Editorial - Emergence

Hello Dear Reader, and welcome to Issue 9 of Consilience.

This issue showcases work exploring the theme of Emergence.

Defined by its irreducibility of its parts to the whole, where new phenomenon blooms not from the fundamental units but from the interaction of each of those units. These units range from atoms to chemical bonds, birds, ants, waves, neurons, mycelium, and most importantly words. 

You are here, as a thinking thing, because of the emergence of consciousness due to the integrated wholeness of each of your neurons weaving together in dendritic patterns to create the ‘you’. Those neurons alone do not create sentience, but through their interactions they  create the beautifully complex pondering human. Emergence is everywhere and in everything you see. From the water you drink and the fire that warms your house, to the murmurations of starlings as you look up to see them fly overhead. It lies also in the poetry and art that enriches our lives.

Poetry emerges from the souls longing to be heard and remembered upon the many eternities of the cosmos. It is the heart longing to make sense of the absurd, wishing to mourn the losses of a thousand worlds in a single second. It is the hands that reach out for another, the great riddle longing to be solved. It is love and the need to be loved. And poetry, like all forms of stories, emerges from the elements of existence (love, loss, exploration, curiosity, finding meaning, growth, fear, sorrow, etc.) but is not reducible unto those. Instead it is something new that bubbles to the surface. It is something novel and beautiful, never before seen in the stardust of the infinite. A butterfly effect within yourself of all your experiences and longings that the mind has finally formed to explain who you are among the stars. There is nothing more real and raw than this emergence of human truth and culture that comes about from poetry, storytelling, and art. To be a loving, compassionate, curious upright thinker, is to constantly long and grasp for this type of emergence. To share, as one, the interwoven network of our inner selves with the outer world of our beautifully complex family of life on this planet. What emerges from that, is the meaning of life itself. 

In this issue, you will find poetry and artwork that touches upon the many faces of emergence and hence the many minds that make up the great intricate network of life. We hope you enjoy these pieces as much as we have.

The Consilience Team