on, what we believe, what we value, what principles–expressed and unconscious–order the behavior of the average member of that order.
It is perhaps what prophets do–think Moses–that they FEEL intuitively this order just below the surface, and they become the first “crystal”. It is easy to create laws and rules, but difficult to craft them in such a way that they feel natural, spontaneous, obvious. For this to happen, there has to be a connection, and a connector. There has to be someone who can see what is there, just on the other side, and who then names it, and by so doing, makes it so, here.
There is a flicker, and then suddenly something that was not, now is. This is magic.
Oh, we are so blind and stupid, now. It is not hard at all to believe that we not only live in a fallen age, but that the falling continues apace. Our slide into oblivion happens pari pasu with the elevation of our buildings into the sky, and the mushrooming of our cities into everything.
Feed the slow, nurture the small. At long last, REMEMBER. Who we are now, is not who we once were, and not as–as I believe–we are one day meant to be again.
But what do I know? The stupid is strong in me too. I feel it.