Hello everyone and welcome to the Infinite Harmony Podcast. I’m Your host Jackie Dragon. Today we’ll be continuing the third part of our conversation about the Existence of Gaia. If you haven’t heard the previous episodes, I recommend going back and giving a listen, or just jump on this thread and see where it leads. In the previous two episodes we covered the idea that our Earth is alive and conscious in a way that is different than our consciousness. We talked about sensory gating and our ability to feel the aliveness of our planet, the connection of our senses to the senses of the Earth. We also discussed the nature of consciousness and how it is experienced, and what it means to actually feel the aliveness of everything around us. Today we’ll look even deeper into the nature of a conscious Earth and our possible roll in the greater ecology.
So, if the Earth were conscious, what would that feel like, how would it express its consciousness? What is the language of Earth? Is she communicating to us now, as we sit here, listening to this podcast? Does she feel us? This podcast will touch on the nature of consciousness in many forms, as it is often considered one of the most fundamental questions of our time. With the rise of AI, the growing awareness of the depth of communication within the plant and fungal kingdom, humans are suspecting that consciousness is not just experienced by us, or is defined by our ability for self-reflection or abstraction, though I must admit, our particular form of consciousness is quite an interesting one. But there are still many questions surrounding it’s nature. Can it exist outside the body, as in the form of a spirit or non biological entity? Can it communicate across non-physical channels? It biology even required for consciousness? Is the rock… conscious?
There’s a reason the call it the “hard problem,” and though we don’t expect to solve it today, we will look deeply into Buhner’s proposition, and those that came before him, that the Earth itself is alive, intelligent, and exhibits a level of beingness that we can and do experience. We’ve discussed the states of consciousness we experience when writing or reading, when listening to music, and how it is akin to a state of dreaming, where our physical bodies take a back seat to the ephemeral feelings and qualities of creativity and imagination, where time takes on a different quality, sometimes disappearing all together. This imaginal realm, a realm humans occupy all the time, is where we meet the conscious nature of Earth, of Gaia. Once we can feel the pulsing of her heartbeat within ours, perhaps the greater meaning of our existence will finally come to light. As Buhner quotes in the Tao Te Ching…
Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants if they once have heard stone growing in a cliff?
Who will prefer the sound of honking horns and espresso machines once we can hear the subtle song of Earth.
She is always singing a song, both figuratively and literally, and weaving herself within her own story, responding to the constant flow of inputs, of information within her self organized system. Her skin-like crust is alive with movement, her magma blood flows beneath her. Her temperature is regulated by her movement, the gravity that keeps her spinning at perfect pace, like a beating heart.
Buhner says “The Earth initiates continual alterations in the form and behavior of everything in the system in order to maintain optimum self-organizational homeodynamis. Those potentials emerge out of the Ocean of Being in which the Earth has its roots, out of the quantum world where all potential forms and behaviors exist simultaneously, in response to the need that Earth expresses in response to the shiftings in the state of self-organization. The new forms and behaviors that come into being are continual informational gestalts about the communicatory interaction that is occurring between Earth and its environments, both of them: its external environment—the out there (for Earth is not an isolated event, it is embedded in the Universe) and the in here, that is, the billions upon trillions of subparts that we know of as eco-ranges, eco-zones, forests, rivers, oceans, trees, dolphins, people, birds, bacteria, viruses and on and on and on.”
As above, so below. An old Hermetic Axiom and golden thread of this podcast. Embedded within us is the knowledge of how the Earth experiences its own existence. Embedded in our dream like states of consciousness we experience in both the waking and sleeping state, is the nature of Gaia’s own awareness. The Dreaming of Earth.
So strap on your seatbelts Earthlings and we take one last ride across the galaxy in search of Gaia, and may our rockets burn true.
Today on the infinite Harmony Podcast.
Now, to understand where Buhner is going with this, think of the human body. We often perceive consciousness as having some kind of active agency over itself, say, choice, or preference. A conscious being can contemplate choices, abstract different possible futures around those choices, and make the best choice for itself. “I am a conscious being because I bought a red Ferrari which represents my unique expression of the universe, and though I had the choice of a hundred different cars and colors, I choose this!”
But think about all the processes executed for us on a daily basis, that are far more essential to our existence. Our autonomic nervous system manages every aspect of our bodily functions, including prompting us when we are hungry, cold, or tired so that we can respond. But most functions don’t require our attention or response. The process of regulating our body temperature, the alkalinity of our blood, immune responses, all organ function, cellular reproduction, this all happens without even as much as a hunch that it’s even happening until we go looking around at other bodies in the name of science. For thousands of years, we just lived and did what most other animals did.
Buhner would say that most self organizing systems exist in this mostly unconscious state, in the state of deep dreaming. Just as when we dream while sleeping, our bodies lie peacefully in bed while our mind takes us on wild adventures. Imagine if you were an alien who came to earth and human beings only existed in a state of sleep and dream, just lying about on the floor. To the aliens, we wouldn’t seem much different than the plants. We wouldn’t appear conscious. And yet we would be living in worlds within worlds deep within the imaginal realm of our own minds.
Imagine if this level of subconscious coordination between our biological self organized systems was not available to us. Imagine if the function of our organs, the cellular communication and reproduction and homeostasis we experience required our constant attention. We would hardly be able to have a conversation, let alone take the time to daydream up the world we’ve created. This incredibly efficient, intelligent and adaptive function of biology is in ways far more capable and advanced than the conscious mind. This is the dreaming of Earth.
You know, over the course of my contemplative journey, which has spanned decades, I've grappled with a notion that reverberates through the corridors of Eastern wisdom: the idea that humanity slumbers, and to attain enlightenment is to rouse oneself to the authentic essence of reality and the self. This inner struggle, I must confess, has often arisen from a sense of self-absorption that seems inherent to the pursuit. The Taoists, in particular, were notorious for their withdrawal from the world, seeking solace in the remote recesses of towering mountains to study the Tao. I couldn't help but ponder, what contribution does such self-imposed isolation make to the world? What's the relevance of self-realization when the edifice of human civilization appears to teeter on the precipice of collapse, its downfall an ever-encroaching certainty? To awaken to the veritable nature of reality? For the sake of my own inner tranquility? Would this newfound awareness permit me to defy the laws of physics and levitate, I wondered?
The conundrum was perplexing.
However, the key might lie in this idea of the Dreaming of the Earth. Could it be that the profound Eastern enlightenment, heralded by meditation, is not the awakening to our personal perception of consciousness alone but rather a deeper dream in which we commune with the all-encompassing consciousness that underpins the entire cosmos? A meta-awareness, if you will, that extends beyond the confines of our individual selves.
This shift in perspective lends a novel dimension to the quest for enlightenment. It transforms it from a pursuit of self-indulgence into a communion with the collective consciousness that threads through all facets of existence. In this reimagining, enlightenment is no longer a solitary endeavor, but a means to weave the golden threads that unite all living entities, Earth itself, and the vast expanse of the universe.
I wonder then, if the animists of the past were already enlightened?
For me, this perspective lends a broader purpose to the journey. It becomes a path not solely for personal serenity but also for comprehending one's role within the grand tapestry of existence; the cultivation of awareness that holds potential far beyond personal growth—that empowers individuals to act as stewards of the interconnected web of life, fostering empathy, and championing a more sustainable, equitable world.
In this way, these doors of perception we’ve been speaking of propel us into a deeper relationship with the greater dreaming. These metaphors of dream and awake fall into a sea of deeper meaning.
A world where plants and humans talk without language as we know it.
A world where the autonomic systems of our body are not just regulated by some internal anthropomorphic system, but by the hand of earth and sun and moon, of wind and stars and sea. As we dream our world into being while the body does what body does, so does the Earth, who dreams as she maintains the currents and tides, jet streams and volcanoes.
The point is, if most of our biological functions are handled by this magical self-regulating system that we’re mostly unaware of, and yet we consider ourselves very much alive and very much conscious, how is the Earth any different? We are comprised mostly of a system of responses, a complex and dynamic system that regulated thousands of different biological functions every second.
And every second on Earth a billion functions are executed throughout the atmosphere, oceans and land masses to aid in stabilizing atmospheric temperature and molecule levels. Gaia is integrating an unfathomable flow of information and is somehow sensing itself…
Or
Perhaps
She is also using us as her sensory input. Perhaps the billions upon billions nervous systems are her biofeedback loop, each of our own dreamed movements aligning like a massive school of dancers, billowing out into geometric patterns in the dreaming of Gaia, stimulating response deep within her, resulting in harmonic self organized homeostasis. For over a Billions of years… and what if Gaia is responding to us, now? We may not truly be able to see it for a few thousand years. What would the response to an extinction event asteroid look like.
Imagine the big one hits and 90 percent of the life on the planet is wiped out, there’s a thousand years of darkness. Now, imagine watching this event, along with the next hundred thousand years time lapsed in five minutes, you know, like your iPhone can do. What would we see? Would it be evident then? Life veining out from certain pockets of the planet like the tendrils of a vine searching for light? Would the oceans rise to meet the new epoch of plant life? Would Glaciers preserve various seeds or bacteria that would eventually and methodically be released over millennia? How can we, as humans with a few thousand years of recorded observation and some abstract scientific data claim to know how Gaia thinks or moves? How could a bacteria in your gut ever possibly know the life you have lived?
Though Gaia is constantly self regulating the activity of her biosphere, you know, all plants, animals, humans, bacteria… we are all by no means a closed system. Our greatest input is without question the sun, and its mythic counterpart, our single beautiful luna goddess, our moon, deeply affects the rhythms of water and life around and within us. But our solar system, nearby stars, and the rest of the galaxy also have their affect on us. According to Buhner the Earth receives over 80 million pounds of extraterrestrial matter from the galaxy around it every year. And apparently not at random. Apparently Astrophysicists have noticed bursts of cosmic matter being generated from Saturn and Jupiter making their way here, affecting asteroids and comets which in turn affect their orbits relative to Earth. Such changes are not without their dangers, and our ability to notice these celestial movements should also be noted. Despite our penchant for resource extraction and opulence, we’ve also become extremely efficient sensory organs. If Gaia did wake up from her dreaming and could tap our conscious information streams, she would suddenly have a language for all of her biological functions and capacities for measurement of a myriad of atmospheric parameters and so much more. We’ve effectively developed the proverbial blood pressure gauge for Gaia.
Maybe that’s what all the consciousness and language is for?
Or, maybe it’s even bigger than that.
What are humans for anyway?
We know that in complex biological systems each organism has a role to play, whether that organism knows it or not. Think about how many different cells and bacteria are contributing to your existence right now. Without the trillions of bacteria, the microbiome that makes up your digestive tract, live on your skin and contribute to your biology, you could not exist. More importantly, these bacteria exist and function without our knowledge or conscious input. Consider this poem by British Poet Anne Stevenson :
And this is how the foxglove keeps its sex life in order.
Two anthers—adolescent, in a hurry to dehisce—
let fly too soon, so pollen lies in drifts around the floor.
Along swims bumbler bee and makes an undercoat of this,
reverses, exits, lets it fall by accident next door.
So ripeness climbs the bells of Digitalis, flower by flower,
Undistracted by a Mind, or a Design, or by desire.
Undistracted by mind, or a design, or by desire.
There’s that dreaming again…
Yet the bee and flower play their roles so precisely.
But humans?
Ask a hundred humans what our roll is on Earth and you will likely get a hundred different answers. Ask humans if our actions are impacting the planet and most will agree they are. Now consider, despite our awareness of self, that we also have a roll in the Gaian ecosystem that perhaps, we are not aware of. More specifically, our actions and contributions to the earth through the transmutation of Gaia’s resources, of crude oil and coal into atmospheric carbon and the mining of metals and all we do to produce civilization are as natural as the beaver building dams or the spiders building webs.
Consider that our ecological function is one of our many autonomously run systems, like breathing or sweating. We’re just doing what we’ve been biologically programmed to do.
We are many things, humans, but our greatest achievement is our engineering. Our problem solving. In fashioning the bow and arrow, in fabricating the plow, the printing press, we ultimately are learning to conserve energy, to create and accomplish more with less input. Now, without going into the caveats of this, of which there are many, and which we will cover over time, our harnessing of energy is akin to moving toward a more perfected state of thermodynamics, a fight against entropy. Light is perhaps the most perfected state of energy, moving at a constant speed throughout the universe without losing energy. How many religions talk about the higher states of spirit moving toward light, or becoming light? Consider this for a moment, as not just a metaphorical idea about the nature of spirit, but about the molecular power of light, and how we humans strive toward that level of perfection. To be beings of light, is to perfect the laws of energy. We are moving toward something, and Gaia is the egg that is giving birth to a potentially radical form of life, one that may extend itself beyond the confines of biology.
An acceptance of an integrated Gaian perspective is the rejection of human action as being separate or independent of the greater system, which also includes the awakening to our impact and adjustments. The shift from animism to the Anthropocene may appear like the emergence a certain kind of free will, the kind that puts the human species at the apex of an evolutionary scale that somehow breaks free of the biological system of evolution itself, but according to Lovelock and many other thinkers, is just not the case. We’ve only alienated ourselves from that which is most precious, and the fact that we are slowly dying at the hands of our own creations, or more specifically, their byproducts, and are being consumed by our own neurosis and pathologies, is a testament that we must reconsider the anthropocene.
On the other hand, the fact that we have developed the ability for abstract thought, conceptualizing past, future, and change, of measurement and application and storage of information beyond what we can hold in the mind at any given moment, is undoubtedly significant. There certainly seems to be unique aspects to our intelligence not found in other lifeforms, except possibly Gaia herself.
James Lovelock spends a great deal of time laying out an argument that the complex homeostasis required to support a planetary biosphere is not one of chance, and that just as a car will not miraculously keep running without proper maintenance, a biosphere requires regulation and limitation to maintain equilibrium. The temperature of the planet, its oxygen levels, salt levels in the ocean, that all these parameters are constantly being regulated to support life. So why humans? Why bring these little homeostasis wrecking, fuel burning, clear cutting, silicon mining bipeds in to screw everything up?
Unless of course we really are Aliens…
Or unless we’re just a stepping stone for the immortal silicone based AI..
The question of “why” humans, and the development of their pre-frontal cortex and that annoying thing we call consciousness, is puzzling from a biological standpoint. But perhaps its function, as we looked at in our co-emergence episode, is is a function that allows us to cooperatively awaken to, and participate as, agents of the greater whole, and experience choice. Perhaps, again, part of our awakening to consciousness is Gaia’s awakening to herself. That our agency is a greater awareness of Gaia’s own agency. That our consciousness is part of a greater whole, and thus our responsibility to that whole only increases. Through us, Gaia can measure her oxygen levels and temperature in the same way we can do so for our individual bodies. Imagine if your white blood cells suddenly become conscious agents, and one morning you could hear their little voices in your head identifying viruses and preemptively warning us of viral invasion or cancerous cells. Would this not be a useful evolution? Imagine if your guy biome could directly communicate the necessary foods to maintain optimum homeostasis. No more bloating or bad gas.
Perhaps in this very same way we can, or even have, become the agents of the planet, with part of our purpose evolving to become the sense organs of the planet.
But maybe it goes even deeper than that.
In perhaps my favorite part of Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, the part I’m constantly referring to with friends whenever I’ve had one too many, Buhner outrightly expresses, that perhaps the most significant function of the human species is something akin to a pollinator. That we are part of the reproductive components of the living system of Earth. (Yo dawg we’re pollinators).
One of the primary opponents of the Gaian Theory is the teleological nature of the planet as a living system and the problem of other planets or a lack thereof, that their are no failed Gaias out there, well, at least that we know of.
You know what we do know?
We know that bacteria can survive in space, because we sent them there.
And they came back. Alive.
Scientist conducted an experiment at the international space station and found that Deinococcus bacteria can survive in space.
Moon mission studies determined years ago that bacteria can survive on the hulls of the rockets, the radical temperature changes, and you know, the vacuum and radiation. Scientists have studied spores of Bacillus Subtillis, Tardigrades and Deinococcus Radiodurans. At varying levels, these bacteria have survived uv radiation, ionizing radiation, the extreme cold of space and could possibly survive interplanetary travel. They have survival mechanisms and processes of repair, and have even restructured their DNA on the fly to quickly develop UV radiation resistance.
And if they can get a little help from encapsulation, extended time in dormancy not seem to be a problem. In 1996, Dr. Raul J. Cano, a professor at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo revived a 30 million year old bacteria from a fossilized bee’s stomach.
Bacteria, it seems, are life’s time and space capsules.
Humans have now actively, even if unknowingly, brought bacteria into space.
Is it possible that our drive to explore, one of the most foundational aspects of our humanness, our drive to create technology and harness energy that has led to the very machines that can propel us beyond the gravity of the planet itself, that these actions are driven by evolution? By the will of Gaia? That we are in fact a tool of a greater planetary desire to survive and reproduce.
Consider crude oil for a moment.
Really, think about it.
Crude oil is the product of the death of trillions of tiny lifeforms and millions of years of intense heat and pressure
And it’s everywhere. We have likely pumped trillions of barrels and still have billions of barrels left.
Why does the death of billions of lifeforms coalesce into a highly flammable substance, a concentration of energy so great, that with time and intelligence, we were able to make rockets, and refine crude oil into a fuel that it can propel us at over five thousand miles per hour and break the gravitational pull of the planet. If we are driven by Darwinian evolution, how does a rocket ship or an automobile, the desire to climb the mountain both physically and metaphorically, translate to species survival or reproduction? Because looking at the history of human action, our propensity to explore the unknown, both in physical and in abstract space, seems as intrinsic to us a sex.
So we’re getting into the realm of teleology here, which is a way of saying that if we look at the end result of something, we can understand its purpose. In other worlds, oil is here to used as Rocket fuel, and humans are here to build rockets. But more importantly, that there is an underlying drive in everything. Remember the idea that atoms have choice from last episode? Why are do we have consciousness, and despite our ability to experience choice and rationality, make the choices we do? Is our search for meaning just a microcosm of the planet’s search for meaning? Or of the universe in its entirety.
We here at the church of Infinite Harmony don’t have a particular creation story, nor do we subscribe an end game to our congregation. There’s no cookies promised at the end of your life if you’re a good little human. We acknowledge the great mystery of existence, but that doesn’t mean that we subscribe to meaninglessness either. Maybe this is obvious at this point, but I certainly get the feeling that something is going on here. The universe is coherent, and clearly we are moving toward something.
Years ago I head a ted talk where a scientist was explaining that in order for the big bang to have happened, the particles of the universe would have to be organized so precisely, that the chance of our universe being random was nearly impossible. And, look, I’m no physicist, but I’ve heard that the exact balance of physical constants, the formation and distribution of matter, and the energy density of the universe following the Big Bang would require such fine-tuning, that it is often cited as evidence of the unlikely and special nature of our universe, and suggests that even slight variations in these initial conditions could have made the universe uninhabitable. And when I say slight, I mean nearing mathematical improbability.
The truth is if you do a little research, we are a loooong way from understanding the origin of the universe. String Theory, Holographic universes, inflationary multiverses, ekpyrotic universes… don’t even ask me what that is. I guess my point is, even for the rational scientist, I would hope that a meaningless universe at this point is improbable enough that it warrants allocating a higher probability to meaning, and that we are a part of it, and very likely not at the center of it.
So what is our part? Entertain for just a moment that humans and their rockets are what propel the possibility of planetary seeding into the universe, like the flower that produces seeds and attracts the bee by its scent to spread its pollen.
Perhaps we are just celestial pollinators. Buhner writes “ Gaia always innovates on earlier forms. Wind pollination gave way to pollinator pollination; as it is much more efficient for the pollen to go exactly where it needs to go. Human pollinators are now taking the bacteria exactly where they need to go. We, inevitably think it is all about us, not realizing that we are in fact performing cross pollination.”
Are we planetary pollinators?
Is Elon Musk’s drive to colonize Mars nothing more than a biological function programmed in us by Gaia herself? I must admit, the compulsion of humans to explore vast inner and outer spaces, to know ourselves… if ever there were a fate written in the book of Destiny, a rally cry of unity and manifestation of a collective endeavor as a species, its the stars… the stars…
Does our biological function, our evolutionary destiny and spiritual purpose all coalesce into one dream? To become a truly interplanetary species and carry the seeds of life across the galaxy.
If so, this is a cautionary tale. A journey fraught with challenges that test our wisdom as much as our capabilities. The dream of being a spacefaring species goes beyond the technicalities of rocket engines and orbital mechanics; it touches on fundamental questions about who we are and what we could become. Are we the kind of beings that can overcome our basest instincts and pettiest squabbles to unify in a quest that transcends individual lifetimes and national boundaries? If so, the stars are not just a physical destination but a metaphysical one, guiding us towards a future that redeems the struggles and aspirations of the past. It's not just about getting to another celestial body. It's about the becoming kind of society and individuals we must become in order to do so.
And do so, we must find peace within ourselves.
We must become stewards of all life, not just our lives.
We must return to the place wherein lies the spirit of the Earth.
We must come to be stewards of Wisdom.
We… well. We’ve got a ways to go.
But we’ll get there.
What will life be life then, when we are stewards of life instead of consumers of it?
What does a world look like where humans are in rhythm with the indifference of nature?
Nature, who has no voice, yet speaks to us. Nature, who is indifferent to us, yet nurtures us. Nature, who has no outside, and no inside, that suffers no opposition to itself, that is not moved by unnatural influence, is not the expression of an order so much as it is the display of a perfect indifference on nature’s part to all matters cultural.
What happens when the idea of nature no longer exists, when humans and nature become one, again? When we become indifferent to our own personal pursuits in the spirit of something far greater. Is that what it takes to become an interstellar species? Or can a species that dominates nature also find its way into space?
There are plenty of circumstances found in nature where a mother must die to give birth. In the quiet theater of nature's grand design, the life cycle of a flower teaches us a poignant ballet of existence, a symphony of silent whispers that resonates with the essence of life itself. From the tender embrace of the earth, a seed awakens, stretching towards the warmth of the sun. As it blossoms, it reveals a certain beauty, a sisterhood of petals painted with the hues of the dawn, each unfurling like the delicate fingers of a newborn. This spectacle of bloom is a fleeting moment in the sun's arc, a transient whisper of color and fragrance in the vastness of time. And yet, in its inevitable withering, is a return to the void from which it came, a surrender to the cycle that gave it life. In the quiet demise of its vibrant being, the flower leaves behind the specter of its beauty and a promise renewed in the seeds that fall, a testament to this enduring cycle of birth, bloom, and return.
Perhaps this is the destiny of Gaia. To give all she has so that life may pervade the galaxy. Do we as humans even have a choice in the matter?
These area the questions we ask at the Church of Infinite Harmony. To follow the way of our ethos is to walk toward a harmonious existence with all that exists here on this planet. To once again engage in the miracle of tending the garden, stewarding the animals, of returning to a work where our survival instinct guides us not toward hoarding resources, but a willingness to be alive, to celebrate the seed, the sow, the plant, the fruit, the harvest, the festival, and the death of it all, but never to give up home that Gaia may endure another few billion years with us. Because as the aeons unfurl, a future looms where the sun, our star, the very wellspring of energy that fuels life’s myriad forms, will take the stage for its final act and swell into a red giant, its dying breaths reaching out to consume its planetary offspring in one last incinerating, luminous embrace.
THAT inevitable conclusion to Earth's saga would not be merely an end, but a coda. A final crescendo to the symphony of our existence that has played out on the surface. That final act of destruction, is, in its essence, a transformation on a cosmic scale—a reminder that from endings spring new beginnings, in the endless cycle of creation and dissolution that defines our universe. But her death at our hands… well, that would be something altogether different.
And here at the Church of Infinite Harmony, we walk the road of poiesis.
A poiesis that renounces the economics of continual growth and extraction for the benefit of comfort, safety and convenience. There is a parallel between the felt sense of aliveness and hazard. Author J.G. Bennett wrote an entire book on the idea. But beyond that whatever world lies in front of us, the one where we come out on the other end of the myriad of existential threats that hover around us, it involves a release of the need for comfort and safety and embracing the challenge that lies before us. For paradoxically, our need for safety had become hazardous to our existence.
Almost everything we’ve built revolves around our desire to more efficiently and comfortably meet our base needs, and to enhance the experience of existence. I’m not saying we have to give up snowboarding, or jet skis or movie theaters. But when was the last time you allowed yourself to suffer the feeling of not having your needs met willingly? Look. There’s about fifteen golden threads I could follow here.
Intentional suffering as a means of transformation.
The illusion that life is anything but safe.
That comfort is actually a numbing feeling to the sensory experience of life and existence.
Or how the abandonment of rites of passage where we learned humility by subjecting ourselves to the power and magnitude of the wild has led to us living in a world run by children.
Or maybe we should talk about how all of our new found pathologies and diseases seem to grow as our indifference to our pollution of our environment grows.
I mean, does anyone really think that the mircoplastics that exist in just about everything we eat or the chemicals “known to the state of California to cause cancer” that are in everything we buy aren’t affecting our sanity, or the health of our DNA or reproductive systems? That we can sit on furniture made with chemicals that would kill us if ingested without affect? I work in a woodshop, and despite my best intentions, there some pretty nasty stuff going into our everyday wares.
All this talk about being the pollinators of the planet and becoming interplanetary species is nice but that doesn’t happen if we don’t get our shit together. Or if it does at the expense of our planet and all the non-human species, then we are destined to bring the terror of our domination to the rest of the galaxy.
of overcoming the existential crisis and embrace a future where humanity harmonizes with the environment, we need to consider radical, transformative actions. These actions must cut across societal, economic, and political spheres, challenge conventional wisdom and push the boundaries of what's considered feasible. It's about envisioning a future that radically redefines our relationship with the planet and then daring to take the steps necessary to realize that vision.
We’re talking about ideas as radical as a global ecological constitution, a binding international agreement that places the health of the planet at the center of all nationalist policies and persons. An agreement that the boundaries of democracy and regulation. We’re not just talking about environmental protection laws; we’re talking about redefining the very principles upon which societies operate. And nothing short of ratifying the Earth itself as a living being with the same rights as each and every one of us would allow the human species to change direction, ecological impact must become a primary factor in every legislative decision, making it unlawful for any action, corporate or governmental, to significantly harm the environment. We have to let go of the idea that matter of this planet we’ve deemed as resources is ours for the taking, just because we can. Mining, fr, deforestation, damming rivers…
Likely before we can pull of something like that, we have to ask ourselves a few questions. And the answer, if we ever come to it, is not nearly as important as the question. How did we get this way?
I was talking to a small congregation recently about what make an adult, or an elder. A group of adults were taking part in a meditation program here and were instructed to meditate in silence and they chose to break the silence when unobserved. Another member entered a sacred space after it had been closed to the public because they forgot a personal object in the space. In both situations did they not only break the rules, but they did not impose consequences on themselves for doing so.
Later, in review of these actions, I shared the idea that an adult, or an elder, however you want to look at it, imposes consequence upon themselves for poor choices. This is what true responsibility looks like. Elders don’t wait to be asked for an apology, or for the police to show up when they’ve done wrong. They bow before those they’ve wronged. They apologize on behalf of their ancestors and they make an offering of forgiveness and create a reciprocity.
We can continue to plunder the planet, but if you are paying attention, the consequences are mounting, and until we start imposing consequences upon ourselves, we are only drawing closer toward the Earth imposing a consequence that can result in the inability of humans to co-exist the way we do.
You know. As I’m writing this, suddenly I’m thinking of the book of revelations. The redeemed elders in white beholding the throne of God, standing alongside the four living creatures that represent all of nature, and it is the slain lamb, who the Christians would call Jesus, who opens the book and unleashes Apocalypse upon the world.
A slain lamb unleashes the apocalypse upon the world.
And the four horseman of the apocalypse.
Conquest.
War.
Famine… and eventually Death.
It it already happening?
For what happens when the great wind comes and shakes away the unripened figs from the tree?
What happens if we can no longer produce adequate sustenance for 8 billion people? According to the UN, 800 million humans do not have adequate food and go to bed hungry more often than not.
Our neurosis as a species is that we barrel forward without understanding consequence, not only immediate, but of second and third order effect.
Micro-plastics in our food. Mercury, led and cadmium in our water. All unintended consequence of technology and progress.
The rise of depression, anxiety and loneliness as a result of social media.
The polarization of politics driven by economic progress of click-bait.
Covid 19.
In March of 2023 the House oversight committee… that’s the House of Representatives, you know, that branch of the U.S. Government and often looks like a couple of Frat Houses competing in college games, yeah those guys. They came to the conclusion that the Wuhan lab leak theory was in fact, the most likely origin of Covid 19. I’ll put a link to the article in the show notes.
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testified how science indicates COVID-19 infections were likely the result of an accidental lab leak in Wuhan. Nicholas Wade testified his knowledge on the manufactured campaign to discredit the lab leak theory. He pointed out that scientists kept in line with the natural origin camp led by Drs. Fauci and Collins because of their dependence on government grants and that the media failed to challenge the forced narrative. That Faucci and others were drafting a narrative to the American public, and the rest of the world.
Follow the rabbit hole a little longer and six months later, the same house oversight committee head testimony from a whistleblower alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offered six analysts significant monetary incentives to change their position on COVID-19’s origin. The whistleblower, who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer, alleges that of the seven members assigned to the CIA team tasked with analyzing COVID-19 origins, six officers concluded that the virus likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China. The CIA, then however, allegedly offered financial incentives to six of the experts involved in the investigation to change their conclusion in favor of a zoonotic origin.
But I digress.
Second order consequences of experimentation resulted in a Pandemic.
We have no idea what we’re doing.
It should come to no surprise that I’m a fan of the Emerald Podcast. One of the most brilliant episodes of the podcast and its creator Josh Schrei, is on AI as a true force of magic that we have not even the slightest inclination of what the consequence of uncorking the genie’s bottle would bring.
Genies don’t actually exist. They are a romanticization of the Djinn, the pre-Islamic spirits of the Arabic culture with great power who are not to be toyed with.
Schrei re-tells the allegory of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice who fancies himself worth of enacting the simplest of spells, which as we know from Disney’s adaptation, spiral quickly out of control.
If we can actually cast the spell of Artificial General Intelligence, we have no idea what the consequence will be. As it stands, AI is poised to take over entire economic sectors and displace millions of jobs with no real plan of how or where those humans will work to sustain themselves. Which will inevitability lead to a growing disparate between the owners of the tech and the companies which implement AI, and the working class. And make no mistake, we still very much live in a world where the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.
I’m tempted here to move into a treatise on the destructive nature of Capitalism, the feeding of the beast Moloch, but we’ll save that for another episode.
We’re still talking about Earth, about Gaia, and about the potential of the human species. And yet in order to realize our potential and preserve our existence in our biosphere, our politics and economics will have to change. Like I said last week, we can’t talk about the principles of this Church without also understanding how our political and economic behavior affect our ability to live by these principles. In effect, we need more principles that govern both economics and politics.
For instance, humans need resources to exist. As we discussed, we are transmuters of energy. We extract energy from our environment. No way around it. And yet millions of humans still do not have access to the most basic resources. Creating a code of Universal basic resource allotment would ensure that every individual has access to essential resources such as clean water, whole food, and renewable energy. We’re talking about a shift from a market-driven resource economy to a rights-based model. And not just for humans, but for all the animals and plants. Which inevitably means that the economy has to stop “growing” and start scaling down to accommodate the rest of the biological inhabitants of the planet. Built into such a mode is establishing metrics of quality of life, quality of environment and sustainability of resources in respect to the environment…
Maybe it's time to stop building cities in the desert without understanding the second and third order effects of taking water from different regions to water the lawns.
Project Save Earth Redirect number 42: Stop Terraforming the desert into a suburb…
And beyond basic resources for survival, as a species we have to ease our obsession with technology and opulence and simplify existence. Now mind you, there is still a substantial disparate between the wealthy and poor nations of Earth. The United States is not the most opulent country on the list, but compare us to, say, Kenya, and you see a stark contrast in how much the average citizen consumes. For instance, the average consumption of BTU’s or raw thermal energy of a Kenyan citizen is about 15 million per year In the US? About 300 million, or twenty times more. 20.
Carbon footprints? The average Kenyan exhausts about .3 tons per year. Here in the US? 15.5 tons of C02.
Fifty times more. Do we need fifty times more than other humans?
There’s been alot of talk about privilege over the years in this country… between races and classes, mostly in respect to social welfare, or social access. What about Ecological privilege? In a world where the media does a wonderful job giving us topics to argue about, all relative to ourselves and our societies, who is talking about the privilege of first world countries over the Earth’s resources? Antifa and the proud boys are still driving BMW’s and f-150’s. I know, that’s so 2020, but still. If our civil rights coalesce into a liberal utopia here in the U.S., Its all for nothing against the backdrop of a failing ecosystem and the hands of our consumption. So yes culture warriors, I’m suggesting you get your priorities straight.
Until we can create a culture of radical conservation and simplicity, the human species experiment is barreling toward extinction.
It takes courage to curb consumption in the same way it takes courage to recognize privilege. The success of our individual freedoms tends to result in the failure of our communal reciprocity. Earning the freedom to make socially unhindered choice does not liberate us from global responsibility. Of ecological responsibility. If we breast-fed from our mothers for the entirety of our lives, literally, we would probably kill them, as at some point the amount of nutrition an adult requires outpaces what the mother can provide. But in this situation being an adult means making better choices not to over-consume our planet, not to put our lives above the life of a redwood, or salmon, or prairie. Being an adult is self-imposing the consequence that we don’t get everything we want all the time. But with enough discipline and practice, we make the effective choice and everyone gets what they want everywhere. All life on Gaia.
The next phase of our evolution is a refinement. To remove the impurities in our thinking systems and clarifying our capacity to generate our resources. And it doesn’t mean we go back to living in mud huts and eating only rice. It doesn’t mean we can’t live a life where we experience the greatest of technologies and in living conditions beyond even what we have now. It means, however, that we have to re-define value, quality, and really think about what a world can look like for humans that doesn’t devour the planet whole.
Does one family need four thousand square feet of living space? Does one man need 200 billion dollars of private wealth. Do we even need private wealth? Does everyone need their own car? Again, our economic actions are unequivocally tied to our spirituality. Why do you think for thousands of years the spiritually devout rejected wealth and the material world. Out of piousness? I think it was out of wisdom that spirit can not be found among the opulence of society. To love Earth is to begin to empty ourselves of the desires to consume her, to acknowledge the life we inevitably consume to exist. There is only one way to escape the cycle of life, and that is death. By being born here on this beautiful blue orb in hurling through space, we receive the gift of transmuting energy in many forms to maintain that existence, to express our divinity through creation, imagination, dreaming and love. Until these biological transformational apparatuses known as bodies decay enough that they can no longer transmute the resources of air and water and fire earth, we are here to do exactly that. But our freedom to choose how determines the value of our species. We have the power of Gods in our creation and destruction. We wield energies that rival the sun. If we can harness the wisdom of those same gods, then perhaps we shall leave our home planet someday having learned how to steward life and not annihilate it. We will become interstellar bastions of life and peace and the wisdom to carry forth its seed.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and I look forward to hearing from you. As always, feel free to ask questions or offer feedback in our forum at infiniteharmony.org , which will include the transcripts of each episode for quotes and references.
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