It seems like some want to be taking bubble baths waiting for the right thought to hit while they burn down our libraries.

I went to the theater recently on a date. I don’t get a lot of time away from everything, so it’s a rare treat that I get to have a date, and rarer still when we decide not just to stay in and roll around. So this was exciting! And it was thrown by a theater group I’ve enjoyed in the past. We arrived and lingered in the lobby with some folks I know, and made friends with some others. Everyone was wearing masks. It was nice. Then the time came, and we were all ushered into a space influenced by Burning Man. It was scrappy, it was cute, but it was not good art. Lights were set to rainbow demo mode, kind of vibe. We all got comfortable. And then we waited. We made more friends with some of the folks around us.

The MC then stood up and told us that the event was about sharing space together. That they had no idea what was going to happen, and that we were just going to see. Emergence! It’s a trend in organizing right now that I appreciate but have some qualms with. So they put on some meditation music and left the room. And then we sat there. In silence. For maybe 10 minutes. Now, I’m all about sharing silence with strangers. It’s one of my favorite things. But I had signed up for a theater event, and expectations hadn’t been set for how long we were doing this for or how things would end. Most folks in the room probably didn’t have a meditation practice and asking those folks to sit in silence for more than about 5 minutes is hard.

I finally held up my phone screen to my sweetie asking if he wanted to leave if this kept up. He agreed, I set a timer for 5 more minutes. The 5 minutes passed. Other folks exited. We did as well. I texted a friend who had stayed there later, to ask what had happened. They said they eventually brought out some art supplies for folks to use, but that not much had happened.

Can you imagine it? A group of relatively radical folks all in a room together, who will never again be just that group of people, with an entire evening set aside to experience something together. And instead that time was wasted. All that potential was wasted.

I have a problem with “emergence.” The way people are treating it is the same way they treated “leaderless movements” 10 years ago. They assume shit just happens, when there are actually some very tired people in a back room, pushing power outwards and uplifting quiet voices, but still providing structure to what is happening. I could have taken up space in that theater show to embody the Quakers, to speak when the spirit moved me to speak to the fear I felt about Trump being elected again. But the expectation had been set to sit in silence, not to scaffold for actual emergence.

“Emergence” in complex systems science has to do with simple rules leading to complex behaviors. Think about how the “simple” rules of physics lead to planets. Think about how the “simple” rules of chemistry lead to biology. There is scaffolding there, that allows the complexity and beauty to emerge. “Emergence” is not “throw people in a room and see what happens tee hee!” It is setting simple rules that guide behavior so amazing things can happen.

I get why the emergence movement has, well, emerged. Too often we jump to a “solution” that isn’t fully baked, isn’t grounded in people’s experiences. Too often, we do not pause long enough for the quietest voices to come to the fore. But I’ve also had people telling me rushing to a deadline in an emergence setting was white supremacy at play, when in fact I was racing against my pregnancy due date. Things do need to change. We do need to act. The most successful movements took action of some form or another.

Do those of us with power and privilege need to step back and open up space for others to lead? Absolutely. Do we need to do anti racism reflection and self change? Absolutely. But experience matters, and while all questions asked in good faith are valid, maybe listen to the people who have done it for years before trying to rebuild something from first principles. We’re settings ourselves back DECADES by refusing to consider organizing experience that prioritizes action. I thought we wanted to stand on the shoulders of giants. Why do we insist on doing everything from the 101? We learned incredible, difficult things during Occupy and the Arab Spring. Why would we throw that away? If you want knowledge shared from experiences other than your own, find those people and ask them to represent those views. Listen to them. Don’t just assume they’re in a random-ass audience and will think you want to hear from them when you haven’t said as such. Tyranny of Structuralessness in another form, I guess.

I fear I helped make this trend happen by not acknowledging the hard work it is to facilitate. That magic doesn’t just happen. You have to find the people with the abilities and knowledge and then make sure they know the group needs to hear from them. You have to set the expectations of how people will interact, and that they will demonstrate respect for each other. You have to be willing to call people out on it when they’re taking up too much space (or not enough) in a way that preserves the vibes. It is not effortless. It is not magic. It is work. And it is experience. But beautiful things emerge from those spaces.

Am I missing some core thing from emergence organizing practice? I have read a fair amount on this, and have loved much of it, and have participated in it as much as I have patience for, but also feel like it’s documentation missing the vital step of “and then you DO the thing.”