Life is constantly creating options
From the macro to the micro, life is constantly creating options. Nature is not fixed and immutable, but emergent and adaptive.
Whether you take the planet as a whole, or the ecosystems at a smaller scale—a forest, a pond, a puddle—life is constantly creating options. In our best human practices, we watch the systems of the world and follow them—permaculture. The natural world manifests life in ecosystems, not monocultures. One of my favorite ways of understanding nature creating more possibilities, is to watch water move through the world. Water creates the ways for itself, moving with gravity, moving around obstacles, wearing down obstacles, reshaping the world. When there isn’t an overt way forward, water seeps into the land, becomes a vapor in the sky, freezes into ice. When the time comes, water moves over the land in cloud form and nourishes elsewhere. And, of course, we humans are mostly water. And look how many ways we manifest. —adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy
- see also: emergence occurs at a certain level of complexity
- related: the taoist principle, be like water