A property is said to be "emergent" if interactions between micro-elements in a system self-organize such that the property "appears" out of nowhere. For example, let’s look at water. At face value, nothing about water itself would explain why some lizards and geckos can literally walk on water.
But if we looked closer, down to to the molecular level, we would see that at the interface between the water and air, there’s an ordered arrangement of water molecules hydrogen-bonded to one another and to the water below. This is called “surface tension” & makes the water behave as though coated with an invisible film, allowing lightweight geckos to “walk” on it. A molecule of water by itself can’t have surface tension…..but multiple water molecules do. This makes surface tension an emergent property of water.
The key thing about emergence is that there's no central planner. No one "forces" a particular emergent behavior of set of outcomes, it is a logical consequence of purely micro-scale behaviors. The economy, politics, and the ongoing collapse in social cohesion/order are all examples of "emergent" dynamics. No one is "in control" of the economy (e.g. intentionally driving up inflation or trying to gouge the middle class for evil kicks). Economists are worse than useless at making predictions and all of our analysis is post-facto, ad hoc storytelling. Our current hellscape is a natural emergent consequence of the particular material relationships that exist in the modern world.
The same thing is true of climate change. No one is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere for fun - the inevitable climate nightmare is an emergent consequence of the economic, thermodynamic, and social structures of our society and the complex interplay between each domain. This is why it’s silly to blame individuals OR corporations for climate change as if either group in the aggregate represent an agent with some kind of moral "free will"; the individuals do what (locally) makes sense and they are required to do to survive under capitalism. The corporations do what (locally) makes sense to maximize profits and satisfy the economic demands of the masses. No one is "in control", we are all embedded in a system much too complex for any one person, or a set of people, to actually understand — let alone control.
Unsurprisingly, faced with unfathomable complexity, people default to what they have always done: personifying impersonal forces and talking about them like Gods. That’s why a lot of people seem to think there’s a crew of decision-making elites that exert causal power but are themselves uninfluenced. "The rich" aren't just one part of a complex dynamical system……. they are allegedly the "elite masterminds" of the whole system.
Whether you're on the Left or the Right, the same patterns happens over and over again. On the Right, consider QAnon, possibly the most mask-off example of unfathomable complexity being replaced by insane stories and bizarre conspiracies. On the Left, phenomena like systemic racism and classism (which are very real systems) are talked about as if they have active agency and desires, and not as outdated systems built by people who are long dead. Don’t get me wrong, those systems still create racist outcomes, but the distinguishing point is such racist outcomes persist even after the participants themselves cease being racist.
I know there are people with tremendous power (Governments, corporate, the rich, etc). I’m not claiming that they don't have power or agency or anything. The claim is that they are embedded in the same system as the rest of us. The choices that they make, the models they use to make sense of reality, and the ways they choose to exert their power are constrained and informed by the state of the rest of the system.
NOBODY pulls the strings or masterminds our circumstances. Instead of defaulting to lazy thinking, we can learn to appreciate complexity in its full power, glory, and horror, and use our understanding to be more effective agents of change.
Happy Friday!