Introduction

Charles Foster, a barrister, veterinarian-trained researcher, and professor of medical law and ethics at the University of Oxford, argues that human beings are "edge people." In this interview with Unherd, he sets out a thesis that new developments, creativity, and genuine meaning arise at boundaries rather than at centers. He applies this idea to evolution, literature, religion, politics, and the structure of human life.

Background

Foster's career spans several fields. After Cambridge, he worked on the comparative anatomy of the Himalayan hispid hare and on chemotaxis in leeches. He studied the immobilization of goitred mountain gazelles in Saudi Arabia and completed pupilage at the English bar. He teaches medical law and ethics at the University of Oxford.

His fieldwork includes the following expeditions:

• Studies of water metabolism in mules in the Danakil Depression, Ethiopia
• Ecological surveys in the Quirimbas Archipelago, northern Mozambique
• A ski expedition to the North Pole

He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Linnean Society. As part of his investigations into authenticity and identity, he has lived as a badger, an otter, an urban fox, a red deer, and a swift. He describes these experiments in Being a Beast, a New York Times bestseller. He is married with six children.

His new book, The Edges of the World: At the Margins of Life, Lands, and History, develops the central idea of the interview.

The Core Thesis

Foster states that humans are edge people. He argues that people live on the edge of various precipices and are "a heartbeat away from extinction." He describes this awareness as "ontological vertigo," which thoughtful people experience. He holds that humans cannot thrive unless they acknowledge the kind of animals they are and the kind of place they inhabit.

He defines an edge as the point where one thing meets another. Examples include the point where a mortal meets death and the point where one mortal meets another in a relationship that changes both. He describes the world as "infinite individuation," an archipelago of edges that meet and change one another continuously.

Edges in Evolution

Foster argues that evolutionary innovation occurs at the edges of established systems, where new challenges arise. He cites the island of St Kilda, evacuated in the 1930s. Two mouse species lived there: the St Kilda house mouse and the St Kilda field mouse. After humans left, the house mouse became extinct. This left a new niche for the field mouse, which doubled in weight and became carnivorous. Foster presents this case, together with Darwin's finches, as evidence that new challenges produce creativity.

Edges in Culture and Religion

Foster extends the pattern to other domains:

• Literature: He cites T. S. Eliot's view that the truth of a poem is seen "out of the corner of your eye."
• Religion: Major religious innovations required a move from established cult centers to new locations. Akhenaten moved to Amarna, between the cult centers of the south and north, to establish the worship of Aten, the sun disk. The Israelites left Egypt for Canaan. The Prophet Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina. Protestant Christianity emerged through movement from Rome to Wittenberg and Geneva.

Cities and Creativity

Asked about the view that large cities concentrate creativity, Foster argues that urban creativity comes from edge people who gather in cities and become "edgier" by interacting with one another in salons and garrets. He cites several London writers:

• Charles Dickens spent much of his life outside London. When he wrote about the city, he described orphanages, brothels, and other marginal places.
• Dickens's Bleak House opens with the Lord High Chancellor in the Court of Chancery, described in fog and obfuscation. Foster argues that this is not a celebration of the center.
• William Blake said London was the only place he could work. Foster argues that Blake's London is transcendental rather than geographic.
• G. K. Chesterton drew on the "cakes and ale" of Fleet Street and Blackfriars. Foster argues that these were produced by a transcendental source.

Foster states that the idea that edges are where everything happens applies broadly across human experience. He links this to medieval cosmology, in which the primum mobile, beyond the stellatum, was the source of motion and influence for everything beneath it.

The Hunter-Gatherer Foundation

Foster argues that humans are, fundamentally, Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. He estimates that about 90 percent of the time humans have existed as behaviorally modern humans has been spent in this way. He characterizes this period by wandering across edges into different environments, paying close attention to each one, and having no political center. Each place became a political center.

He states that this heritage makes a return possible. He also states that thriving, whether in a city or on a mountain, requires replicating this way of attention. Stasis is deadly, he argues, whether in a coronary artery, a river, or a housing estate.

Literal hunting and gathering are no longer feasible, Foster notes. He proposes metaphorical hunting and gathering: paying close attention to one's surroundings, gathering ideas, recognizing that relationships are central to human life, supporting communitarian policy, and avoiding self-enclosure.

Critique of the Neolithic

Foster contends that the Neolithic period damaged human life in several respects:

• Humans were physically larger as hunter-gatherers than as Neolithic farmers.
• Hunter-gatherers had far fewer infectious diseases.
• Hunter-gatherers avoided the joint diseases caused by grinding, bending, and harvesting.
• Hunter-gatherer societies lacked the hierarchies that developed after settlement.
• Settlement separated men and women, with women preparing grain at home and men working the fields. Foster argues that this gave men a sense of superiority as primary producers.
• Failed harvests in settled societies led to conflict over resources. Hunter-gatherers could move to the next food source.
• The Neolithic distorted humans' relationship with the natural world, turning it from a partner into a resource. Foster argues that "othering" began in this period, and that the individual "carapace" began to harden.

Foster does not reject culture or civilization. He states that hunter-gatherers could not have built Chartres Cathedral. He argues that the roots of great cultural achievements trace back to the Upper Paleolithic constitution. He describes Chartres Cathedral and caves as "friends and not opponents." He argues that the cathedral's orientation toward transcendence provides a check on human hubris, and that the Christian doctrine of immanence encourages a healthy understanding of humanity's place in the world.

Hubris and Centralization

Responding to the view that cathedrals reflected the ambitions of wealthy and competitive elites, Foster accepts that hubris was present. He argues that the Medici bankers funded Renaissance art for two reasons. First, Christian orthodoxy condemned usury, and the Medici sought to escape damnation. Cosimo de' Medici funded the monastery of San Marco, where he had a cell with an inscription expressing his hope of escaping condemnation. Second, fifteenth-century Florence was shaped by millennialist fear that the world was approaching its end.

Good Edges and Bad Edges

Foster distinguishes good edges from bad ones. He states that conscience usually identifies the difference. He compares the edge of a field, which may hold wildflowers, with the same edge littered with broken glass and used needles. Human cultures show the same contrast. Colonel Kurtz, in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, is a bad-edge figure.

Edges can define identity in both positive and negative ways:

• Positive: After the Israelites left Egypt, they defined themselves as a distinct people through simple pottery and a non-hierarchical society, in contrast to the ostentation and hierarchy of Egypt.
• Negative: Thucydides observed that Homer contains no barbarians because the Greeks were not yet a people. Once they became one, they defined themselves against barbarians. Foster argues that this self-definition through denigration is a bad edge.

Nations, Corporations, and Scale

Foster states that nations serve useful functions, such as collecting refuse and repairing drains. He argues that nations overreach when they assume a status they do not deserve. He draws on C. S. Lewis's essay The Weight of Glory. Lewis wrote that nations, cultures, arts, and civilizations are mortal and that their lives are to ours as the life of a gnat. Foster argues that individuals are morally weightier than nations and should determine how nations operate.

He applies the same reasoning to corporations. He describes the tendency of people in modern neoliberal culture to give their work organizations the attention and love they owe to their families and friends. He calls this servitude. Foster accepts nations and corporations as servants but rejects them as masters.

Foster also expresses reservations about flags. He argues that a flag cannot summarize the experience of a person who walks through a nation's landscape. He states that a flag can become demeaning or destructive when people value the nation above the lives of fellow citizens.

He cites Leopold Kohr's argument that the greatest creativity appears in small nations. Foster states that this is supported by historical evidence. He adds that many small nations are less capable of large-scale destruction and better at self-regulation, making them more internally functional and less internationally dangerous. He states that nations "can be great" but must be monitored.

The interviewer observed that the United States, a federation of states, and Oxford, a university of autonomous colleges, show that many smaller units working together can outperform a single centralized structure. Foster agreed, citing the cooperative cells of the human body as a model for political structures.

Contemporary Context

The interviewer noted growing skepticism toward large global corporations, transnational organizations, and broadly applied rules. Foster states that he sees a clear and increasing desire for small communities involved in a larger story.

He argues that a central problem of the age is the absence of stories large enough to give meaning to human life. He identifies these alternatives:

• National identity, which he argues is too small to match the scale of an individual.
• Homo economicus, in which people matter only through their contribution to GDP.
• Progress and growth, which Foster describes as metaphors drawn from cancer biology.

He argues that these narratives shape public life despite failing to reflect human intuitions about human nature. He attributes the loss of a larger framework to the decline of religion in the public worldview.

Religion as an Edge Story

Foster argues that major religions are edge stories. He describes Christian salvation as occurring when a provincial man, rejected by the religious hierarchy, is crucified outside the city and changes the cosmos. He states that the great religions share this pattern and that pilgrimage traditions express the rejection of centers, which Foster describes as sites of harmful conduct.

The interviewer observed a tension within Christianity: it began among humble outsiders and became a centrist force after it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Foster called the conversion of Constantine "a disaster."

Foster states that he observes a significant increase in interest in Christianity. He reports large numbers of conversions in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and charismatic traditions. He describes charismatic practice as a crossing of edges into altered states of consciousness and ecstatic experience, in which a person transcends the constricted self to achieve union with God.

Foster identifies as a Christian and belongs to the Orthodox Church. He states that the Orthodox Church showed a more demonstrable continuity with the earliest church than other Christian traditions. He describes the early church as anarchic and disreputable and cites David Bentley Hart's observation that early Christians would not have been welcome in conservative evangelical homes in the American Midwest.

The interviewer noted that Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw, both figures who had opposed modern orthodoxies, also converted to Orthodoxy. Foster stated that authentic orthodoxy is "deeply unorthodox" and "very, very edgy."

Foster argues that all major religious traditions warn that living for oneself is harmful and prescribe ways to move beyond the self. In Christianity, he states, the self must be crucified before the true self can rise and flourish. He defines ecstasy as the Greek ekstasis, "standing outside yourself," and describes the goal of religion as leaving the self behind.

Practical Application

Asked how individuals can apply the idea, Foster offers three steps:

1. Recognize existing edges. Begin by accepting that one is already an edge person. Foster cites Graham Greene's novels, whose epigraph comes from Browning's Bishop Blougram's Apology: "Our interests on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist." Foster argues that Greene succeeded because most thieves are honest, most murderers are tender, and most atheists are superstitious.
2. Avoid stereotypes. Foster cites Shakespeare as an example. His characters do not fit stock categories. Human beings, Foster argues, are too complex to fit into proper categories.
3. Engage with others. Foster recommends acknowledging the Upper Paleolithic origins of human attention and gathering ideas. He states that people become themselves only through contact with others.

Foster advises against attempting deliberately to become "edgy," which he argues leads to eccentricity or weirdness.