Biospheric Philosophy (Chris Searles, editor)
Living in the Life-Support System Paradigm
I wanted to write this article because scientifically speaking it’s clear that deforestation and species loss alone are driving humanity towards a death spiral — with or without soil depletion, desertification, climate change, micro-plastics, mining, and all the rest. Yes, it’s overwhelming but it’s also clear there are more solutions than problems when one employs our planetary life-support system as her/his/their primary resource for resolution.
I also wanted to write this because it’s confounding, to say the least, that we’re not a) aware of how desperately close to collapse our Life-Support System is today and b) how accessible and powerful rescuing and restoring it is, especially relative to the numerous wicked problems most people and other forms of life now face.
So I wrote this to help kick off a new era: exploring the meaning of existence from our planetary life-support system’s perspective, our biosphere’s perspective. I want to start that conversation right now. Here are some thoughts. Let’s get real.
“The Pale Blue Dot” from 3.75 billion miles away (NASA, 1990).
I. There’s only one life-support system.
Often when we talk about “Space” we convey affection. It just sounds cool—who knows what could be out there? But the thing about the word, “SPACE” … as in the final frontier, is that what we’re really talking about is the unbelievable distances between planets. Notice in the famous photograph above, “The Pale Blue Dot,” there are no other dots. This despite the nearly 4 billion mile distance between the camera and its subject, our life-support system.
So far NASA has found more than 4,400 other planets, sure, but of those other orbs just 60 are considered “potentially-habitable”. And when you look into what that means, it’s meaningless. The top five are completely different: no confirmed water, oxygen, atmosphere, or life; or no sunlight on half of the planet, which means most of the planet is unlivable except at a very narrow in-between zone; or days that are 11 days long, or years that are 4 days long; etc. etc. These are our best case scenarios for relocation. Unlivable. More importantly, they’re unreachable. The closest planet that might be making oxygen is, hold onto your hat, roughly 73,000 years away by modern travel technology. The next option after that is about 190,000 years away.
Lastly and most importantly,, “No life beyond Earth has ever been found.” Not even one microbe. Current science tells us Earth’s life-support system took more than four billion years to form before it was able to host humans. Good luck speeding-up that process. Here’s a timeline of the science on Life’s development:
Citations: Microbial Life (4.5B years), Complex Life (600M years), Our life-support system (65M years), our species (300,000 years). Created by me, 2021.
II. Philosophy — the study of how we define existence; how we guide our behaviors.
One of the challenges Earth-bound humanity faces today is: we don’t have a central value for right and wrong. We do not yet share a conception of ultimate common good. I think this is what religion tries to get at, so admirably, but we are SO diverse it seems impossible to establish fact or define morality for all people. Thus, we tend to live in defensiveness rather than within a paradigm of agreement. How could anything be valued the same way by all of the people on Earth? Is that even possible? Is there anything we can unanimously agree on? Anything that is right for everyone? Anything we can hold as our greatest shared value, that we can organize ourselves by and live within?
I suggest that the unifying “common good” we’re searching for is Life-Support System continuation and that living according to the laws of our Life-Support System advances both a kinship among all people and an ethic of realism and respect for all of the ways of living in harmony with the Earth, of continuing continuation of the living Creation.
Our Western European-originated religions tend to ignore the spirituality in other living creatures, focusing instead on humans as supreme mortals and the heavens as sole home for spirituality. In that paradigm, why would Christians care about nature?
Likewise, our secular, Western European philosophies are unrealistically human-centric, devoid of any fundamental recognition of the necessity of our relationships with other living things and that we live inside a planetary life-support system.
Even our incredibly valuable Science ignores the palpable and quantifiable existence of the animating force present only in living beings. “Spirit”, some call it. You can also call it “animation.” How can this be? How can Science, of all things, discount life’s existence and identity, its most important aspect? Science is materialist and in that paradigm it’s having a hard time grasping our planetary ecosystem’s worth, even as together life-force reality and the composition of ecosystems on Earth create the conditions which make Science possible.
Today’s developed world cultures exclude the miracle of life-force that is present in every organism. How then could our economics and way of life be anything other than biologically, biophysically, and biospherically self-destructive when our systems of belief, thought and inquiry are so out of touch with reality? We are blind to what we see because we have a paradigm problem. We are not living in life-support system reality.
III. Miracle of Miracles
When each of us comes into life we become an animated, biological construct, a bone and flesh machine driven by an internal force we do not understand; an animating force. Not only that, we don’t know where we come from or why. Each one of us comes into life from nothingness, an unexplainable phenomenon. This fundamental piece of our reality, that we are “spiritually” animated beings inhabiting physical form, is perhaps our most important, common miracle. Each of us comes into being, has “a life” for a time in a body, and then we go away. Upon death our spirit or “animating force” leaves, the body remains, and then biodegrades. This is true for all organisms for all time.
And Death? Death is beautiful. We don’t know where we go. There are a lot of beliefs on that, but what we do know is Death connects us to the continuum of Life making Life that has been a constant on Earth for more than 4 billion years; the continuum that made and makes our lives possible.
There is, in being alive, in existing together at this exact moment, and in mortality itself, a sacredness we share. With that sacredness comes respect for others, an infinite number of biological/spiritual/physical miracles. These miracles of life are with us all the time on Earth. Please take that reality and draw your own religious conclusions. We are here, in existence, together, at the same time. We are alive. A collection of miracles.
What is BE? (Biosphere Earth)
BE is a wilderness continuum, an endless, iterative evolution of “natural, intact ecosystems.” Consider the history of life on Earth in the timeline above. We know from current science that somewhere in the range of 4.5 billion years ago the first micro-life appeared. From that point it took about 4 billion years for the first plants and animals to come into being. Our species, Homo sapiens, didn’t arrive until about 300,000 years ago. All along, BE was a wilderness continuum building and rebuilding itself for something like 99.99994% of its time on Earth before our species arrived. And, yes, it was Industrialization in about 1800, when there were fewer than one billion people, that began today’s era of life-support system destruction.
Our human civilization today, the system that is DOING the harm to our only life-support system, has only been in existence for less than four 10-millionths of 1 percent of the wilderness continuum’s total existence, .0000004% of the last 4.5 billion years.
Science says BE began with super simple microbes (citations above). Logically, it then took billions of years for these microbes to cover the planet. One can assume, reasonably, that all along these microbes were iterating and surviving according to the conditions they were in, just like we do now, and that their will to live through all manner of challenges resulted in the organic construction of living communities, aka. “wildernesses” and the wilderness continuum. This timeless surge to continue living and building ecosystems led to what made and makes it possible for us to live today.
We are “complex” life. Not very adaptable. Unlike simple life, we don’t know how to trade our DNA with other species. Unlike trees, which are about 1,000 times older than Homo sapiens, we don’t know how to plant ourselves and eat from the air. Unlike other animals, we don’t know how use our night vision, live outdoors or navigate the Earth’s magnetic field. We’re not that kind of smart.
We Homo sapiens are totally insignificant to the Wilderness Continuum’s overall functionality. It doesn’t need us. Biospherically, humans are like the candles on top of a birthday cake, not even the icing, and certainly not the cake. That’s not a criticism. There are many ways of expressing this simple, life-support system reality. As some native peoples say (paraphrased), “You can take the person out of the ecosystem and the ecosystem will be fine, but if you take away the ecosystem no person can survive.”
IV. What is the economic value of our only LSS?
That’s easy. The economic value of our only life-support system is so much greater than anything we can design, build, or manufacture. It makes itself. It covers the whole planet, from below the oceans to inside, on, and around all biological bodies, to the top of the atmosphere; a continuum of life. BE is the container of all economic activity in the known universe, the only container. In addition to that, rescuing and regrowing our LSS is our biggest climate and “wicked problems” solution. Not just because the carbon absorption potential of regrowing Biosphere Earth is greater than what’s needed to stop global warming, but also because regrowth of the wilderness continuum restores functionality to our weather and climate systems in ways technology cannot.
Technology can’t even remotely replicate ecosystem-scale LSS/climate system services such as: moisture circulation, hydrological system maintenance, heat reduction, microclimate temperature maintenance, biodiversity rescue and collapse reversal, extreme weather reduction, extreme weather prevention, extreme weather resilience, rapid recovery from extreme weather catastrophe; the list goes on and on. There are no replacements for the functions wilderness protection and regrowth provide us.
The Life-Support System paradigm is pretty simple.
Biodiversity + Productivity + Intactness + Connectedness =
Life Continuation, Security, and Abundance.
One could think of continuation as the ongoing production of the myriad Life Support System resources BE makes for us: oxygen, freshwater, moisture capture / containment / movement, temperature stabilization, food production, medicine production, fertility and fertilization, constant composition of all life forms, constant de-composition of all life forms, constant redistribution of biophysical materials, planetary integration of all organisms and relationships to comprise the human LSS, our physical health, our psychological context, companionship, feelings of connectedness, beauty, inspiration, brains, voices, emotions.... All of these things and more come together because of the life-support system container we call Earth; our reality, the only living Creation.
V. Two Biospheric Philosophers
John Trudell, “Remember who you are.”
John Trudell was a fascinating Native American man (Santee Dakota). The first track on his first album ends with this stanza, “One time I was visiting with my relatives, The clouds the mountains the sky, The trees, My relatives touched my spirit, Nudged it lovingly (and said), “Listen to us impatient one, We are forever, You must remember the gentleness of time, You are struggling to be who you are, You say you want to learn the old ways… When all you must do is remember.” Trudell reminds us, we are all from tribes. Our memories have been erased, our ancestral knowledge has been erased, quite recently by what Trudell calls the Technologic Industrial Perceptual Reality. Developed-world peoples have been disconnected for centuries from our biological identity and instead made to focus on individual gratification, not because it benefits the individual but because it benefits the Technologic Industrial economic system.
How do we get out of that? According to Trudell: we have the gift of our ability to think and communicate coherently and to use our spiritual power, which is to say to connect to the spiritual energy that’s in you and every organism and perhaps, animistically and in the quantum field, every thing.
We have the ability to see today’s paradigm of biospheric self-destruction for what it is — a wealth authority system that subjugates nearly all people and our “nonhuman relatives” so the elite can create more material wealth. Trudell reminds us, “We live in the sun-sky-universe reality.” It is literally that simple when you consider the science.
Furthermore, among Trudell’s many many many points, he says that native peoples did not believe people were born as sinners, but as miracles. Native children are celebrated and educated on how to live within the laws of biospheric reality — as miracles. We are all miracles.
“We are human beings. Human-the visible visible. Being-the invisible visible. The bone, flesh and blood of the human is literally made up of the metals, minerals, and liquids of the Earth. We are literally shapes of the Earth. We are just Earth forms… that’s the reality, and all things of the Earth have the same makeup… we all come from this reality of the Earth.” Trudell, 2001
Mary DeJong, “The wild is calling.”
Eco-theologian Mary DeJong is helping establish “indigeneity” in Christianity. Leaders like Mary are connecting to the Divine presence in Nature through academic rigor, ancient rituals, and place-based experiences. For Mary, “indigeneity” is, broadly (in my interpretation) the idea that to know yourself you must know and have a relationship with where you are—the location and the other beings and things who live there. Having a relationship with the trees, the rocks, the winds, etc., of the ecosystems and ecological communities around you is the most foundational aspect of who we are.
Mary reminds us that Christianity has traditionally been focused on a heavenly spirituality. Her work, often based in ancient Celtic Christianity, is focused on connecting to an Earth-based spirituality.
Mary will tell you — the divine presence is in the rocks and the trees. These place-specific features are called “waymarkers,” a term going back at least to sacred Hebrew texts, connoting natural markers that guide one home. If you were to walk across any given nation from border to border you’d see a lot of different types of rocks and trees, a lot of waymarkers. For Mary, these naturally-placed features of living and non-living nature are at root level locational guides that connect you to who you are.
What’s difficult, she says, for a lot of Christians is realizing that human beings are not the supreme animal. Christians tend to believe that on the sixth day, the last day before Sabbath, God created the White Man and gave him control over women and Nature. That’s really not the way our life-support system works. It’s often hard for Christians to get this. They’ve been indoctrinated with the idea of ultimate superiority on Earth. To that, Mary says (paraphrased),
“Look around! How’s that working out for us, having human beings as the dominant species on our planet? … My work is to return to a more indigenous read of scripture... How do we begin to read the stones and the trees as sacred script? How do we begin to be curious about the presence of wild others? How can we look just beyond our doors, open our windows, walk beyond our households and into the wild world, engaging that as wild script?” DeJong, 2021
VI. Wrapping Up: Living in the Life Support Paradigm
Without question what’s stated in this article are just some of the fundamental ideas for a Biospheric Philosophy. I expect they will lead to all kinds of new insights, discussions, and funded solutions. I believe this is our last chance to live according to the laws of reality—in our Life Support System paradigm, and that as we engage that life we will realize true advancement for human beings. Here’s a quick review of some of the key ideas stated in this piece, again, as an attempt to get the conversation started on Biospheric Philosophy.
We live inside the only Life-Support System
What could be a greater common value than our LSS?
It is the basis, creator, container, recycler, and sustainer of all Life activity
LSS = BE = Wilderness Continuum
Life Force Reality is more reliable than anything else we know, except perhaps rock
Remember who you are
Remember what you are made of
Learn where you are
We live in a connectedness paradigm: Biosphere Earth is fundamentally a connected system of life in how it originates and functions.
VII. Indigenous Peoples & Indigenous Values, 1st
Indigenous peoples are the literal guardians our BE’s most important ecosystems today. The integrity of our life support system is contingent on indigenous peoples co-powerment now and us transforming our Western minds into indigenous minds, as Mary DeJong says.
Today’s indigenous peoples live on lands and in waters that contain 80% of Earth’s biodiversity and at least 30 years of stored carbon emissions. Their wild ecosystems are also the most productive on our planet, a requirement for our continuation, like the vital organs in your body. It is not a coincidence that these places are still life-thriving. Life-support system reality is their reality.
Global cooling, life-support system productivity, planetary carbon absorption, planetary moisture and atmospheric circulation, stored carbon, and global biodiversity are concentred where today’s indigenous peoples still live. The most effective response to the “wicked” environmental crises of today is to co-power these people with their inalienable human rights as land owners and guardians of our planet’s, and our economy’s, vital organs.
It is up to us in the Developed World to figure this out: that the integrity and continuation of our only life-support system depends on our co-powerment of indigenous peoples and our adoption of their values of connectedness, relationship, and right livelihoods; knowledge of how live in balance with reality.
VIII. Can We Update Civilization?
So many people live in “economic reality,” as fundamentally unfair as it is. Now we must transition to living in Life-Support System reality, biospheric reality. We know we can’t just go to another planet and hop off the spaceship and live. I think people can get it that our only LSS’s wellbeing is our primary shared value, our human true north. As we engage greater diversity of human needs, identities and cultures, as we engage greater relationships with Earth’s other living creatures—our life necessities, it is time to update Civilization’s narrative on what existence really is.
Developed-world peoples are feeling the need to re-balance our way of life with our Life-Support System reality. We can see the damage around us and on the news. We can see how little intact wilderness is left, and “we can imagine new futures,” as Rev. Matt Syrdal says.
We can accomplish the myriad changes human beings must to stop collapse. We have the answers, what we need is paradigm shift. We have our intelligence, indigenous knowledge systems, technology, science, innovation, wealth, mistakes we’ve already made, cooperation, life-force reality, and a 4.5 billion year-old biosphere ready for us to rescue, engage, regrow, enjoy, and continue with it. It is time to advance into a biospheric reality and philosophy, a “new” identification of what it means to be a human being.
This is what reality looks like:
“20 years of continuous observations of plant life on land and at the ocean’s surface, 1997 to 2017” (NASA, 2017).
Postlogue
We have unwritten laws that were here before the (White) people came. . . Our laws were set down by the Creator. . . We’re taught when we’re little, when we go up into the mountains we don’t break the trees or pick the plants or do anything. We pick the fruit, but we don’t disturb anything that we’re not supposed to because that’s something that we’re taught to respect. . . The Creator says, “I give you this. You take care of it. If you don’t then I’ll take it back.” . . . We don’t just catch the fish any time we feel like it. Water is given to us as part of our lives. It’s part of our lives. From the time you’re little till you go on to the other world, you’re gonna use that water. You’re gonna thirst for it. The food that’s in that water, you have to take care of it; how sacred it is, how important it is to us. I don’t only speak for my people, I speak for all people. . . This timber is the clean air that you breathe and the clean water that you drink. Without this timber you’re not gonna have no clean air. The wind blows and cleans the air through this timber, all is fresh. We’re taught by our elders, “Don’t burn the forest. Don’t cut it out, because that’s what cleans our air.” A lot of this is taught to us when we’re little, even before we start going to school.” Chief Johnny Jackson, 1994
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Chris Searles is co-founder and executive editor of AllCreation.org. He is also founder and director BioIntegrity Partnerships (biointegrity.net). View more of his work on AllCreation here. Watch this paper as a presentation.
