Can humanity become aware of it’s true place within Gaia before it’s too late? In the age of the Anthropocene humanity has become the creator/destroyer. Our Promethean myth of the weakness of humans in a dangerous world - who can only survive through innovation - no longer serves the present moment in history. Our level of destruction is a mirror that points to our rise to dominance in such an unconscious way as to prove we are asleep.
We have to use Historical Materialism in a way that strips it of the insistence that we are progressing toward a better future. In fact, all of our knowledge points to the realization that we have only made our worst nightmares come true. We look around at an apocalyptic future where the earth temperature will likely be 8 degrees warmer for 100,000 years, and it compares a lot more with our images of hell, than of heaven.
The insanely optimistic view that all “progress” will lead to a world awakening, is a part of the Theological aspect found in Hegel that has blinded us to our destructive technologies. These technologies have made life in Gaia far more challenging for all species and has placed us historically in what we now call the 6thextinction.
Hegel had a very beautiful notion, that the universe was waking up through us as a singular “Spirit”. If we only alter this Monist perspective that is so pervasive in Western Thinking, we can come to a new conclusion that all life, and even non-life, is tending toward consciousness.
Rocks form complicated geometries, and inorganic compounds form proto-life. Everything in Gaia wants to reproduce itself, and in a certain sense express it’s will to power. An intelligent expression of a will to power in a species would be to form mutually beneficial symbiosis with the other species around it. Humans have proven that their will to power is not intelligent. We can no longer view ourselves as the victim, this only creates a passive aggressive attitude toward the rest of the species we are in symbiosis with.
Our knowledge of our impact on the healthy functioning of Gaia is scientifically based, and can be observed as true. Our metaphysics has been the root of our inability to see this fact. “Progress” and it’s fear of primitivism has blocked the Western World, from being able to hear the voices of the ancients. In a Lakota sweat lodge, the hot lava rocks in the center of the lodge are seen as the oldest and the wisest in the lodge. Tunkashila is the name for one of these stones, and it means “Grandfather”.
If we can adopt a metaphysics that doesn’t pre-suppose we are greater than the rest of Gaia, then we can learn to live as fellow beings within Gaia. When one enters a sweat lodge, which represents Gaia (Turtle Island), they crawl through a small door and say “Aho mitakuye oyasin”. This translates roughly as “Hello, all my relations”, and includes all of Gaia. An intelligent and awake species who is aware of this relationship can form a healthy Symbiosis. Gurdjeiff describes humans as being able to awake, but that it is challenging and unlikely. He also gives the impression, that beings of a higher intelligence are shocked at our wars and ignorance.
I would like to propose a new metaphor. Imagine many worlds throughout the cosmos, where a single species becomes dominant, and like us, they have to rethink their place when they create enough technology to affect their environment as dramatically as we have. Many never wake up. Many perish, and destroy a large part of the symbiotic system, they were born from, on their way out, and leave inorganic destructive waste that last long after they do. Some have awoke and survived because of their awareness. They have restored their equilibrium with their Gaia, on their planet. We use the idea of a higher awareness to imagine what such a being would say to us. To see beyond what we can imagine now. These higher intelligences wouldn’t look down at us scornfully, but with compassion, and would hope that we could use our knowledge to wake up. I would go on to say that these beings’ intelligence would be rooted in their restored balance, and positive symbiosis with their Gaia. I would imagine they would say, “All the wisdom you need is rooted in your Gaia.”
Learn to listen to the rocks, plant, and animals. Let them speak through you and form a positive symbiosis with them. Artists and writers have a special access to this sort of communion and can help us to develop our imagination to see what this symbiosis might look like. Now more than ever, we must be knowledgeable about where we are historically, in the age of the Anthropocene, and imagine new futures for our place within Gaia.
Cathead Reynolds 3-27-22
