Gaia Schmaia

Ever since I first encountered James Lovelock's Gaia Theory in 1980, where it was featured in the 1980 edition of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, I have been enamored--some might even say obsessed--by the Gaia concept (as first formulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis), despite the fact that it has been ridiculed by scientists, sharply criticized by philosophers, largely ignored by the public and the mass media, condemned as heresy by Christians, and uncritically embraced and mythologized, much to its progenitors' dismay, by marginal California neopagans and mush-brained New-Agers. It has even been adopted as the name for one of those mass virtual reality games on the Internet, mostly for children, but having nothing at all to do with its original meaning, and even less with the deeper implications.

The Gaia concept has, to be sure, a few able defenders in philosophy, such as Mary Midgley, who sees it (as I always have) as "the next big idea." But my early hopes that the Gaia concept would be widely embraced by the global environmental movement and the intellectual avante garde, leading to a global transformation of cultural consciousness, have come to naught--in fact, many of my friends in the movement have never even heard of it, and could not care less. So why my persistent and almost obsessive adherence to these four letters--to Gaia?

My short answer is this: we still need a name for ourselves, a shared identification that crosses all national and cultural boundaries, and that refers to our true home--the only living planet we will ever know.  We still need a basis of identification that transcends the obsolete "man vs. nature" dichotomy of the Industrial Revolution, and that embodies humanity-within-nature as a single system. And "Gaia" is the only viable candidate for such a concept. "Earth" means "dirt," which is mostly how we have treated the planet hitherto. "The World" is too vague and anthropocentric--it comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "Werald" meaning "age of man" and is often used as a synonym for the entire universe (as in the French equivalent, "Le Monde").  "Gaia," however, is feminine, not neuter--like the names of the nation-states to which most of us give our primarily allegiance--"America" "Canada" "Russia" "China" and so forth. Yet Gaia is more real than any of these shifting cultural constructs. Like the names of the other planets, it is mythic in reference. But if a dead planet can be named after a mythic figure--like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--why can't a living, far-from-equilibrium planet like our own likewise have a deeply resonant mythic name? What are we afraid of? Having to admit that we are raping our own mother??

And so I am, and will always be, a Gaian.  Names matter, for they constitute the basis of our identification. And my short definition of this identification, this label, is one whose first allegiance is to the fabric of life on Earth. All other allegiances are secondary to this one. The nice thing about this identification also is that it is the only identity label I know that excludes absolutely no one nor any other living being on the planet. If there is any non-Gaian life, we don't yet know of it, and may never. So being a Gaian means identifying with all living beings. One can, with no contradiction, be a Gaian Buddhist (as I am), a Gaian Christian (like Wangari Maathai and Pope Francis, whether he knows it or not), a Gaian Jew (like Evan Eisenberg or the "Green Rabbis"), a Gaian Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, Agnostic, or whatever...for Gaianity does not require nor preclude any religious belief system, any more than it does any national identification.

Imagine, moreover, what the effect would be if more and more people self-identified as Gaians! This in itself could trigger a quiet revolution, a subversion and transformation of Glomart, the Spontaneous Remission of the Cancer of the Earth. It is worth a try, and as long as I draw breath, I will continue to promulgate Gaianity--Gaian consciousness--in whatever ways I can.