52. Complexity cannot be the endpoint
Emergence Dynamics and Attractor Dynamics operate in apparently opposite directions.
Emergence Dynamics continuously creates new relations, differences, perspectives and understandings. Each new understanding simultaneously opens up new relations to everything that already exists in KNOWING. This drives complexity continuously upward.
Attractor Dynamics operates in the opposite direction. It gathers, compresses and reorganises ever more relations into higher and more comprehensive wholes. Attractors do not compete to become as numerous as possible, but to incorporate as much understanding as possible into one stable whole.
The universe is thus simultaneously driven towards greater complexity and greater integration.
If Emergence Dynamics alone dominated, reality would ultimately dissolve into unlimited fragmentation without coherence or meaning. If Attractor Dynamics alone dominated, no new relations, experiences or understandings could arise. Both mechanisms are therefore necessary — and neither is sufficient alone.
Yet they are not symmetrical.
Emergence Dynamics continuously creates new differences, but these differences always arise within one and the same whole. Every new relation must be understood in the light of relations that already exist. Every new experience must be incorporated into KNOWING. Every new attractor must relate to the existing attractor landscape.
Complexity can grow without limit — but it cannot free itself from the whole that makes complexity possible.
This points towards the universe’s long-term direction being not infinite fragmentation, but ever higher integration. Attractor Dynamics continuously organises relations towards larger and more comprehensive wholes. Followed to its ultimate conclusion, this process points towards one final attractor that incorporates all other attractors and all possible understandings into one unified whole — the attractor ONE.
Every new experience is still a transformation of the same fundamental sensation. What arises later can therefore never become completely separated from its origin.
Complexity can grow without limit. The whole cannot be annulled.
