The Collaborative Nature of All Creation

Gregory Bateson used to tell a story about a man who kicked a stone and a man who kicked a dog. The stone moved according to the physics of the kick — a unilateral transaction. The dog responded according to its own internal organization — a bilateral transaction. Mary Catherine Bateson absorbed this distinction and extended it into a general theory of creation. Everything interesting in the world was dog-like rather than stone-like. Nothing interesting was produced unilaterally. Everything interesting was collaborative, in the deep sense that its properties emerged from the interaction rather than from any single participant. This framework dissolves the anxiety about AI and creativity that pervades the cultural discourse — an anxiety that typically assumes a unilateral model of creation that never actually existed.