What is a Gaian?

Last weekend, while I was volunteering at New Earth farm, I was working and chatting with Melissa, their young helper--a slim, gracious, serenely competent young girl of Asian descent who helps John & Kathleen on the farm. In the course of a conversation over breakfast, Kathleen happened to allude to my self-defined identity (which also appears on my license plate) as a "Gaian." Curious, Melissa asked me, "What is a Gaian?"

Melissa, of course, is one of the most Gaian people I've ever met--dedicated, heart and soul, to organic farming, to Earth-healing, to total identification with, and service to, the web of life--our unique and magnificent living planet--in all she says and does. So I was tempted to say, "Look in the mirror."

But like most other highly evolved Gaians I have met, Melissa had never heard of the word "Gaian." This is because the word itself is fairly new, and is understood by only a relative handful of people who know anything about the Lovelock/Margulis Gaia theory. So this, Melissa, is for you--and for all other Gaians who do not yet know that they are Gaians.

A Gaian, then, is, as I define it, someone whose first allegiance is to the living Earth. It is an adjective of identity derived from "Gaia" the ancient Greek name for the Earth Mother Goddess, a name that has assumed new life as a kind of shorthand for the scientific theory, first developed by British biochemist James Lovelock and American microbiologist Lynn Margulis. The theory posits, in a nutshell, that life and a life-sustaining planet coevolved--that without life, the Earth would be uninhabitable, with 95% carbon dioxide, a surface temperature of about 250 degrees, and no oceans or topsoil at all. The implications of this theory, which at first was highly controversial, but now has gained widespread (if often unacknowledged) acceptance among scientists, are that the biosphere is a complex adaptive system which, like all other such (from cells and organisms to organizations and nation states) is resilient up to a point, but perishable if pushed too far.

But one need not understand the systemic complexities of Gaia theory to be a Gaian. In fact, one need not understand, or even believe, anything at all to be a Gaian--since we are all Gaians already--all of us, that is, who inhabit this biosphere, who breathe oxygenated air, drink fresh water, and eat food grown in topsoil--all of which are Gaian (i.e. biogenic) products and services.

So if we are all Gaians anyway, why call oneself a Gaian? Why do I choose this as the only label with which I am willing, without reservations, to identify? Simply because we can broadly divide the world into two categories: unconscious Gaians and conscious Gaians. The vast, overwhelming majority of us, of course, are unconscious Gaians--every nonhuman living thing from paramecia to great whales, and the vast, overwhelming majority of human beings as well, who identify with various subsets of Gaia, including nationalities, ethnic identities, and religions, or even hobbies. They all unknowingly participate, for good or ill, in co-creating, sustaining, and in many latter cases eroding or destroying the biosphere which sustains us all.

So I count myself as one of only a handful of conscious Gaians. Others, like Melissa, but also like millions of other good people worldwide, are in a middle category--conscious Gaians who do not (yet) know that they are Gaians, and who normally call themselves something else--"Environmentalists," "Tree Huggers," "Greens" etc.

This begs yet another question: why is "Gaian" any better than the above labels? My short answer is that "Gaian" is theoretically rooted in a rigorous and much-needed understanding of the real world--it is the only word we have that does away entirely with the illusory "man/nature" dichotomy--that refers to the entire planet--physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere--as a single, integrated system: Gaia.

"Gaian" is also, therefore, the only label I know that is 100% inclusive. It is emphatically not a religious label, since Gaia theory has nothing at all to say about vexatious religious questions, such as the nature of God, salvation, or the purpose of our lives. One can therefore, without contradiction, be a Gaian Christian, a Gaian Jew, a Gaian Muslim, a Gaian Buddhist, or a Gaian-anything-else. St. Francis, for example, was a highly evolved Gaian Christian, even in the 13th century...though (like Melissa and all the rest) he didn't know it.

So I cordially invite anyone so inclined to join me in calling ourselves Gaians. It could be a way of building solidarity among a wide range of people who share our fundamental shift in values away from the cancerous ideology of industrialism that views the natural world as nothing more than a "resource" with no value at all until it is turned into commodities for profit. When we become Gaians, we consciously realign ourselves with the living Earth.