Gaian Identity

Description

Samantha Sweetwater:

"I think of Gaia as a principle in the universe of a planet where a local sun has collaborated with matter and water to boot up complex life. And so in that process of the evolution of life on a Gaian planet, we are a certain category of organisms that I think of as a creator-destroyer, preserver-destroyer category of organisms. So if you imagine that our planet is not the only Gaia in the universe, but it is a very particular one, and we’re a very particular kind of organism on this planet—we’re a category of organism that can attempt to separate itself from the biophysical processes that made us. And in that way, we are creators of worlds, and we can also become destroyers of worlds.

So the identification of our place within biospheric process is why I identify as a Gaian. We have created a global civilization that is not at all coordinated in terms of its function relative to the biosphere. So the kind of opportunity that the metacrisis and polycrisis presents is also an opportunity to interrogate: well, what identity structure might cause us to realign the superorganism with the planetary superorganism, with the more fundamental biophysical process that we depend upon and are interdependent with and are currently on the verge of collapsing?"

(https://jimrutt.substack.com/p/ep-335-worldviews-samantha-sweetwater)