Random Musing

I think the thing which I find most tragic about the-- I'm not even sure what the term for this is. Environmental damage? Earth's illness? What I think I find most tragic about it is the loss of potential experience.

I will be completely honest. I have an anthropocentric perspective on pretty much everything. I believe that eating meat is okay-- not great, but okay-- because you're sacrificing a lower form of consciousness for a higher consciousness, and that's ethically viable. Probably not the best thing which could happen, but ethically viable nonetheless.

So until nature develops the ability to write poetry or perform opera, I shall remain anthropocentric. Perhaps I should say other parts of nature. Nature did develop the ability to write poetry, and it is us. But none of this Rousseau-type BS about how the hills are alive with the sound of music; I don't believe that. After a few hours in the woods it all begins to look the same to me. A transcendentalist I am not.

But I've always been sort of intrigued by the Gaia hypothesis, that theory which postulates that the Earth is a living organism, hence all of the self-regulation which occurs in the biosphere. It makes an odd amount of sense. And if this is the case, then the most complex form of consciousness in existence is that form of consciousness which is comprised of all other forms-- the Earth itself.

Whether it could be called a conscious being or not, the Earth is undeniably complex and all parts of it intricately interconnected, and I think if we have a responsibility to anything other than ourselves, it is that interconnectedness, the glorious richness of it, and the mystery, that something less than conscious can juggle a mind-boggling number of factors and create ecosystems which we, with all our culture and poetry, could never fabricate and are only beginning to comprehend.