Heroes Not Zombies

If I drive about an hour west from here I come to the edge of France. This particular stretch of coastline is called “La Cote Sauvage” (the wild coast) and it’s where you can stand and look out across the Atlantic Ocean. There’s something life expanding about gazing out over this immense expanse of water. It makes you take a deep, deep breath and fill your lungs, which is one way of making yourself a little bigger! The air is filled with that scent of saltwater, of clean air, and of distant, invisible places.

Many of us are drawn to the sea. We talk of “the pull of the sea” or the “call of the sea”. My ancestors, on one side of my family, came from the Orkney Isles, off the north coast of Scotland. I don’t know if that connects to a Viking thread or not, but I do know that the Vikings were great sea travellers. There are even some suggestions that they sailed as far as the continent we call North America. But, wherever they went, what induces a sense of awe and almost incredulity for me, was that they set out across expanses of sea like this one. They had no idea where they were going. There were no maps, and they didn’t even know if the ocean had an edge that you might fall off when you got there. They just set off.

What were they thinking, these ancient mariners? Did they just think, oh I can see the edge of the water over there in the distance, I think I’ll go and have a closer look? In much the same way that we drawn to go to the edge of a cliff, or a high building, so we can peer over and see what we can see. Did they think there might be new land there? New territories to conquer or treasures to grab?

I don’t know but I think the same questions can be applied to any of the sailors who set off across unknown seas like these. Given that I am a bit of a fan of the “and not or” idea I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a bit of both….with other motivations blended in as well.

It’s a bit of a metaphor for life, isn’t it? On any day we stand at the edge of an ocean, an expanse of possibilities stretching from here to eternity. What lies out there? The future. Is the future just waiting to be discovered? Probably not, is the answer. How many routes can we take to cross that sea? An infinite number, is the answer.

The bit that doesn’t work in this metaphor is in the answer to that first question….”what lies out there?” The future is not a distant place. It’s not just lying there, passively and patiently waiting to be discovered. Why not? Because the future is “emergent”…..that is, as in all complex systems, the future cannot be predicted from even a complete knowledge of the present, because complex systems come up towards “bifurcation points” where they might go one of two ways….towards greater complexity or towards collapse and chaos. When they pass through these points they show this quality of “emergence” which is defined as a state which could not have been predicted from the previous knowledge. When that emergence is of a certain degree of significance everything is different….the system has undergone a “phase change”.

So the future isn’t out there waiting because we are still busy making it. It will arrive when we get there. A sentiment we know well from the advice to “cross the bridge when you get there” (knowing that when you get there, there might not be any bridge, or even a gap to cross).

It’s our imagination and our curiosity which propel us onwards on this voyage of creation. Every day, every moment, even, co-creating with the rest of Existence, the next moments, the next days, the near and distant futures, which are still a gleam in their parents’ eyes.

Pretty exciting, huh? Are you up for it?