PERIPHERAL VISIONS
by
Mary Catherine Bateson
The Gaia hypothesis is not a simple assertion that could easily be proved or
disproved. Instead it is a complex statement with multiple levels of meaning,
like a work of art. At the simplest level, it asserts that this planet is
characterized by the capacity for self-correction that characterizes living
organisms, the maintenance of continuity by corrective variation. The
composition of the atmosphere and the temperatures of the planet over time, for
instances, are not accounted for by the laws of chemistry and physics alone,
but apparently by processes of self-regulation within those laws. The Gaia
hypothesis deepens the sense of the planet as developing, as having a history.
Wiggling.
There are several quite different responses to the idea of the earth as a
living organism. Some people feel increased solicitude for a planet newly
recognized as vulnerable, intricately beautiful. Others respond with
nonchalance, saying Gaia can do her own housekeeping, leaving us free to
continue as we are. Still others notice that the planet's capacity for
self-correction might well involve the end of the creatures that are making the
trouble.
When a metaphor is proposed it generates questions. You notice the puppy's
ears, and you wonder if the elephant has ears. You didn't notice so much hair
on the elephant--something else to wonder about. A metaphor goes on generating
ideas and questions, so that a metaphorical approach to the world is endlessly
fertile and involves constant learning. A good metaphor continues to instruct.
When we assert that the planet is living, one of the things that springs to
mind is that living things can die. They have needs that must be met. Their
health is subject to thresholds of various sorts. We may extend the analogy and
move quickly to wondering what part we represent in this organism. Are we,
perhaps, the brain? That feels good. Are we the vectors of its reproduction,
colonizing outer space? Or perhaps its immune system? Perhaps we are a virus
running wild within it or the multiplying cells of a malignant tumor. As with
any pathogen, the question arises whether this one will kill the organism it
invades, or be eliminated or neutralized, or whether some balance will be
achieved. Microbes ride the human body and depend on its health as we ride the
earth. All these speculations and others come up in playing with the metaphor
of earth as a living organism. A metaphor can propose testable questions and
serve as a framework for synthesizing information. This is no small gain, for
the challenge to meteorologists and chemists, physicists and geologists of
synthesizing their knowledge far outdoes the problem of the blind men in the
old story [of the Elephant].
There is another step implied in the Gaia hypothesis, the hint that the
behavior and characteristics of this planet are best grasped by an analogy with
the living organism we know best, a human being...The Greeks believed that
every tree was inhabited by a dryad, a female spirit, who would die if the tree
were cut down. Most of us know intellectually that trees are alive--they grow,
they age, they breathe, they respond to the environment they're in, they draw
in nutrients, they have a metabolism, all those things--but it's hard not to
slip into seeing a tree as an inanimate object that is simply a given in a
particular environment. Trees live at a different tempo from human beings--I
didn't slow down enough to notice the growth of trees until I was over
forty--so it is hard to remember that a tree can suffer and become ill, though
we are more aware than we used to be. Arguably, a belief in dryads may
complement what is learned in botany classes, making our knowledge of trees
more complete and more accurate. In the same way, the belief that patients are
whole persons is not easily acquired in medical classes that emphasize the
mechanical characteristics of bodies, so physicians must find other ways to
maintain it. Although the belief in an immortal soul brings a lot of baggage
that may be troublesome, it probably helps some physicians to remember. The
anthropomorphic dimension of the Gaia hypothesis proposes empathy as a way of
knowing--and caring....
To me, the most important thing that the Gaia hypothesis proposes that was
absent from earlier metaphors like spaceship earth is that we are immersed in,
brought into being by, a living reality, not a mechanical one. We are
completely dependent, as we would be in a spaceship, but we do not have full
blueprints and we cannot expect to be in complete control. The atmosphere, that
mixture of gases we study in high school chemistry, could occur only as the
product of a living system, for the free oxygen that makes animal life possible
would not continue except for the steady activity of green plants. The soil and
most of the rocks we think of as lifeless are the products of life processes
over vast stretches of geological time. Because the earth is different from us
and mysterious, changing constantly, every encounter with the environment is an
opportunity for learning. Our planet is not an inert piece of real estate
subject to rezoning, for its surface has been shaped by life processes, with
their own lawfulness. We cannot treat the earth as inert, just as we cannot
treat a tree as an iron pylon or a meadow as a piece of wall-to-wall carpeting
Environmentalism began with piecemeal concerns about parts of the natural
world: saving this forest or that bay, the whales or a particular lake that had
become polluted. The issue becomes very different when we realize, as the Gaia
hypothesis demands, that we are totally contained in and sustained by a single
living system, in which all the parts are interconnected and everything we do
resonates with the whole. Nothing is fully localized. The destruction of an
ecosystem or a species is an amputation, and, like the amputation of a limb,
can trigger fatal shock or, at the least, require learning new ways to
function. One extraneous item introduced in the wrong place in a living body
can trigger pathology. The Gaia hypothesis becomes, at every level of its
metaphorical evocation, a reminder that the world we live in is a biological,
or if you like a biologized world, a sacred process in which we share, a
community to participate in, not an object to be used.
We don't see it. Our habits of attention work against seeing, and the
connections in the system are invisible. Most of the time, we are like the
blind man with the elephant. Focusing on the pursuit of particular, narrow
goals, we pay attention to a fraction of the whole, block out peripheral
vision, and act without looking at the larger picture. Cutting down forests for
timber, it is easy to ignore their role in the regulation of climate. Poisoning
insects to increase crop yields, it is easy to ignore the concomitant deaths of
natural predators, which lead to an increase in pests the following year. All
of this could be spelled out in environmental impact statements with elegant
diagrams showing the interconnection of the different factors, but the Gaia
hypothesis may help to make these interconnections seem intuitively obvious....
The Gaia hypothesis pulls the data together, but it goes further by offering a
metaphor for organizing awareness of the interconnections. Beyond that, it
proposes empathy as a way of knowing and imagining connections about which we
cannot yet be explicit....
...What would it be like to walk through the woods or the city in the presence
of--aware of--Gaia? Part of that awareness can be built up by letting children
look through microscopes, germinate seeds, learn about soil chemistry, but part
of it comes into being through the experiences of loving and being loved,
resolving quarrels, learning new ways of family life, attending patiently to
things we do not understand
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