The ethics of emergence

Law and public ethics are derived by socialization processes and democratic processes of judgment formulation. Private ethics, in the direction of norms, which go beyond the minimum requirements of expected responsibility, derive not only from socialization processes but from innate desires that stem from our evolutionary history. By following those innate desires that have led to evolutionary emergence, we maximize growth and fulfilment for ourselves and our social circles. Emergence refers to the process of self‐organization and evolution in which systems transcend previous limitations by creatively coupling with their environments. Living, psychic and social systems exist as patterns of relationships in physical substrates that are constantly shifting; they maintain their existence in time by continually reproducing those patterns in different materials. The ethics of emergence refers to the strategies of successful emergence, which have brought us to where we are now in the evolutionary scheme of things and which can guide us into the future. The generic instruction for such ethical behaviour is to combine self‐preservation with openness to environmental influences. In the realm of human interaction, process leads to a progression from morality (behaviour that is consistent with individual and ethnocentric standards) to ethics (behaviour that is consistent with standards democratically achieved through social interaction) by setting minimal standards of behaviour. By the same token, individuals and groups are freed to pursue their growth potential by internalizing elements of the ethics of emergence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.