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[Stoppelmann]

The quest for Gaia began more than fifteen years ago [1964], when NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the USA) first made plans to look for life on Mars. It is therefore right and proper that this book should open with a tribute to the fantastic Martian voyage of those two mechanical Norsemen … At that time, the planning of experiments was mostly based on the assumption that evidence for life on Mars would be much the same as for life on Earth. Thus one proposed series of experiments involved dispatching what was, in effect, an automated microbiological laboratory to sample the Martian soil and judge its suitability to support bacteria, fungi, or other micro–organisms.
After a year or so, and perhaps because I was not directly involved, the euphoria arising from my association with this enthralling problem began to subside, and I found myself asking some rather down–to–earth questions, such as, ‘How can we be sure that the Martian way of life, if any, will reveal itself to tests based on Earth’s life style?’ To say nothing of more difficult questions, such as, ‘What is life, and how should it be recognized?’
Lovelock, James. Gaia (Oxford Landmark Science) . OUP Oxford.

This is how the begin of the search for “the largest life-form on earth,” began, which contradicts the thesis that it was a new-age belief that became popular.

I found the reissued version of Lovelock’s book published in 2000, with a new preface and corrections bringing it up to date, a reasonable portrayal of his hypothesis, and it incorporated some of the aspects of human experience into view, such as our sense of aesthetics and appreciation of the beauty of a landscape, which is not too far removed from the erotic appreciation of beauty in the opposite sex. This is all the more curious because we know how much work is involved in producing a crop to sustain life, especially in the days before industrialised farming. The biblical expulsion from paradise probably describes the awareness that, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

The book Sacred Nature by Karen Armstrong quotes the “Western Inscription” (Ximing) by Zhang Zai (1020-1077) as an epigraph:

Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother
and even such a small creature as I
finds an intimate place in their midst.

Therefore that which fills the universe I regard as my body
and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature.

All people are my brothers and sisters,
and all the things [in nature] are my companions.

She also quotes William Wordsworth (1770–1850) who “recalled the luminous vision of the world that he had enjoyed as a boy but lost as a grown-up:”

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

This shows that on the other side of the world and throughout history, the sense of being a part of nature, rather than above or separate from it, had an aesthetic quality, when the idea of “conquering” the world was not dominant, or when facing the limits of the ability of the soil to produce a harvest, people didn’t double down on a solution that could force a yield, disregarding the organic attributes of nature, a living being.

George Monbiot in his book Regenesis wrote:
“The more we understand about life on Earth, the more intricate and connected it turns out to be, and the greater its role in creating the physical environment. As the conservationist John Muir famously remarked, ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.’ The soil might be the most complex of all living systems. Yet we treat it like dirt.”

The pun at the end of the quote could be applied to the hypothesis of Gaia form James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis, which is just very inconvenient. That is probably why the idea sparked so much controversy, and critics disregarded the British scientist's work in medicine, environmental science and planetary science, as well as his inventions, such as the electron-capture detector that enabled the measuring of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere in the 1970s. His controversial position was emphasised when in 2006, his book The Revenge of Gaia predicted disastrous effects from climate change within just a few decades, writing that “only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive”.

So, is the Gaia Hypothesis just inconvenient, or what objections could be raised against understanding our planet to be a living organism, with us resembling the micro-organisms that we too have in our body?

[value]

There is some evidence that a 'spirit' of nature (Gaia) cannot be dismissed, while it in the same time cannot be empirically proven.

Astronauts report to experience an extreme transcendental experience of 'interconnected euphoria' when they view earth from space. It is called 'Overview effect on Earth'.

First we should understand why we don't already know of this profound experience, despite decades of astronaut reports.

Widely known in the space community as the Overview Effect, it is little known by the general public and poorly understood even by many space advocates. Phrases like "strange dreamlike experience", "reality was like a hallucination", and feeling like they had "come back from the future", occur time and again. Finally, many astronauts have emphasized that space images do not come close to the direct experience, and may even give us a false impression of the real nature of the Earth and space. "It is virtually impossible to describe... You can take people to see [IMAX's] The Dream Is Alive, but spectacular as it is, it's not the same as being there." - Astronaut and Senator Jake Garn.

(2022) The Case for Planetary Awareness
http://overview-effect.earth

(2022) The Overview Institute
There's more to the pale blue dot than we know.
https://overviewinstitute.org

Many people report to have experienced a 'spirit' of nature, e.g. of a complete forest or of an underwater environment, which is perceived by them to be an intelligence that surpasses them (a human) in greatness. Some mention to have had such an experience with mountains and astronauts are reporting it for the earth as a whole.

What could that 'spirit' be? What is reported might concern in-the-moment 'signifying' on behalf of a priori meaning, i.e. morality in effect on a grand scale. Astronauts experience that as interconnected euphoria.

[Stoppelmann]

There is some evidence that a 'spirit' of nature (Gaia) cannot be dismissed, while it in the same time cannot be empirically proven.

Astronauts report to experience an extreme transcendental experience of 'interconnected euphoria' when they view earth from space. It is called 'Overview effect on Earth'.

First we should understand why we don't already know of this profound experience, despite decades of astronaut reports.

Widely known in the space community as the Overview Effect, it is little known by the general public and poorly understood even by many space advocates. Phrases like "strange dreamlike experience", "reality was like a hallucination", and feeling like they had "come back from the future", occur time and again. Finally, many astronauts have emphasized that space images do not come close to the direct experience, and may even give us a false impression of the real nature of the Earth and space. "It is virtually impossible to describe... You can take people to see [IMAX's] The Dream Is Alive, but spectacular as it is, it's not the same as being there." - Astronaut and Senator Jake Garn.

(2022) The Case for Planetary Awareness
http://overview-effect.earth

(2022) The Overview Institute
There's more to the pale blue dot than we know.
https://overviewinstitute.org

Many people report to have experienced a 'spirit' of nature, e.g. of a complete forest or of an underwater environment, which is perceived by them to be an intelligence that surpasses them (a human) in greatness. Some mention to have had such an experience with mountains and astronauts are reporting it for the earth as a whole.

What could that 'spirit' be? What is reported might concern in-the-moment 'signifying' on behalf of a priori meaning, i.e. morality in effect on a grand scale. Astronauts experience that as interconnected euphoria.

Good points.

I wrote elsewhere: "What ... extinction events ... show is that the romantic notion that Gaia maternally cares for life on the planet is far from the truth, no matter how we perceive it. However, Lovelock did not really claim that, but rather that was the influence of New Age groups that romanticized his hypothesis. Rather, life on Earth is a competition between species trying to survive in the conditions they find. To me, the most interesting part is the fact that after all the species that have evolved and then died out, a species has evolved that not only survives, but develops a relationship with nature, discovers nature's ability to provide for our diverse needs, and is capable of a consciousness beyond what we have observed in other species. As human wisdom traditions suggest, it is a mixed bag when humanity grows, a potential blessing and a curse at the same time. It would seem that the division between good and evil is the innate potential we possess to view the planet either narrowly or broadly, either from the perspective of ownership and exploitation or of relinquishing aspirations of dominion, focusing on cooperating with, and supporting life-sustaining functions, enriching nature with our imagination but blending into it rather than breaking out of it. In this way, the intuition of a vibrant, living organism that tolerates, even supports, our existence could describe the relationship between humanity and the planet. After all, it is the only known bearer of organic life in our vicinity, at least within 14 light-years of cold, inhospitable space. 

[value]

Good points.

I wrote elsewhere: "What ... extinction events ... show is that the romantic notion that Gaia maternally cares for life on the planet is far from the truth, no matter how we perceive it. However, Lovelock did not really claim that, but rather that was the influence of New Age groups that romanticized his hypothesis. Rather, life on Earth is a competition between species trying to survive in the conditions they find. To me, the most interesting part is the fact that after all the species that have evolved and then died out, a species has evolved that not only survives, but develops a relationship with nature, discovers nature's ability to provide for our diverse needs, and is capable of a consciousness beyond what we have observed in other species.

Has consciousness ever been observed? Recent scientific studies (2019) have shown that Orca whales have more 'gray matter' (spindle cortical neurons) than humans. Those type of neurons are what makes a human brain 'special' compared to animal brains according to the status quo of science. There is literally no other candidate to explain human intelligence/consciousness when for example a human brain is compared to that of an elpehant. The whale brain also contains a much more complex brain system that is involved in emotions.

Are whales deep thinkers?
Whale and dolphin brains contain specialized brain cells called spindle neurons. These are associated with advanced abilities such as recognising, remembering, reasoning, communicating, perceiving, adapting to change, problem-solving and understanding. So it seems they are deep thinkers! Not only that, but the part of their brain which processes emotions (limbic system) appears to be more complex than our own.

Whale brain vs human brain
whale-vs-human-brain.jpeg (17.77 KiB) Viewed 1676 times

A recent publication that cited many modern philosophers argued that the destiny of the human species might be to transform into something like a whale.

(2021) Dolphin intelligence and the future of philosophy
Plausibly since Homo erectus, our very physiology has been moulded by our inventions. Moreover, it was technology that made humans philosophical.

We don’t see evidence of supercivilisations across the galaxy because the only ones that persist are the ones that give up the risky path of technology and instead pursue immersion in nature.

Ageing civilisations either self-destruct or shift to become something like a whale. The Russian astrophysicist Vladimir M Lipunov speculated that, across the Universe, the scientific mindset recurrently evolves, discovers all there is to know and, having exhausted its compelling curiosity, proceeds to wither away and become something like a whale.

By 1978, the philosophers Arkadiy Ursul and Yuri Shkolenko wrote of such conjectures – concerning the ‘possible rejection in the future of the “technological way” of development’ – and reflected that this would be tantamount to humanity’s ‘transformation into something like dolphins’.

Could whales or dolphins be made to 'bite the apple' of science?
https://aeon.co/essays/dolphin-intellig ... mic-future

As human wisdom traditions suggest, it is a mixed bag when humanity grows, a potential blessing and a curse at the same time. It would seem that the division between good and evil is the innate potential we possess to view the planet either narrowly or broadly, either from the perspective of ownership and exploitation or of relinquishing aspirations of dominion, focusing on cooperating with, and supporting life-sustaining functions, enriching nature with our imagination but blending into it rather than breaking out of it. In this way, the intuition of a vibrant, living organism that tolerates, even supports, our existence could describe the relationship between humanity and the planet. After all, it is the only known bearer of organic life in our vicinity, at least within 14 light-years of cold, inhospitable space.

In my opinion the planet might be happy with humans.

I recently listened to a podcast that said 'While humans can be the great destroyers of the planet, they can also be the saviours of the planet'.

I once replied the following in a response to Pattern-chaser, a self proclaimed Gaian-Daoist .

Why would any sentient species want to support or aid the plague species that is destroying the world we all share? Surely sentient creatures would wish to oppose humanity in every way that they can? [Gaia again! ]

By asking the question why you essentially provide evidence for potential. Humans could make a mistake, but as is evident from your post, it may not intend to do so.

If nature has a purpose then humans may hold exceptional potential to serve nature's purpose well.

Philosophy could be held responsible. The potential for moral consideration in an individual - when made evident - can become a requirement or responsibility in the face of dignity. That requirement would be a cultural demand which is a very strong demand.

Philosopher Henry David Thoreau once mentioned mentioned the following with regard moral development of the human specie:

“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”

My reasoning would be: Barbarians reflect on cruelty in nature to fuel cruelty. Moral beings reflect on reason to become reasonable.

What is good? This question is where morality starts in my opinion and where humanity finds infinite growth potential not only to secure its future but to go 'beyond' what exists today.

It is the facilitation of urgency in the enhancement of moral consideration potential within humanity that is required to secure humanity's future on the planet, in my opinion.

"When humanity is to secure its future and to achieve an optimal path, it would be case that humanity is set to enhance its moral consideration potential with everlasting urgency, to be certain that whatever path it has chosen, has been given the right chance, to have been the right path."

[Stoppelmann]

 
Has consciousness ever been observed? Recent scientific studies (2019) have shown that Orca whales have more 'gray matter' (spindle cortical neurons) than humans. Those type of neurons are what makes a human brain 'special' compared to animal brains according to the status quo of science. There is literally no other candidate to explain human intelligence/consciousness when for example a human brain is compared to that of an elpehant. The whale brain also contains a much more complex brain system that is involved in emotions. 

Are whales deep thinkers? 

Whale and dolphin brains contain specialized brain cells called spindle neurons. These are associated with advanced abilities such as recognising, remembering, reasoning, communicating, perceiving, adapting to change, problem-solving and understanding. So it seems they are deep thinkers! Not only that, but the part of their brain which processes emotions (limbic system) appears to be more complex than our own. 

A recent publication that cited many modern philosophers argued that the destiny of the human species might be to transform into something like a whale.

 
I like this train of thought, because it acknowledges the possibility of consciousness being primary and that all living creatures have access to that primary knowledge with varying abilities of bringing that to expression. According to this hypothesis, a consciousness awakening in an ocean would adapt to the physical presence it finds itself in, with its specific awareness from that perspective. It would be a welcome turn towards recognising the mind of animals as something we could communicate with, and consequently, not something we should eat. 

Whether our evolution would put us back in the water overlooks the fact that we have marine life and land life, and the means of expression of human beings has excelled, so that under circumstances, we can reach out to other life forms where we find the advanced abilities you speak of. The whales, for example, do not have this ability to adapt to the living conditions of land species, despite their brain potential. What their brains can do is something that we need to find out quickly, and stop that slaughter that they suffer, especially if the whale is capable of complex emotions.  

But the same goes for all animals with which we can communicate, as numerous videos of animals recognising beneficiary humans have shown, like with Jane Goodall, or the time when Robin Williams sat down with a gorilla, but there are so many examples that show that if human beings can overcome their prejudice, there can be an interaction with animals over and above what we experience with our pets, who are solely orientated on us. 

 
(2021) Dolphin intelligence and the future of philosophy 

Plausibly since Homo erectus, our very physiology has been moulded by our inventions. Moreover, it was technology that made humans philosophical.  

We don’t see evidence of supercivilisations across the galaxy because the only ones that persist are the ones that give up the risky path of technology and instead pursue immersion in nature. 

Ageing civilisations either self-destruct or shift to become something like a whale. The Russian astrophysicist Vladimir M Lipunov speculated that, across the Universe, the scientific mindset recurrently evolves, discovers all there is to know and, having exhausted its compelling curiosity, proceeds to wither away and become something like a whale.  

By 1978, the philosophers Arkadiy Ursul and Yuri Shkolenko wrote of such conjectures – concerning the ‘possible rejection in the future of the “technological way” of development’ – and reflected that this would be tantamount to humanity’s ‘transformation into something like dolphins’. 

Could whales or dolphins be made to 'bite the apple' of science? 

https://aeon.co/essays/dolphin-intellig ... mic-future

 
This comes very close to the opinion that I have developed over time, having once been an avid science fiction reader, that life which developed far earlier than us and have survived eventually looked at space and the yawning distances between galaxies and realised that they are part of the planet they live on. It is then a question of how to make life sustainable, how to truly become carers for their environment, and keep the diversity that the planet provides. This kind of attitude has been around on earth for some time, but hasn’t been leading our civilisation, but rather our societies chase illusions that threaten the coexistence of species, and the depletion of resources. 

We also have to deal with the moods of the solar system, and movement of the various ‘loose’ bodies between the planets, and the structural upheavals of tectonic plates in motion, climate change, etc., so there is a lot to do to survive, let alone to develop, and overcome our carnal nature. Technology might help us there, but I think the best technology would be the kind that helps us ride the wave of turbulence that is there. That might include occupying the sea, who knows? 

 
In my opinion the planet might be happy with humans. 

I recently listened to a podcast that said 'While humans can be the great destroyers of the planet, they can also be the saviours of the planet'. 

I once replied the following in a response to @Pattern-chaser, a self proclaimed Gaian-Daoist . 

Why would any sentient species want to support or aid the plague species that is destroying the world we all share? Surely sentient creatures would wish to oppose humanity in every way that they can? [Gaia again! ] 

By asking the question why you essentially provide evidence for potential. Humans could make a mistake, but as is evident from your post, it may not intend to do so. 

If nature has a purpose then humans may hold exceptional potential to serve nature's purpose well. 

 

 
I agree, like I said, if we can focus on cooperating with, and supporting life-sustaining functions, enriching nature with our imagination but blending into it rather than breaking out of it, we could be co-creators on the planet. I think that an open mind can see that as some kind of calling, and I am convinced that many traditions were speaking about that potential, albeit not in the way we do today, after seeing our technological potential – for good or evil. 

 

Philosophy could be held responsible. The potential for moral consideration in an individual - when made evident - can become a requirement or responsibility in the face of dignity. That requirement would be a cultural demand which is a very strong demand. 

Philosopher Henry David Thoreau once mentioned mentioned the following with regard moral development of the human specie: 

“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”

I think that philosophy has been a dangerous occupation in the past, delivering new paradigms to people who wanted everything to stay the same meant that they could lose their lives, and many did. Others were ostracised, or duly ignored, and so they went off and did their thing, leaking their understanding into society, which generally only caused a fan-base to build, but had little consequences. I was after wars, political upheavals, revolutions and the like that people realigned themselves to new ideas, but before then it was a struggle. The same can be said today, we have the extreme ‘liberal’ attitude and the extreme ‘authoritarian’ attitude at loggerheads with each other, whereby they are often difficult to distinguish from each other, because the libertarian often takes on an authoritarian approach. The road to wisdom runs between the extremes, balancing the opposites. 

 
My reasoning would be: Barbarians reflect on cruelty in nature to fuel cruelty. Moral beings reflect on reason to become reasonable. 

What is good? This question is where morality starts in my opinion and where humanity finds infinite growth potential not only to secure its future but to go 'beyond' what exists today. 

It is the facilitation of urgency in the enhancement of moral consideration potential within humanity that is required to secure humanity's future on the planet, in my opinion. 

"When humanity is to secure its future and to achieve an optimal path, it would be case that humanity is set to enhance its moral consideration potential with everlasting urgency, to be certain that whatever path it has chosen, has been given the right chance, to have been the right path." 

 
I think that what influences us most is the habitual way we see things, and there tends to be either a narrow, prickly way, or a wide, gooey way of thinking (Alan Watts). In reality, we need both and people like Iain McGilchrist have shown that these attitudes reflect our brain hemispheres, which should work together, but instead we tend to one side or the other. We need the wide perspective to observe the big picture, the connections between things and people, and we need the narrow perspective to identify and investigate, but we tend to ignore the big picture in favour of the narrow perspective. It is a matter of habit, and bad habits can be changed. 

[Pattern-chaser]

I once replied the following in a response to Pattern-chaser, a self proclaimed Gaian-Daoist .

Why would any sentient species want to support or aid the plague species that is destroying the world we all share? Surely sentient creatures would wish to oppose humanity in every way that they can? [Gaia again! ]

By asking the question why you essentially provide evidence for potential. Humans could make a mistake, but as is evident from your post, it may not intend to do so.

If nature has a purpose then humans may hold exceptional potential to serve nature's purpose well.

That seems unlikely. Humans do not even admit the existence of Nature, as such, but only of a world comprising humans, and things for humans to use as they see fit. The perspective of humanity (as a whole) directly and violently opposes any and all Gaian sentiments.

[Stoppelmann]

I once replied the following in a response to Pattern-chaser, a self proclaimed Gaian-Daoist .

Why would any sentient species want to support or aid the plague species that is destroying the world we all share? Surely sentient creatures would wish to oppose humanity in every way that they can? [Gaia again! ]

By asking the question why you essentially provide evidence for potential. Humans could make a mistake, but as is evident from your post, it may not intend to do so.

If nature has a purpose then humans may hold exceptional potential to serve nature's purpose well.

That seems unlikely. Humans do not even admit the existence of Nature, as such, but only of a world comprising humans, and things for humans to use as they see fit. The perspective of humanity (as a whole) directly and violently opposes any and all Gaian sentiments.

I assume that you are human? I definitely am, and my potential seems real to me...

[Sy Borg]

The Earth is clearly alive. I know this from personal experience, being alive myself, and being a part of the Earth. I also notice many other living parts of the Earth. Everywhere I look I see living parts of the planet, some active, some dormant.

It is as absurd to think of rocks as being "dead" as it is to think of the water, minerals, compounds, proteins and chromosomes in our bodies as dead. In fact, according to orthodoxy, our cells do not qualify as "life".

Living systems are right before our eyes and under our feet, but they are taken for granted. We don't live on the Earth, but in it. Just because the atmosphere is dynamic and does not appear on maps and globes, does not make it apart from the planet. It's as much a part of the planet as our own microbial clouds. So we live in the Earth's atmosphere, right at the juncture with the solids and fluids of the surface.

Astronauts visiting the ISS routinely report life-changing perspective changes on seeing the dynamic Earth below them in all its activity and phases. It's no doubt much harder to have a clear overview from within a system, as we humans usually are. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech captures this, in part.

Look around. Everything and everyone is a piece of you. Or you are a piece of them. Or you are pieces of the same thing. We are the Earth.

However, I don't agree with Lovelock that humanity is destroying Gaia. Rather, I think Gaia is metamorphosing and humanity is a change agent - entirely subject to Gaia, and far less in control than we like to think. We humans been shaped and controlled by our environments from the start. The illusion that humanity is in control of itself comes because we have volition as individuals.

Does humanity en mass have volition? No way. Humanity has always been a hot mess, finding ever more novel ways of careening out of control.

Gaia is 4.6 billion yeas old. In a billion years' time, the Sun will have heated up and all of the oceans will boil away, creating a steaming atmosphere. Then the Earth will more closely resemble Venus than today's Blue Marble. Thus, the planet is 80% into its life. It has 20% left. My own guess is that Gaia is operating like a monocyclic plant, which goes to seed towards the end of its life. The act of reproduction kills it, inducing senescence.

Increasingly, humanity will send 3D printers (made from Earthly materials) filled with blueprints of how to create structures conceived on Earth. In other words, spores*. So I don't see humans as destroying Gaia any more than I consider the enzymes of a pupa to be destroying the metamorphosing insect. We are part of the system.

I sometimes wonder about humanity's denial about their fairly obvious existential situation as part of an active planet. Why would parts of Gaia be in denial about its existence? Immaturity? Sickness? Or maybe what we think about it is irrelevant to everyone but ourselves?

That's why Gaia is not science. Once you accept the concept, what do you do with it? Global systems such as weather and tectonics are already being studied. To me, the value of Gaia is an appreciation that we are all in this together on Spaceship Earth** - humans, plants, animals, fungi, microbes, viruses, oceans, rocks, technology et al. This view leads me in more ethical directions that I might have otherwise considered.



* Sticklers will say that's not actually reproduction because the blueprints don't show how to create an entire planet, only particular items. That, however, misses the point. Analogies are seldom exact. Reality operates via quasi-fractals rather than true fractals.


** Earth is a complex entity, so it can be thought about in multiple ways. Gaia. Spaceship Earth. A mine. A savage jungle. An oasis in space. God. Goddess. Heaven. Hell. Somewhere in between. Home.

[value]

I once replied the following in a response to Pattern-chaser, a self proclaimed Gaian-Daoist .

Why would any sentient species want to support or aid the plague species that is destroying the world we all share? Surely sentient creatures would wish to oppose humanity in every way that they can? [Gaia again! ]

By asking the question why you essentially provide evidence for potential. Humans could make a mistake, but as is evident from your post, it may not intend to do so.

If nature has a purpose then humans may hold exceptional potential to serve nature's purpose well.

That seems unlikely. Humans do not even admit the existence of Nature, as such, but only of a world comprising humans, and things for humans to use as they see fit. The perspective of humanity (as a whole) directly and violently opposes any and all Gaian sentiments.

My argument was that by saying that you essentially prove the opposite. It seems that you do admit the existence of Nature or attempt to reach it through participation in philosophical discussions.

It is the same as philosopher William James's argument that people are naturally inclined to a state of war to then create a theory to prevent war (William James is one of the founders of pacifism or anti-war philosophy). Why would otherwise be possible? Why would William James intend to ‘strive against nature’ and formulate a moral theory to prevent war?

"The plain truth is that people want war. They want it anyhow; for itself; and apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the final bouquet of life’s fireworks. The born soldiers want it hot and actual. The non-combatants want it in the background, and always as an open possibility, to feed imagination on and keep excitement going."

My argument is that it is 'lack of reason' (lack of moral consideration potential) that causes an apparent inclination to war or to be incapable of Gaian sentiments. That explains why philosophers have attempted to formulate a moral theory to prevent war. It is a formulation on behalf of reason.

A lack of potential for moral consideration (reason) is the origin of the supposed natural inclination to a ‘state of war’ or incapability of Gaian sentiments, and ethically, there can be no justification for acts that originate from a lack of reason. One can hide behind error, but error should not be the intended result.

Philosophy should be held responsible.

It is a sign of higher intelligence when the human shows potential for moral consideration (an intellectual capacity). As such, it can be demanded on behalf of human dignity. A lack of moral consideration can become unjust when the potential for it (in an individual) can be made evident. The result is a cultural evolution that improves moral consideration potential which seems to be what Henry David Thoreau meant with his quote:

“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”

Official sources report that the whole world is going vegan.

(2018) Millennials Are Driving The Worldwide Shift Away From Meat
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpel ... from-meat/

Humans may not intend to do harm to Nature. Sy Borg recently shared her interaction with ants which highlights the spectrum in which humans either neglect or consider the ant morally.

The situation may be like humans and ants. If ants are not being invasive, most people don't wish them harm, and will avoid stepping on them (if convenient haha). I sometimes leave out my breadboard for them to finish the fine cleaning work. So we feel benevolently towards them (if they don't sin!) but we ultimately don't care if, say, one ant kills another*.

* Unless the killing is shown in close-up on YouTube, in which case much heartbreak will follow

[Stoppelmann]

The Earth is clearly alive. I know this from personal experience, being alive myself, and being a part of the Earth. I also notice many other living parts of the Earth. Everywhere I look I see living parts of the planet, some active, some dormant.

It is as absurd to think of rocks as being "dead" as it is to think of the water, minerals, compounds, proteins and chromosomes in our bodies as dead. In fact, according to orthodoxy, our cells do not qualify as "life".

I have watched cells under the microscope doing their thing and wondered, if they were sentient, would they realise that what they are doing serves a larger organism? The more we look at the microscopic build of a body, whatever creature it belongs to, the more amazing it is how organised the cells are, doing their job. Of course, there are those that would point to the fact that organisms grow old and die, that there are cancerous cells etc., and attempt to burst my bubble of fascination. Nothing is “perfect” in the sense that it amounts to a physical perpetual mobile, that carries on for ever without some additional external energy, but isn’t that just our frustration wishing?

Living systems are right before our eyes and under our feet, but they are taken for granted. We don't live on the Earth, but in it. Just because the atmosphere is dynamic and does not appear on maps and globes, does not make it apart from the planet. It's as much a part of the planet as our own microbial clouds. So we live in the Earth's atmosphere, right at the juncture with the solids and fluids of the surface.

Astronauts visiting the ISS routinely report life-changing perspective changes on seeing the dynamic Earth below them in all its activity and phases. It's no doubt much harder to have a clear overview from within a system, as we humans usually are. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech captures this, in part.

Look around. Everything and everyone is a piece of you. Or you are a piece of them. Or you are pieces of the same thing. We are the Earth.

I see that we are close on this, and your examples would be mine too, although I started off from Alan Watts, who had a particular influence on me. Working in nursing gave me the additional awareness of the complexity of physicality, healing deep wounds over time, or watching a perforation wound close inside 20 minutes after a patient pulled their percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube, which goes through the abdomen into the stomach. There are microscopic workers closing those wounds quickly, so that if we are too slow, the perforation has to be done again. Please excuse my enthusiasm.

The same principle happens in the world when, for example, nature is allowed to take over, like in the rewilding the San Joaquin Valley, which set the course for the largest recovery of species on record. If you look into it, our tendency towards monocultures and ridding ourselves of “pests” has often led to multiple problems with the fertility of the ground, even the trees react to what we do. As the biologist Rupert Sheldrake said, if you dissect organisms, the life is gone. The same goes for mentally dissecting organisms, which means you know longer see the connections, or place the particular in the whole.

However, I don't agree with Lovelock that humanity is destroying Gaia. Rather, I think Gaia is metamorphosing and humanity is a change agent - entirely subject to Gaia, and far less in control than we like to think. We humans been shaped and controlled by our environments from the start. The illusion that humanity is in control of itself comes because we have volition as individuals.

Does humanity en mass have volition? No way. Humanity has always been a hot mess, finding ever more novel ways of careening out of control.

If you look again, Lovelock was warning humanity of losing the environment it needs to live. He said that Gaia reacts to situations like the catastrophic extinction events by producing new species, or species come to the fore that were until then in the background, but it does this in time spans that go far beyond our lifetimes, and it does so without emotion. There is no preference for humanity, even though our potential is obvious. It is true that we have adapted to our circumstances, but evidence is gathering that at the end of the Younger Dryas, humanity had to restart due to a cataclysmic melting of the ice sheet, and the ones we descend from are the hunter-gatherers who were primitives at the time. The civilisation, however advanced it may have been, has left little evidence of its existence, except perhaps in megalithic structures littered around the world.

Gaia is 4.6 billion yeas old. In a billion years' time, the Sun will have heated up and all of the oceans will boil away, creating a steaming atmosphere. Then the Earth will more closely resemble Venus than today's Blue Marble. Thus, the planet is 80% into its life. It has 20% left. My own guess is that Gaia is operating like a monocyclic plant, which goes to seed towards the end of its life. The act of reproduction kills it, inducing senescence.

Increasingly, humanity will send 3D printers (made from Earthly materials) filled with blueprints of how to create structures conceived on Earth. In other words, spores*. So I don't see humans as destroying Gaia any more than I consider the enzymes of a pupa to be destroying the metamorphosing insect. We are part of the system.

That is an interesting theory, and is of course as possible as any other I can think of. I tend towards humanity finally coming to realise that it is part of a cosmic consciousness and the purpose of (in cosmic terms) its brief existence is, with all other sentient beings, to experience. It is all a “happening” as people in my youth used to say. It is a dance, and the only meaning we can gather from it is to dance well and not to wipe ourselves out before time, a message which has been passed down in various ways from before written history, in mythology, in megalithic structures, and in the astrological references we find.

I sometimes wonder about humanity's denial about their fairly obvious existential situation as part of an active planet. Why would parts of Gaia be in denial about its existence? Immaturity? Sickness? Or maybe what we think about it is irrelevant to everyone but ourselves?

That's why Gaia is not science. Once you accept the concept, what do you do with it? Global systems such as weather and tectonics are already being studied. To me, the value of Gaia is an appreciation that we are all in this together on Spaceship Earth** - humans, plants, animals, fungi, microbes, viruses, oceans, rocks, technology et al. This view leads me in more ethical directions that I might have otherwise considered.

That is why the topic is posted here, because I am convinced that we have been left warnings from people who went before, who survived an extinction event and made their conclusions. The bottom line is that our actions have consequences, Karma is a bitch, and we are warned that we need to be ready for the next storm that Spaceship Earth is confronted with. I think that the obsession with calenders that the ancients had are warnings to be ready. Our survival as a species is dependant upon how awake we are.

[Pattern-chaser]

If nature has a purpose then humans may hold exceptional potential to serve nature's purpose well.

That seems unlikely. Humans do not even admit the existence of Nature, as such, but only of a world comprising humans, and things for humans to use as they see fit. The perspective of humanity (as a whole) directly and violently opposes any and all Gaian sentiments.

I assume that you are human? I definitely am, and my potential seems real to me...

...and yet Nature has no "purpose" that I can see. The only thing obvious to me is that humanity is dedicated to environmental destruction at all costs ... and those costs are enormous; extinctively (if that's a word?) terminal for humans, and many other species too. So what is the "potential" that you've spotted?

[Pattern-chaser]

The Earth is clearly alive...

Nice post. If I had thought of those words, I would've posted them proudly. You saved me the trouble of trying to say what you just said so well. I'm sure Gaia appreciates your efforts too.

[Pattern-chaser]

Humans do not even admit the existence of Nature, as such, but only of a world comprising humans, and things for humans to use as they see fit. The perspective of humanity (as a whole) directly and violently opposes any and all Gaian sentiments.

My argument was that by saying that you essentially prove the opposite. It seems that you do admit the existence of Nature or attempt to reach it through participation in philosophical discussions.

As a Gaian, I certainly acknowledge the existence of Nature. But I'm just one human being. My comments apply to humanity as a whole. Empirical observation confirms our violent and rapacious attitudes to Nature. We take what we want, for the purpose of profit and the acquisition of personal wealth. This dystopia we have built is the product of American free-market Capitalism, and it is violently opposed to any and all environmental sentiments.

Humans may not intend to do harm to Nature.

Only because they are indifferent to it; they don't even notice it. So they (we) aren't aware of the damage we do, and we (en masse) don't care. Only profit and wealth matter to us. The world is there for us to use.

[Pattern-chaser]

...although I started off from Alan Watts, who had a particular influence on me.

Me too. He is a wonderful explainer and teacher, I find.

[Sy Borg]

The Earth is clearly alive. I know this from personal experience, being alive myself, and being a part of the Earth. I also notice many other living parts of the Earth. Everywhere I look I see living parts of the planet, some active, some dormant.

It is as absurd to think of rocks as being "dead" as it is to think of the water, minerals, compounds, proteins and chromosomes in our bodies as dead. In fact, according to orthodoxy, our cells do not qualify as "life".

I have watched cells under the microscope doing their thing and wondered, if they were sentient, would they realise that what they are doing serves a larger organism? The more we look at the microscopic build of a body, whatever creature it belongs to, the more amazing it is how organised the cells are, doing their job. Of course, there are those that would point to the fact that organisms grow old and die, that there are cancerous cells etc., and attempt to burst my bubble of fascination. Nothing is “perfect” in the sense that it amounts to a physical perpetual mobile, that carries on for ever without some additional external energy, but isn’t that just our frustration wishing?

I am interested in the similarities, differences and interactions between sapient entities and unconscious entities. Well, relatively unconscious entities because, as with your cells example, there's definitely sensing and feedback loops happening.

Both the animate and inanimate can undergo quieter or more tumultuous times, just that only the sapient are aware of it and is capable of resisting entropy in more ways than just mindlessly holding tight. Still, there's nothing much more at peace in this reality than inanimate objects.

There's an old mediation idea that you breathe in peace and breathe out love. As part of the Earth we require a constant connection to stay alive through respiration. We draw in healthful, peacefully non-sentient molecules and breathe out our gratitude and appreciation for that peace, with love being basically the sapient equivalent to non-sentient peace.

Living systems are right before our eyes and under our feet, but they are taken for granted. We don't live on the Earth, but in it. Just because the atmosphere is dynamic and does not appear on maps and globes, does not make it apart from the planet. It's as much a part of the planet as our own microbial clouds. So we live in the Earth's atmosphere, right at the juncture with the solids and fluids of the surface.

Astronauts visiting the ISS routinely report life-changing perspective changes on seeing the dynamic Earth below them in all its activity and phases. It's no doubt much harder to have a clear overview from within a system, as we humans usually are. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech captures this, in part.

Look around. Everything and everyone is a piece of you. Or you are a piece of them. Or you are pieces of the same thing. We are the Earth.

I see that we are close on this, and your examples would be mine too, although I started off from Alan Watts, who had a particular influence on me. Working in nursing gave me the additional awareness of the complexity of physicality, healing deep wounds over time, or watching a perforation wound close inside 20 minutes after a patient pulled their percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube, which goes through the abdomen into the stomach. There are microscopic workers closing those wounds quickly, so that if we are too slow, the perforation has to be done again. Please excuse my enthusiasm.

The same principle happens in the world when, for example, nature is allowed to take over, like in the rewilding the San Joaquin Valley, which set the course for the largest recovery of species on record. If you look into it, our tendency towards monocultures and ridding ourselves of “pests” has often led to multiple problems with the fertility of the ground, even the trees react to what we do. As the biologist Rupert Sheldrake said, if you dissect organisms, the life is gone. The same goes for mentally dissecting organisms, which means you know longer see the connections, or place the particular in the whole.

Some academics scoff at Watts, but had some beautiful insights and he never fell into the holier-than-thou trap.

Our attempts at terraforming suffer from inexperience. The planet's been developing systems over billions of years, and the complexity builds over time. You'd need a helluva supercomputer to catch up, although I suspect that what AI achieves will always be, to some extent, a sketchy imitation of nature - just as imitations of pretty well anything will tend to fall short of the real thing.

Specialisation is a double-edged sword. It allows researchers to probe ever more deeply, and in greater detail, either confirming or disproving previously contestable hypotheses. Yet there is always the risk of siloing, of not being able to see "the wood from the trees". To that end, there has been a lot more cross-disciplinary work done this century. However, as I mentioned earlier, overviews tend not to be "scientific". If an idea does not generate potential experiments or observations to prove or disprove, then it falls into that most reviled of intellectual weastepaper baskets - philosophy :) Ideas without practicality or consequence.

Yet grand overviews can give us a sense of meaning and purpose. They can make us happier, more content. This is why people claim that science is not spiritual, or even anti-spiritual. Ironically, many scientists have strong spiritual feelings about the nature they study, but they only speak of it in informal settings, never when they are educating.

However, I don't agree with Lovelock that humanity is destroying Gaia. Rather, I think Gaia is metamorphosing and humanity is a change agent - entirely subject to Gaia, and far less in control than we like to think. We humans been shaped and controlled by our environments from the start. The illusion that humanity is in control of itself comes because we have volition as individuals.

Does humanity en mass have volition? No way. Humanity has always been a hot mess, finding ever more novel ways of careening out of control.

If you look again, Lovelock was warning humanity of losing the environment it needs to live. He said that Gaia reacts to situations like the catastrophic extinction events by producing new species, or species come to the fore that were until then in the background, but it does this in time spans that go far beyond our lifetimes, and it does so without emotion. There is no preference for humanity, even though our potential is obvious. It is true that we have adapted to our circumstances, but evidence is gathering that at the end of the Younger Dryas, humanity had to restart due to a cataclysmic melting of the ice sheet, and the ones we descend from are the hunter-gatherers who were primitives at the time. The civilisation, however advanced it may have been, has left little evidence of its existence, except perhaps in megalithic structures littered around the world.

George Carlin reckoned it was silly to think we could save the Earth. He figured the Earth will keep on doing fine, but we will be going away.

The idea of "primitives" is fun to think of in terms of stone axes in the Stone Age. The first stone axes were basically sharp shards of rock that the people found. Fast forward a few thousand years, and those stone axes are beautiful little works of art, meticulously flaked away to precise shapes, with a ridge at the bottom to allow them to be attached to spears. The latter would undoubteedly see the former as "primitive".

Looking at the extent of change made by humans over a relatively short time geologically, I think it's fair to say we are actually different. Our empowerment means we are change agents, as described above. I consider this as neither hypothesis nor theory, just bald observation.

Gaia is 4.6 billion yeas old. In a billion years' time, the Sun will have heated up and all of the oceans will boil away, creating a steaming atmosphere. Then the Earth will more closely resemble Venus than today's Blue Marble. Thus, the planet is 80% into its life. It has 20% left. My own guess is that Gaia is operating like a monocyclic plant, which goes to seed towards the end of its life. The act of reproduction kills it, inducing senescence.

Increasingly, humanity will send 3D printers (made from Earthly materials) filled with blueprints of how to create structures conceived on Earth. In other words, spores*. So I don't see humans as destroying Gaia any more than I consider the enzymes of a pupa to be destroying the metamorphosing insect. We are part of the system.

That is an interesting theory, and is of course as possible as any other I can think of. I tend towards humanity finally coming to realise that it is part of a cosmic consciousness and the purpose of (in cosmic terms) its brief existence is, with all other sentient beings, to experience. It is all a “happening” as people in my youth used to say. It is a dance, and the only meaning we can gather from it is to dance well and not to wipe ourselves out before time, a message which has been passed down in various ways from before written history, in mythology, in megalithic structures, and in the astrological references we find.

You have the poetic side covered well here, so I'll add a view through a more prosaic lens. Everything is in a state of disequilibrium. This is good, otherwise nothing would happen and the universe would truly be "dead". The Earth, like another entity, is basically a mess of little imbalances all over the place. The Earth is constantly balancing and rebalancing under a constant spray of solar radiation. This causes the hydrated surface of the planet to bubble, and life is basically a complexified collection of such "bubbles".

I sometimes wonder about humanity's denial about their fairly obvious existential situation as part of an active planet. Why would parts of Gaia be in denial about its existence? Immaturity? Sickness? Or maybe what we think about it is irrelevant to everyone but ourselves?

That's why Gaia is not science. Once you accept the concept, what do you do with it? Global systems such as weather and tectonics are already being studied. To me, the value of Gaia is an appreciation that we are all in this together on Spaceship Earth** - humans, plants, animals, fungi, microbes, viruses, oceans, rocks, technology et al. This view leads me in more ethical directions that I might have otherwise considered.

That is why the topic is posted here, because I am convinced that we have been left warnings from people who went before, who survived an extinction event and made their conclusions. The bottom line is that our actions have consequences, Karma is a bitch, and we are warned that we need to be ready for the next storm that Spaceship Earth is confronted with. I think that the obsession with calenders that the ancients had are warnings to be ready. Our survival as a species is dependant upon how awake we are.

Yes, there were warnings. That's what people have always done via stories and myths handed down (and embellished) over generations, and it's what we are still doing. There's warnings everywhere. Climate change. Natural disasters. War. Economic downturns. Extinctions. Unemployment. Ecosystem breakdown. Crime. Inequality. Social division ... we humans are a pretty diligent bunch - or rather, we humans are diligent parts of the Earth, amongst other things :)

For the most part, it seems we are in furious agreement on this. Thanks for the topic, its one that is dear to me.