What is the Gaia Mythos? ⇡

Switch the Lights On ⇡

All of the statements listed above are either misleading, meaningless, false or a combination of those. In this section, we are going to go through the claims, and apply scientific knowledge and common sense to see how they fare.

Nature is physics, chemistry and biology, and nothing more. There is nothing in nature that would not adhere to scientific laws. Take food for example. A molecule is the same regardless of its origin, whether it is a plant or a factory. If a manufactured food is not as nutritious, which is often the case today, the reason for it is either missing molecules or the presence of unwanted molecules. If we would mimic the original food molecule by molecule, there would be no difference at all. But we don’t need to mimic every single molecule. As our knowledge extends, the important differences will be discovered and accounted for. It is merely a question of time before we can manufacture food just as good as natural, albeit probably different in composition. And progress does not even stop there. From that point on, we are going to develop better, more nutritious, healthier foods.

When this time comes is hard to pinpoint. It is well understood that the biochemistry of a human being is quite complex. However, it is impossible to miss the rate of progress in the area, despite its complexity. There is no doubt we will have a sophisticated understanding of genetics and biochemical processes at some point. But we don’t have to wait for it. Complex systems can be attacked by brute force, by the sheer number of manhours put into it, systematically examining each molecule and their combinations. With automation, this task is not at all impossible, and has actually been started.

But it is more than just biochemistry and physics, one could argue. Nature has a psychological effect too. Living in a city, sitting in a chair, in an office building with artificial lighting, without the sounds, scents and colors of nature cause great stress. This is all true, although greatly exaggerated. Stress is something we can tolerate, and there is a flipside to this coin, namely we live much better lives without many of the hardships we had to endure before civilization. However, the true counterargument is that it is, like food, just biochemistry and physics! Nature does not have this effect on us through some magical quality. It does so through our senses, sight, touch, smell. It affects us through biochemical processes in the brain. These physical stimuli can be imitated, or the effects can be, eventually, produced by other means. After all, as we discussed, a beam of light or a molecule is a beam of light or a molecule, regardless of their origin. If such stress is indeed a serious issue, we can expect science to provide a solution, perhaps in a form of imitation, medication, meditation, mental exercise or even genetic modification.

Since nature is just a set of complex processes embedded in the physical world, it is very hard to define its boundaries. One would have a hard time arguing that star-devouring black holes, pitch black empty spaces large enough to fit galaxies in, or planetary system wiping supernovae are somehow part of the harmony and balance. Volcanoes or forest fires caused by lightning are borderline. But under what logic or criteria would mankind be outside of nature? We have evolved just as any other animal. We eat and exploit other organisms, just as any other animal. We use tools, but so do some animals. We transform land, like beavers do. We construct complex structures to live in, just like ants or termites.

Granted, humans cause large scale change, which not many other life forms do. Not that they don’t try, mind you. Animals are not obeying some form of law or instructions given by Nature, they just try to get by. The main reason why life can go on for extended periods of time in an apparent equilibrium is the sheer scale of the Earth and its biosphere. There are millions of different biomes and countless species in all of them. Even if one species finds a way to upset the balance, which occasionally happens, the effects are almost always localized. Almost always. In fact the very first form of life, photosynthesizing bacteria, started with causing a mass extinction event called the Great Oxygen Catastrophe. The only reason why nobody fears the planet altering capacity of bears or pigeons is that they don’t possess one. These animals are quite incapable of doing anything large scale, as they are mostly irrelevant. Man is dangerous because man is capable. If we do something, everybody better listen, because we mean business.

And this pretty much invalidates the hubris accusations. Yes, we are prone hubris, but with a very good reason! At some point in the last century, after watching the impossible to happen again and again, we realised that we can probably do everything. No plans are too ambitious! We can walk on the Moon, we can cure all diseases, we can stop earthquakes, we can, finally, build the Tower of Babel. Maybe not today, but soon.

Creation, of course, has side effects. To build the cities and factories, cars and roads, power plants and mines, we do destroy large swaths of wildlife, or make the lives of uncountable animals much harder. Which is all right. All right for two main reasons. Reason number one is that this is how it is in “Nature”, cruelty is the law of the land if you are the wildlife. Mosquitos would not flinch learning they kill us with malaria. Dolphins kill fish for fun. The whole system is based on multiple layers of parasitism, the only non-parasites being photosynthesizing plants and bacteria. There is zero moral rules against poisoning the waters or the ground, it is routine. It is merely a practical issue.

Reason number two is that it is only a practical issue for now. Today we rely on nature, we use the air and rain it provides, we harvest the ocean for fish and other animals, we suffer the weather and eventually the rising sea levels. But not for very long. In many ways, we already have separated ourselves from nature. There are areas where agriculture is problematic or impossible due to climatic reasons, like minimal rainfall, low temperature or low lighting. We make up for what’s missing using irrigation, greenhouses and artificial lighting. We don’t hunt anymore, but keep animals in mostly closed buildings. We use heating and air conditioning. We use dams and forms of coastal management to control water. In a not so distant future, we will be able to control the climate, control the weather, relocate land to create more coasts where we want and how we want. Ocean level or disappearing species will not threaten us in any way.

One might wonder if the exhaustion argument is even intended to make sense. It is hard to know where to even start with that. We do want to exhaust resources. Logically, we pick the cheapest form of any resource, like mineral oil for energy, or a certain ore for lithium. We are not going to spare it just to not exhaust it, are we? We want to use up all of it, and then look for some other source, or recycling existing stocks in some way. The argument that when there is no more of it, prices will sharply rise, is an argument for or against what? If a resource runs out, and the next best alternative is five times as expensive, what is the proposed strategy? Not using it helps how? The only concern is to be prepared for a sudden increase in price when one source runs out. But this is hardly a challenging problem in a modern economy. In fact, we can expect our capabilities grow faster than the cost of accessing alternative sources, thus making resources cheaper and cheaper as we go. Even in a relatively close future, we foresee asteroid or core mining, as well as ocean filtration.

Before you let yourself be consumed by outrage, allow me clarify that we don’t advertise completely ignoring other living beings, and destroying them in the process. My point is that it is our choice, and there is neither necessity nor moral obligation to preserve a species or save any particular animal from suffering. However, there is a moral obligation to save people from suffering. Perhaps not an obligation, but certainly a more compelling goal on both emotional and rational level. We will get to the point when we can easily be the saviour and protector of life on this planet, as opposed to an extinction causing factor. Not sure anyone will care at that point, but the possibility is there. Until that time, however, we need to choose between us and other species, and the choice should be pretty clear.

Civilization, including the technological one, happens for a reason: we are building a better future. It is not greed or derangement that drives us, but the possibility to eliminate suffering and unnecessary death. Today, billions of people live in medieval or even tribal conditions. If we create the proper circumstances, these people can be brought up to western level, but it takes time. People living today will probably not see skyscrapers, air conditioning and computers becoming ubiquitous. But their grandchildren might, and this should be our focus and our goal. Hindering this process is a crime against humanity. It is baffling how can pandas or coral reefs be more important than hundreds of millions of people doomed to lifelong suffering and poverty.

Fallout of the Gaia Mythos ⇡

A society that does not care about the future does not have one. The Gaia Mythos undermines believing in the future in two ways: it belittles ourselves, and it directly attacks the very tools that can bring us to a better future, namely technology.

The most damaging way to stop someone from achieving a goal is to depriving him from the very knowledge of the goal. Most people today subscribe to the notion that chasing “material pleasure” or money, desiring more advanced technology or greater comfort is a mental problem, and a shame. If someone envisions large cities, multi-kilometer tall skyscrapers, faster cars, personal flight, space exploitation or better quality cheap food, he can easily labelled technocrat or daydreamer. As we speak, scientists work on eliminating age related disease, opening the possibility of radical life extension. At the same time, the general public mostly occupies the position that it is impossible and undesirable, because it is Natural for a human age and then die. Other than being Natural, not much positives can be said about aging, and indeed, if we get rid of this nonsense argument, we find aging and death repugnant, and something to be fixed.

A similar sentiment can be seen about space exploration. We don’t know our own psyche, or the depth of the oceans, why do we want to go up there? The answer is of course: because we want and we can! That is the human way. Columbus did not sail across the Atlantic because he or someone else needed something. He did so out of hubris and greed. Good for him! The benefits came later, and unexpected. This attitude of going out, exploring, taking over, acquiring and transforming is what got us here, made us a civilized society from fragmented primitive tribes. This process is not over, and must not end. It can and should keep going, because there is a lot of potential, and the sky is not the limit.

A major instrument in eliminating poverty and other hardships is cheap energy. But this ambitious goal is attacked on all fronts by Gaia believers. The main weapon of this cult is the mantra of Global Warming. Global Warming is a callsign that allows them to work on hideous goals such as limiting the spread of coal power in China, India and Africa, which is crucial for their ascension to western quality of life. They also oppose nuclear power, for an even less understandable reason, since it has near zero effect on the biosphere. However, for a Gaia believer, nuclear power is the pinnacle of Cruel Technology that is the antithesis of Nature. On the other hand, they support wind and solar energy, and other forms of “Renewables”. As we already discussed in the previous session, maintaining the climate is simply not a goal in itself. We want to maintain our own living conditions. For the time being we are dependent on rainfall and other environmental factors, thus we don’t want severe climate change. However, it is not a real danger. If we disregard sensationalism and fear mongering, it turns out that it is very unlikely for the climate to turn real bad within the next hundred years. Even if turns bad then, the effects are easy to mitigate. Lack of rainfall can be fixed with irrigation, rise in temperature can be negated by simply shifting our crops to the north, but most plants don’t even care, and higher carbon-dioxide level is actually beneficial for plant growth. There are also proposals to control the climate using space based infrastructure, which we need in the long run anyway, because the climate can change on its own, and we better prepare for it. It is much better to face these problems after hundred years of unhindered economic growth based on cheap energy, rather than choking progress in the name of prevention, favoring “renewable” energy sources that are just not ready yet. Imagine a world with nine billion people living on the level western countries do today. Imagine Africa with metropolises, universities and factories scattered around in large numbers. Such a civilization is way more capable of dealing with drought than today’s primitive agriculture. Preparing for the effects is a valid option if we use common sense. It is not, if we are in the Gaia Cult, where technology is sin, and Nature is saint.

We are playing with fire here. Mankind is still fragile, and we are sitting on multiple ticking timebombs. It is not us that threaten nature, but quite the opposite: nature is the one threatening us! Extinction events were numerous in the past, and they won’t stop on their own. Supervolcanoes, meteor impacts, major pandemics can happen any time, and we are mostly defenseless. But if we are focusing on scientific and technological progress, all these dangers can be eliminated in a few hundred years. We only need to survive this time period, then mankind enters a new phase of its existence: the Post Extinction phase. At this point, we no longer have to fear catastrophic events anymore, and the future of our species settled for millions of years ahead. With every year wasted, we risk becoming one of the forgotten civilizations, those that didn’t make it.

The Gaia Syndrome ⇡

As we’ve seen, the Gaia Mythos is exceptionally harmful. But it is also not pleasant. It is not a cozy worldview that eases the mind, it is not some mental cocaine, neither it is an expression of our love for nature. The Gaia Mythos is always, and was always, associated with fear, helplessness and anxiety. The Gaia Mythos is a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

The human mind is malleable. We tend to believe anything that we think will help us survive. Facing with a fearful oppressing power, we tend to find solace by accepting said power, taking its side, treating it inevitable, help it, and viciously attack those that try to oppose it. Siding with a powerful agent is a survival strategy, which, as a behavior, makes perfect sense, as crossing its ways could lead to immediate peril. Unfortunately, due to how the human mind works, we can not maintain a discrepancy in our views and behavior for too long. We can not properly side with any cause without transforming ourselves to truly believe in it. Thus, if the oppression is severe enough and it lasts long enough, its dictums soon become internalized. It becomes deeply embedded in our decision making mechanisms, thus no conscious override is necessary, it happens easily and quickly.

Unfortunate may be, but the benefits are also obvious. If humans are bad liars, which is a desired characteristic, malleability and internalization is critical. However, there is a more insidious problem with this strategy: internalized rules tend to live longer than their initial cause. The victims in the Stockholm case didn’t suddenly stop being supportive of their oppressors when they got rescued. Such events often have lasting impressions on the mind. The reason for it is that learning is greatly enhanced during stress. In stressful situations, the mind enters a highly suggestible state, an increased level of malleability. But the lack of stress, obviously, does not have the same effect. Behaviors learned during stress are often very hard to get rid of.

The Gaia Mythos is an obsoleted internalization of nature’s cruelty and indifference. It was learned through hundreds of generations of extreme stress. It will not easily go away. We need to meet it head on, we need to look deeply into it, identify it for what it is, and methodologically dismantle it until we finally break this heavy chain, and unlock our true potential.