Heroes Not Zombies

Herman Daly, senior economist at the World Bank, 1988 – 1994, who is a Professor at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, writes in the current issue of “Resurgence” magazine, about the need for a steady-state economy. He argues that the current pursuit of growth is neither sustainable, nor sensible, pointing out that there has been no growth in the quantity of the physical material of the Earth since it was formed, but that it continues to grow, evolve and develop despite that. This is an interesting perspective. It shifts the agenda towards evolution and development rather than acquisition and consumption and challenges us to think about qualities not just quantities. I was particularly struck by his closing sentences though –

So, in closing, I will only mention what seems to me to be the deeper issue. Is Creation the purposeless, random consequence of multiplying infinitesimal probabilities by an infinite number of trials, as taught by the reigning paradigm of scientific materialism? I say Creation with a capital C advisedly, and certainly not in denial of the well established scientific facts of evolution. Rather it is in protest to the metaphysics of Naturalism that everything, including evolution (by random genetic mutations selected by a randomly changing environment), is ultimately happenstance. It is hard to imagine within such a worldview from where one would get the inspiration to care for Creation, which of course Naturalists would have to call by a different name – say, “Randomdom”. Imagine urging our fellow citizens to work hard and sacrifice to save “Randomdom”! Intellectual confusion is real, but the moral nihilism logically entailed by deterministic materialism (Naturalism), uncritically accepted by so many, is probably the bigger cause of environmental destruction.

It’s one of those strange synchronicities of life that the new issue of Resurgence came through my letter box two days after writing a post about connections which provoked a discussion about randomness in the universe.

And, just to complete the synchronicity experience, I was discussing medical practice with a friend and colleague this week, where we agreed that “co-creation” was the way to go. There is a shift in the way doctors and patients relate to each other, and maybe one of the best ways to understand that, and develop it, is to consider one of the characteristics of all living organisms (as seen through the lens of complex adaptive systems) – that is the characteristic of “co-evolution”.

Co-evolution is a term used to describe how every organism inextricably exists within a context or environment, and as it is an open, dynamic system, there is constant exchange of energy and information which produces complex patterns of linked changes. Think how a group of human beings settling to live in a particular part of the world begin to change the physical environment by living in it, and how the physical environment in which live influences the way they live.

Co-evolution is a creative process, and isn’t this the characteristic which runs right through the entire story of the universe? Isn’t it the story of Creation? Aren’t we the co-creators?