I was watching a documentary of collaboration in the various animal species. And how they know to come together beyond their difference, for the sake of the whole. And it made me think, yet again of our specie. And our need for Community.
One of the things I am learning at One Design, is that Designing for a Community is an Emergent process. Constantly evolving and yet not random.
Emergence needs Synergy. They are both two sides of the same coin.
It takes a discipline of design to think about how we can help foster the Emergence of a self- aware, self-governing, self-evolving, self-transcending community, that actually makes it through our numerous attempts at divisions and grow through the technological adolescence period with voluntarily becoming isolated and dumb, as devices gets more connected and smarter.
Definition of Emergence: Something that was never there before comes into being. Magically..almost.
Emergence is a function of synergy and Synergy is the property of relationship, and what happens between them. Where the whole has new properties that the parts didn’t have. Ever.
Simply put, Synergy means whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts, and emergence IS that greater. A Community is NOT just people coming together. It’s the emergent greater, thats more than the sum.
Community IS the emergent magic
Another way to look at this, Synergy is defined as properties of whole systems that aren’t found in any of the parts taken separately, which also means are fundamentally unpredicted by the parts taken separately.
And yet we keep looking individually for that which can only come forth by coming together. In looking for the emergence in this way, we keep creating emergencies, and pandemics and wars.
Sigh…
So, emergence is a result of synergy. Synergy is a result of relationship. Ok so far.
And relationship is a result of attractive forces which are elegantly designed, like nature, Not random, like Daniel S. puts it.
On this show that I was watching , I got fascinated by the fireflies And how male fireflies at some point have to sync their light, on – off to get the attention of the female. Who will only respond to collaboration and not to random chaos of all of them buzzing. And so , after a few attempts thousands of them start to get it. And some 2000 different species converge to 12, in the simultaneous synchronization so that some males gets to mate and future continues.. It’s breath taking wonder at how they manage to pull this off .
And how much we have yet to learn from the quite ways of nature.
Community is not just people coming together. That is not the magic. If just people coming together would create magic, airports and train stations would be the most magical place. (expect in harry potter)
And so, the role of Design is key in building communities that are connected. If they not connected – the future – our future – is not sustainable.
Buckminister Fuller called love “metaphysical gravity”. In the same way that gravity and physical forces act on physical bodies to attract them, we have metaphysical forces that act on metaphysical bodies to drive attraction. It’s invisible and YET present. We are all connected to this field, if only we keep realising this and leaning in.
Perhaps its time, we start paying more attention to this invisible stuff as we start consciously curiously wondering about building communities.
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