Talk:Gaia spore

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There are a number of weaknesses in the Gaia spore article, valid though it is.

One is that at present industrially advanced humanity is parasitic on Gaia. It works by maximising its energy return on investment (EROI), by damaging Gaia and getting Gaia to undertake the work of self repair (i.e destroying sub-climax K type areas and with secondary colonisation of R type species), harvesting the available biological production as "food". By preventing Gaia to move to a K type existence, (i.e. where photosynthesis = respiration) we have been causing the sequential collapse of ecosystems, and are are about to cause a major collapse world wide (the 6th extinction) out of which humanity in its current form is unlikely to survive. As Stephen J Gould showed, evolution is not a linear sequence - bacteria -> eukaryote -> metazoan -> vertebrate -> tetrapod -> mammal -> man. This is obsolete Aristotelian "Great Chain of Being" thinking. Gaian complexity aims at maximisation. We humans are not the spores or the reproductive gametes of Gaia, as for Gaia to reproduce requires its "spores" to become saprophitic or commensual with the body of Gaia, not to be parasitic. It requires Gaia to benefit from human existence not to suffer.

So you are right about a Gaia centric morality being required. Industrial civilisation as a "perpetual growth system" is truly cancerous. Cancers finish by either killing the host, or by being killed by the host's immune system. Both scenarios are unsatisfactory from a human point of view and have a very similar pathway - ecological simplification and a flip to a new steady state. This is likely to happen as the book Gaia's revenge so clearly shows. Unfortunately the ecological services necessary for continued human survival are being undermined, and as the top of all planetary food chains, our survival as the ultimate predator species is seriously being compromised.

So the only alternative is a rapid re-commencemnet of human cultural evolution away from the cancerous condition. Apoptosis is required to begin the process of re-equilibration within the body of Gaia. But a demographic overshoot and collapse scenario is underway, and human populations over the course of the 21st century will plummet. What is important is what will emerge out of this parallysis of the pupae in which industrial civilisation dissolves.

These thoughts can be accessed through contacting me personally at jdcroft@yahoo.com. John D. Croft 02:50, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

This article needs to be reworked for a more neutral tone, especially the "Strategic Approach" section. It presently reads like it is presenting the Gaia hypothesis as fact.

Noclevername 22:30, 7 October 2007 (UTC)