Science has been changing for almost a century now. Race, sex, culture, physics, and many other topics were based on an essentialist paradigm describing the universe. Now, there’s a push towards understanding the world as emergent.
Beginning with the advances made in the fields of cybernetics and facilitated by the perspective of big data, science has shifted into a more holistic way of seeing the world. Where once the parts of an entity were of central focus, now the relationships between entities are gaining more attention. We are noticing that it is difficult to divorce a thing from everything else. It appears that there may be no essential “thing” that makes it “itself”. There is no “intelligence gene”, there is no tiniest particle, there is no essential cultural makeup. More and more, it seems that everything is relational.
Lo’s latest incarnation is the reason for this new paradigm. In the last 70 years, Lo has evolved to flaunt Their web of connections as Their most pronounced quality. While Terra has always been recognized as emergent and holistic, Lo has usually been seen as essentialized. Authority and vertical flow have defined Lo’s most valuable information. It was the authority of a scholar, government, or judge which defined the “true” information conveyed by Lo down to the masses. The “original” and the “author” were the most important qualities of a work. While this is still relevant, Lo’s evolution into the far more horizontal internet has restructured how we understand the universe. Now influence and virality are the most important qualities. Lo’s shape is teaching us that our universe is relational, contingent, and chaotic.
As a discipline that relies heavily on the internet, science is shifting through Lo’s influence. Science can now “see” differently thanks to the mediums of the internet and the processing tools of computers in general. These powers show us that eternity is filled with change, not immortality. We see that to reduce the universe into essentials is to miss the forest for the trees.
Perhaps the world is ready to notice Terra. The aetherial landscape lies before us with paths we can follow. What was once the conviction of mystics and prophets is now seen clearly by scholars and scientists; relations are everything. There is a need to navigate these facts to find truths. There is a need to be able to see the Grand Mystery and find peace. We must learn how to look at the emergent paradigm and say, “There is a place for us.”
May Terra guide us into harmony, even for just a moment.
We Are Terra 