I think it was Alan Watts who described what earth might look like to an observer with a different perspective. “Look at that; this planet is peopling”. His point being that we are all emerging phenomena intrinsically linked to the unfolding processes of earth and the cosmos more broadly, and that our existence is a manifestation of the universe unfolding. For whatever progress science makes, there’s this underlying primordial quality that often gets lost in the academic conceptual descriptions and labels assigned to this phenomena.
I think it’s fair to say earth is alive with a completely straight face, and it’s probably even important for more people to start seeing it this way.
Indeed, and Alan Watts’ further point was that we come out of this world, not into it.
In modern western societies we learn that we born into this world, and that our mind, body and soul are seperate entities.
Whereas other cultures and philosophies consider that we are part of the world, that we are born out of it but still connected.
The speeches for Watts are really about the increasingly unhealthy abstraction from this planet that is shaping our thinking.
Ideas that we can and should live on Mars or grow and eat artificial meat are just bonkers really. I’m all for science and advancement, but being restoring our connection to this planet is the answer. :-)
Broadly, it was a half baked thought that our Western culture heavily promotes ideas that are anti-Earth in a way.
Ideas for instance where Elon Musk is talking about saving humanity by getting to Mars, or creating artificial meat as a solution to our food crises.
These ideas suggest that the solution is to engineer our way out of a problem of our own making. The problem rhetoric being that Earth cannot support us.
This runs counter to the thinking that we are bound to this Earth because we are part of it. We are one and the same. So we should respect it and work with it.
Watts talks about seeing the Californian hills in the 60s, being carved up and houses being wedged in to the landscape in an artificial way. Where no consideration is given to working with the land, instead we try to dominate and shape it.
Like I say, it's a half baked idea that I'm not really expressing very well I don't think! :-)
I'd love others to straighten me out, or put me on the right path! :-)
I did laugh a while back when in one of Watts' talks he mentioned Plastics being the solution to Deforestation and Paper Wastage...
Engineering a solution to deforestation using plastics didn't work out so well for us.
Fast forward 50 years and it turns out that Humans just began using more of everything!
Like building roads to reduce traffic and you end up just promoting more car usage! :-)
This reminds me of this quote from Jill Tarter of SETI:
“Might it be the discovery of a distant civilization and our common cosmic origins that finally drives home the message of the bond among all humans? Whether we’re born in San Francisco or Sudan or close to the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, we are the products of a billion-year lineage of wandering stardust. We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.”
I love this perspective but think it needs to be taken all the way. Are you comfortable saying corporations are alive? Stars? The universe? Once that floodgate of 'aliveness' is open, I don't see that it stops flowing, up and down. And it's and even smaller step to 'everything is conscious'...
I think it’s fair to say earth is alive with a completely straight face, and it’s probably even important for more people to start seeing it this way.