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Rooted in curiosity, care and attentiveness to diverse histories and voices, the collective offers open-ended impulses that anyone can adapt, question or extend across a growing constellation of educational hubs.
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In this talk, Daniel Schmachtenberger explores emergence as a core dynamic of the universe; an answer to how something fundamentally new arises. Emergence occurs when distinct elements come into synergistic relationship, producing properties and possibilities that none of the parts held alone. These relationships are fueled by attractive forces, whether physical (like gravity), emotional (like love), or intellectual (like curiosity), all of which support the universe’s movement toward higher-order complexity.
Evolution, then, is not random but directional; driven by increasing novelty, integration, and elegant order. Humans, uniquely capable of abstraction, can become conscious agents of evolution, not merely reacting to crisis (“emergence through emergency”) but choosing to participate in the unfolding of beauty and coherence. Each person is an irreducibly unique facet of the universe, whose self-actualization contributes to the emergence of more life-affirming systems. From this lens, building a thriving civilization means aligning social systems, infrastructures, and shared meaning with the evolutionary principle of emergence.
In the field of education, this invites us to cultivate learning environments that are not solely problem-solving mechanisms but spaces of synergy, where learners’ uniqueness meets shared inquir; sparking new forms of knowing, relating, and creating that no individual alone could generate.