diagram of the chemical composition of coal, which is referenced in Stuart Kauffman's article

“We co-create with one another and with nature, but by the very creativity of the Universe and us in it, we cannot know what we will co-create.

Then what can guide us? Our guide can be a new founding mythic structure that reflects our full enlivenment: humanity in a creative universe, biosphere and human individual, and social lives that are fully lived and that keep becoming. The dream is diversity, more ways of being human as our 30 or so civilisations across the globe weave together gently enough to honour their roots and allow change to unfold gracefully. Our global woven civilisation is ours to create, ever-unknowing, facing, as Immanuel Kant said, the crooked timber of our humanity."

Stuart A. Kauffman, ‘Why science needs to break the spell of reductive materialism’. Aeon 💬

See also: Stuart A. Kauffman (2016) Humanity in a Creative Universe. Oxford University Press.

Image: Chemical composition of coal.