I stepped away from my car and did something I do nearly every day of the year: I was walking from my driveway toward the front door of my house. My mundane activity was interrupted when I saw green blips from various places in my yard. For me, this was the first sighting of lightning bugs this year (or fireflies, if you’re from other regions). They have emerged.
But in addition to arriving once more, there is also a concept called emergence. Though they were not right next to one another, or interacting (at least in ways we humans might call interaction) they seemed connected, because their green blips lit up in near-synchronous rhythms.
Moments before, I didn’t even know they were there. And now, they were revealing themselves — yes, in different places, but also as a complex, interconnected system. I don’t even understand this, but I can marvel at it.
There are so many ways that humans seem disparate and separate. And we definitely behave that way at times, lacking empathy or even calling empathy something dangerous (can you believe people are actually saying this?). Whether you call it selfishness, greed, total depravity, social entropy, or something else altogether, these are real forces for evil, and they show up in our communities and inside us.
But still…
And…? Still?
Might we be more connected than we think? Might we be capable of more? And right now, might there be circles of human beings working for good — some out in the open, and some under the radar — ready to emerge at the right time?
What if an emergency, or layers of emergencies, is precisely the right time for emergence?
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 