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Lovelock remarks: “. . . I fi nd that country people still living close to
the earth often seem puzzled that anyone should need to make a formal
proposition of anything as obvious as the Gaia hypothesis. For them it is
true and always has been.” That does not negate the notion that a human
being is an entity, but it does suggest that humans relate to Gaia in much
the same way that the trillions of microorganisms in our bodies relate to us.
A tree also has relatedness to Gaia, but offers different services, if you will,
to the larger whole.
Humans offer particular intelligences: the ability to evince detailed
and complex self-awareness, the power to extend our agency beyond our
bodies through technology, and both consciousness of and curiosity about
the larger contexts in which we live-cultures, civilizations, Earth, and the
cosmos. These are unique talents. They enable us to have such a large
infl uence over the Gaian whole as to cause highly consequential effects,
including palpable harm. The prime characteristic of a Gaian perspective
consists of awareness of our relatedness to the whole Gaian entity. We are
not alone.
Looking down at the big blue ball as astronauts did in 1968, one can
see that nothing on it is non-Gaian; even the asteroids that have embedded
deposits of nickel deep into Earth's crust are now part of the grand eco-
system. Technology has been invented by entities as diverse as crows, rac-
coons, and marine mammals. Like Vernadsky's and Teilhard de Chardin's
“noösphere,” 13 our technologies are extrusions of ourselves, and so, of Gaia.
Joseph Campbell described our fi rst view of the earth from space as “the
fi rst time the Earth was able to look back on itself through the eyes it had
grown in human beings.” 14
Rob and I often speak of “Gaian Gardening.” This is not the conquering
of Nature as the Old Testament would have it; rather, this is mindfulness
and behavior intended to serve balance and health of the Gaian whole. This
is not “restoration” in the sense that one may never return to the status
quo ante in Nature, but may instead nurture what is coming into being in a
way that respects Gaian relations. This does not speak only to plants and
wilderness and animals; it also speaks to how we frame the powers of the
technologies we bring into being.
13. Both Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin used the term “noösphere.” De Chardin's is evi-
dently the fi rst published use in a 1922 paper entitled “Cosmogenesis.”
14. This was part of a conversation published as an article by Johnson in 1997.
 
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