Self-Creating Universe 8: Making Sense of Life

Clarke develops the idea of emergentism as a worldview, in the sense of the German notion of Weltanshauung, a narrative, or "conceptual scheme," that attempts to bring the aspects of existence into a unifed story about the meaning of life, and to rediscover the sense of the sacred in a reintegration of the art and humanities with the sciences. 

But what do we value most in life: what do we regard as sacred. For Clarke, the emergentism that understands 'human persons as agents and self-creators is a reflection  of the sacredness of nature itself as a self-organizing, self-creating cosmos". It re-enchants the disenchanted universe of the old materialist-mechanical model. Instead of the pessimism of Christianity and Sin and the Fall, we can take heart in a view of "this emergent world of unending creativity as sacred" with the idea of "God" as our name for creativity in nature. But what of destruction and death? There is a a complementarity between creation and destruction, and the notion that we fight against violence and evil is a sign of "moral and religious emergence."

How does emergentism speak to the moral life, about "the good life, about ethical principles, about human morality, about rights and wrongs, justice, honesty, and compassion?" Clarke proposes to develop an "autopoietic ethics," self-generating and self-developing. If human life is self-creative, so then can human ethics.

But does that pitch humans into nihilism, where everything is permitted? Clarke thinks not, asserting that even traditions developed with God's authority "we are still the creators and interpreters" of God's authority. We do not become altruistic by "learning rules or commandments... but by becoming altruistic persons". It presupposes a "long and often agonized 'conversation of mankind', an "ever-developing "communicative rationality." Is this just egoistic "self-realization"? Clarke thinks not; we are social beings in a network of interdependence genuine self-realization means the self-realization of all beings. However, this is not easy, as the critics of both Marxist equality and liberal freedom demonstrate. Perhaps the Green philosophy, with its vision of "close affinity with the natural world" is a better approach, with "adaptive, self-regulating systems" rather than command-and-control. But does this approach extend beyond the human species? Yes, but not too far. Clarke feels that his approach to morality aligns with Buddhism and the Tao.

Now Clarke moves on from the moral life to the spiritual life. What does that mean in an emergent philosophy?

Next: Emerging Futures.