Living with Gaia

 

article originally published in the

'Nouvelle Observateur' Magazine December 1997

 

One of the most appealing and liberating aspects of living with Gaia is the realisation that you can’t not live with Gaia! Western civilisation still bases most of its decisions and behaviour on the assumption that humans are somehow separate from, and superior to, the rest of the natural world - indeed, we are taught that Nature is there to be tamed by Man. This belief is so ingrained as to be almost unnoticed on a day to day level. But Gaia Theory tells us that the planet is a self-regulating emergent system, and that life and the environment have co-evolved so intimately as to resemble a single living organism. We are, as we always suspected, connected to natural processes in the most vital way.

 

The success of the Gaia system is shown by its robustness and longevity, but the major players in the Gaia story are not exotics like ourselves. The dynamic global balancing act has been kept going for billions of years by the simple, ordinary, reliable creatures, the myriad micro-organisms like bacteria and algae. Lovelock himself says:

 

‘In Gaia we are just another species....our future depends much more upon a right relationship with Gaia than with the never ending drama of human interest’.

 

The implications of this idea are stunning. Pause for a moment to consider how much of your everyday life is taken up with the ‘never ending drama of human interest’ compared with the time you spend being aware of the effect your lifestyle is having on the climatic and chemical global balancing act! What a relief to discover the radically humbling notion that we are just another part of the process!

 

But how do we need to behave now that we have discovered this new relationship? Lovelock issues an exciting challenge when he points out that

 

‘there are no prescriptions for living with Gaia, only consequences for our actions’

 

It seems the lawmakers and self-styled experts are powerless to help us, so what clues does Gaia herself give us which might lead us to a more sensitive approach to living with the natural world?

 

Let us start with ‘self-regulation’. The main implication of living within a self-regulating system is that we have to be sensitive to the rhythms of its emergent properties rather than trying to force things to happen. The feedback which goes on within and between the networks of the Gaia process has its own flexible rhythm and pace of change. This is what gives Gaia her ability to withstand shocks to the system and to be creative when an opportunity arises to evolve along a new pathway. Human actions such as large scale deforestation to provide pasture for beef burgers are oblivious to the subtlety and diversity which lie at the heart of self-regulation. You can get a feel for this yourself. Your own body is a self-regulating system, or rather a co-operative of lots of self-regulating systems. Imagine how busy you would be if you had to manage all these systems consciously! Fortunately for your survival and your creativity, your body just does it; but how much time do you allow yourself to be sensitive to your own natural body rhythms?

 

Another important aspect of Gaia Theory is the concept of co-evolution. It is fundamental to Gaia that life and the environment are closely coupled in a dynamic, evolving relationship. But how sensitive to this close coupling does civilisation allow us to be? For most of us, life is filled with noise and busyness which serve only to emphasise the distance we have put between ourselves and the natural world. One of the most inspiring implications of Gaia is that living as closely as possible to real issues like where your food is grown and how your waste is managed leads to a deeper appreciation of where we fit into this co-evolutionary process. Gaia Theory, then, is a challenge to our human centred obsession with our own self-importance. But in a wider context it provides us with the opportunity to develop a world view which may enable us to realise our full Gaian potential as a truly social species. The signs are becoming clearer; if we can cut out some of the noise and busyness and increase our awareness and sensitivity, we may still have time to choose. Will we maintain this peculiar arrogance which could soon force the system to condemn us into being no more than an evolutionary dead end or will we accept the challenge and start to make our future decisions in the light of this revolutionary scientific paradigm. In short, will we be fatally distracted by the never ending drama of human interest or will we find the way to enjoy living in a right relationship with Gaia?

 

© Peter Horton 1997