Originally released in June 2022, I’m rebroadcasting for Earth Day Episode 60 with Dr Stephan Harding - Holistic Scientist, Deep Ecologist, Author and Co-founder of Schumacher College who was mentored by the scientist James Lovelock - responsible for the Gaia Hypothesis Theory.
Earth Day began in 1970 the year before I was born, and here we are 54 years later experiencing the accelerated unravelling of our Earth’s System, essentially from a perception problem, a relationship problem, a separation crisis.
Capitalist Modernity has failed to understand or accept that the Earth is alive, an ongoing complex, mysterious entanglement of intelligent living relationships which have created the conditions for life to emerge, including human life.
This is Gaia.
A way of seeing and understanding the Earth that humans throughout the majority of our time as a species on this planet have always known.
The Earth and all life as sentient, animate and sacred.
Decades of destructive and extractive ways of being in relationship with the Earth means we’re facing into the consequences of that in profound ways now, how quickly can we wake up at scale and re-learn to see the Earth as alive ?
What Stephan would call Gaian consciousness…
“So lets call it a Gaian consciousness. It’s gradually taking root inside people, people are waking-up to it more and more. But it’s slow. Waking up is far slower than the rate of destruction. And what we need now is the rate of waking-up to overtake the rate of destruction. And the waking-up has got to happen on a massive scale. But I don’t know how that is going to happen.
The positive side is that cultural revolutions can happen very quickly. Revolutions in consciousness can happen very quickly. This one has got to happen quicker than any other, and happen fast and on a global scale. And it has got to transcend national boundaries, political boundaries, all the sorts of boundaries that we humans have erected between ourselves, gender boundaries, all those boundaries they have got to fall down. And we all have to unify to protect our very own planet, for her own sake and our sake and the sake of all beings. Is that going to happen?”
In this episode we explore
- Who is Gaia and what’s her history?
- James Lovelock independent scientist, mentor and Gaia Theory Hypothesis
- From the scientific study of the Muntjac Deer to the deep connection of the wholeness of nature
- We are not just thinkers. We’re equally, feelers, sensors and intuitors
- We’re inherently animistic with a spiritual connection to nature. And we can still value science
- A cultural revolution needs to happen quicker than any other time, for the sake of all life
- Gaia Alchemy. Why put alchemy with science?
- Healing a crisis of meaning and the Azoth of Philosophy
- Valuing the psyche over the ego. Do we invent ideas or do we receive them?
- Finding your Gaia place
I hope you enjoy this conversation.
Please share your thoughts in the comments and the episode with your friends if it speaks to you.
LINKS
Schumacher College - https://campus.dartington.org/schumacher-college/
Gaia Alchemy : https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Gaia-Alchemy/Stephan-Harding/9781591434252
Animate Earth : https://www.nhbs.com/animate-earth-book
Play Out Track:
Brian Eno - Did the World begin today
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